How does a former football talent as a boy becomes the DfT award winner, by Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf and its online shop Fashion ID? By leaving his football career behind, going to Business School just because of the way one would dress as a banker after graduation and than he decides to become a fashion designer in order to create the menswear he likes, influenced by the suits businessman would wear.
I call that a person with a very strong vision.
Matteo Lamandini, has definitely a strong ideas about his design and when he applied to become the DfT winner he was already working for the Italian label MARNI and now he will be soon doing an apprenticeship at the Tommy Hilfiger Design Center in Amsterdam. With the help of Peek & Cloppenburg and Fashion ID, a great start for a young talent.
Matteo designs menswear and he is constantly looking for solutions. He knows exactly how a garment, a suit should look at the end but he is looking for different ways they are made. Therefore he goes out on the street and watches, preferably homeless people and how they deal with cloths. They wrap them, they wear clothes in sizes that are wrong for them and he loves the bagginess, he is fascinated by shapes.
He looks at the Cooties movement, which was a strong style in the 30s in New York City where men wear baggy pants and oversize jackets. And he likes to go to flea markets where he finds patches, coins and emblems that he sews onto his designs.
New York seems to be the perfect palace, also because his most favourite Designer Tom Brown made his menswear collection now also wearable for women.
This could be Matteo’s next step…
This years DfT, Matteo Lamandini loves oversize menswear. Shapes and finding solution of how to create volume are his main aims. The Tommy Hilfiger Show was one highlight between many others during New York Fashion Week, Spending hours at Mood Fabrics was perfect to get prepared for ones own collection, as well as a morning stroll along Hells Kitchen Fleamarket and the journey goes on. The next stop will be the Tommy Hilfiger design Center in Amsterdam, where Matteo will do an apprenticeship for some time and gets prepared to create his own first collection with the sponsorship of DfT, Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf and its online shop Fashion ID.