SATURDAY 2:06 PM SEPTEMBER 21, 2024 MILAN
Following his successful stint as the Head Designer for leather garments, outerwear, and men’s and women’s tailoring at Bottega Veneta, Matteo Tamburini is bringing his unmistakably Italian sensibility to Tod’s, where he’s been creative director for one year. After the brand’s SS25 runway show in Milan on Saturday, our editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg wanted to get a closer look at all the clothes: Tamburini’s tailored trousers and one particular chocolate-brown blazer caught his eye. Below, Tamburini tells us what was inspiring him this season—from yachts on the Mediterranean to the work of the Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri—and why Tod’s is for everyone. “Ultimately,” he explains, “I just want to reach people.”
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MEL OTTENBERG: Matteo, how do you design a really good pair of pants?
MATTEO TAMBURINI: Well, I don’t know. It depends on the feeling. It’s thinking about the silhouette and then trying to translate it into something real.
OTTENBERG: Do you give them to people to try on?
TAMBURINI: It’s a matter of thinking about a general silhouette, about what we want to do. Do we want to go slim or wider, pleats or not? So it’s just a matter of conceiving of a general image that you want to create and then translating it into something that actually works. It’s also about choosing the right material and everything else.
OTTENBERG: Your pants look really good on the runway as they’re moving, and they look later in the photo, too. That’s not always the case.
TAMBURINI: I think it’s a matter of the fabric, also. It’s my thing, choosing expensive fabric. What can I say?
OTTENBERG: It seems very, very expensive.
TAMBURINI: Thank you.
OTTENBERG: What’s the inspo this season?
TAMBURINI: Well, it was kind of an imaginary trip to the Mediterranean, so we wanted to translate the sensation of a kind of a summer wardrobe: starting from Italy, sailing through Greece, this was the feeling we wanted to translate. Everything was a bit more relaxed and easy in a way, compared to the full winter shoot that was a bit more formal, more connected to the city.
OTTENBERG: What were the references for womenswear?
TAMBURINI: There were many, I would say. There were images from the Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri, the kind of rarefied atmospheres of his prints. There was also the Italian yachting photographer Carlo Borlenghi, this idea of sails blowing in the wind, which is kind of connecting to the Mediterranean.
OTTENBERG: I like the men’s, too. Was there a certain guy you had in mind? Is he Italian?
TAMBURINI: For sure. He really cannot be anything else.
OTTENBERG: The colors are so good. I think this is my favorite color of brown. What’s your favorite color in this palette? You’ve got to have one.
TAMBURINI: I surprised myself. Usually, I’m not really into red or yellow, like the trench. In general, I’m more attracted to natural palettes and also the bottle green thing. The position of colors, the brown with the green or the red with green, I love that.
OTTENBERG: What I like about this show is that the clothes looked good, but also an old customer could be wearing this stuff.
TAMBURINI: Yes, the range of people wearing the collection could be quite big. You can connect the dots to an older kind of clientele. Ultimately, I just want to reach people.
