We walk out onto the stage of our lives with our glamorous masks in front of our faces. With our past inside us, we stride out into our future. If you look behind the mirror of our personality, you will find love, the purest love – love for love, for beauty and for art. This is Giancarlo Petriglia’s Leitmotiv as he creates his colourful, timeless bags using high-quality Italian craftsmanship. In his spring/summer 2019 collection, the prize-winning designer presents a homage to eternity in an instant – varied, playful and self-deprecating. Precious items made from leather, made in Italy.
«My little, secret kingdom, enclosed in a bag, a precious framework, which balances the past and the present,»says Giancarlo Petriglia of his creations, in which he brings together all the things that are most important to him from childhood, fashion and art. His works are the realisation of his dreams, where he sets his feelings free. The values of the past are carried into the future. With a ceaseless twinkle in his eye, he uses the bags in his upcoming collection to recount the different moments of a love story between happiness and pain, break-up and return – from the «Love Letter Bag» and the «Diamond Bag» to the «ForEver». Fantastic pastel colours, sometimes cheerful and triumphant, sometimes elegant and reserved, but always unequivocal in their attitude, bring emotions to the fore in their interplay. Soft calf and shimmering snake leather; combined, they become an extraordinary, symmetrical pattern displaying both inner conflict and loving unity. The resulting effect is similar to that of the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold, Kintsugi, in which fragments are reassembled in an artistic and aesthetic manner, which at the same time emphasises the scars rather than negating them. The sturdy bags are monolithic constructions with architectural echoes; elaborate fastenings adorn every model. They wear the Giancarlo Petriglia logo in their heart: two mirrored griffins in gold, protecting the most valuable asset on Earth. Giancarlo Petriglia is a designer who sees himself as a romantic explorer with a child’s soul, a tireless discoverer. A free spirit, versatile and curious, an explosion in creativity and lightness. Even before he was able to ride a bike, Giancarlo Petriglia was already using a sewing machine to express his early interest in fashion. His instinct for art resulted in him passing his design degree in Milan with distinction and led him to the major luxury fashion houses, mostly as artistic director and personal assistant to Signora Trussardi. This stirred his interest in accessories and in the spring/summer of 2012, he brought out his first collection. He received great recognition and his bags, handmade in Sicily, were celebrated for embodying Italian identity. Vogue Italia and the most important fashion show in Italy, AltaRoma, chose him as the «Who is on Next 2012» for accessories. Nowadays, his creations are not just available across Italy, you can find them throughout the world in selected stores from Munich to Zurich, Paris to Shanghai, Moscow to West Hollywood. Fashion shoots in Vogue or Cosmopolitan showcase his distinctive bags. «I want to be a timeless cult. Gone with the Wind, a classic look into the future, because tomorrow is another day», he says, describing his artistic concept of preciousness and eternal beauty. The new bags are a further development of his style, but with a nod to his previous collection. A perpetual cycle of beauty, love and purity. For Giancarlo Petriglia, the goal and philosophy of his brand is, he says, «just to make luxurious and glamorous handbags.» The Spring/Summer 2019 collection is proof that he has succeeded.
