Business & Economy

New collection from fashion designer Giovanni Scutaro to be “Song to Caracas”

By Sabela Bello

Valencia, Venezuela, May 3 (EFE).- From his “Esperanza” (Hope) collection, renowned Venezuelan fashion designer Giovanni Scutaro is now moving to offer his “Canto a Caracas” (Song to Caracas) collection, working against the clock to bring his new designs to the catwalk by May 24 in Caracas with tones inspired by dawn and sunset in his homeland, as he explained to EFE in an interview.

Scutaro – who recently brought a “capsule” of his Hope collection to Hesperia Valencia Fashion Week (HVFW), held in Valencia, the capital of Carabobo state – said he was excited about his new project, which will be made public in just three weeks in the city where he was born and to which he returned after living in the United States for a number of years.

And he returned, he said, because he believes in his country’s economic recovery and, as a result, in the new awakening of Venezuelan fashion which he asserted has some “great talents,” both well-known and newly emerging designers, turning out creations that “have no reason to envy” the designs being created in other countries.

“Very positive things are coming out, having great influence, not only for the already recognized talents. I’ve been in the fashion world for 35 years. I’ve done more than 120 shows on the international level, more than 300 shows in my country and, really, we have no reason to envy what’s being done abroad,” he said.

With that mindset, Scutaro is preparing to launch Canto a Caracas, his new spring-summer collection into which he’s put his time, heart and soul.

“Canto a Caracas is a tribute to the city of Caracas. Caracas has a virtue that perhaps few cities have, which is dawn and sunset. I sometimes say: Will everyone ever have the chance to see it? Because sometimes daily life doesn’t let us observe things like what the afternoon’s like and what the dawn is like,” the designer said.

And those moments in the Venezuelan capital’s day are what motivated Scutaro to imagine an infinite number of combinations that he decided to express in his creations, thus showing the world a view of an infinite city through multicolored fabrics.

“We have an Avila (a large mountain near the capital), which is what overlooks our city. And that city is so resplendent at dawn… You see those blues, grays, how they turn to pink. On the basis of that, I selected the colors, and so that’s what you’re going to see in Canto a Caracas,” he said.

In displaying just a portion of his Esperanza collection, Scutaro became the undisputed star of the HVFW, where his designs featured green tones, unusual embroidered tulles – a lightweight, very fine, stiff netting – and the dream that something big is coming to Venezuelan fashion.

“Esperanza, precisely, is the dream, a hope. So, we started with green colors. The tulle wasn’t just a simple tulle but rather an embroidered tulle … We could really bring that innocence and that enchantment to our women, not just Latinas, but women of the world who want to return to that very marvelous epoch that was the 1960s,” he said.

The assembled outfits, the bustles and fine textures of Esperanza are designs with which Scutaro wants “any woman to be able to outfit herself a la Scutaro,” because “in the end, the (ladies) who are going to use (that look) are not the models, but rather the everyday women.”

Scutaro’s goal is for fashion, which like almost all economic sectors has endured a real hiatus during the pandemic, to now return with a vengeance and for Venezuela to be a big showcase, something which he said “Yes, we can” achieve, and the point of departure on this long road was, he added, the HVFW.

“Yes, we can. We can do many things. The pandemic … caused all Venezuela and the whole world to hunker down, but it opened many doors and this is one opening, above all – in my opinion – a personal one, for all the new designers who can present (their creations) on a stage. It’s not easy,” he said.

He said that “Fashion Week, which for the first time is being held in Venezuela, definitely allowed the opening of a floodgate of work for everyone. So, I’m super happy and 100 percent supportive of this type of event.”

The first Fashion Week held in Venezuela featured 120 models and a team of more than 200 people who organized the event over several months and it is intended to be the seed of the relaunching of the fashion sector in the South American country.

That is why Scutaro has returned from the US to work in his homeland, despite the fact that he has achieved great success internationally.

“I’ve been in seven countries on an ongoing basis, in the Fashion Weeks, not only in the US, but also in Argentina – I worked in Buenos Aires for seven consecutive years … – in Santo Domingo … Puerto Rico, New York, Miami, in Spain … So, I’ve traveled the world,” said Scutaro, who went on to note his work with Carolina Herrera and Oscar de la Renta, among others.

But despite all that, after working abroad for more than three decades, he has returned to his homeland with the same verve and drive he had when he was starting his career.

EFE

Related Articles

Back to top button