La Perla, la crème de la crème of the luxury lifestyle lingerie set, if you didn’t already know, is much more than a seductively chic European brand. More so than ever after recent developments for the line centred around the launch of a new concept of appealing lounge-wear and beachwear for men during Pitti Uomo in Milan this Spring Summer season.
The creative director at the helm of this project, Tuscan designer Emiliano Rinaldi, made sure to channel much of La Perla’s enlivening of the female body into the new designs targeted at men. Many recognisable traits determined by luxe fabrics and ethereally lavish details from the world of feminine lingerie have been reconstructed in an apparent “sophisticated mix-and-match”, in a method ostensibly inspired by surrealist interpretations of the submarine world. Well, everyone does seem to going be going aquatic this season after all.
All the more fitting in natural shades of white, through to ultramarine blue and coral red, the refined new loungewear entrants are at their strongest when taking on the form of night robes and kimonos in a range of raffia fabrics and jacquard silks, worn over long gilets for a prepossessing sense of intimacy.
The riche layering and oversized trousers in the highest grade cotton and cashmeres reveal what this man wants, relaxed elegance, epitomised by La Perla’s insistence that their new concept collection could and should be adapted as underwear worn as outerwear. It makes sense too, who would want to resign their brilliance to being confined within four walls?
Though while Glass does advise that it may not be a good idea to go about your daily business in anything too “off-duty”, there is a permissively directional, whether you like it or not, thought-process behind La Perla’s new concept. Yet, fundamentally, this is signature stuff, and we’d personally find it almost impossible to pass on the iridescent Original Lycra fish-scale beachwear.
The SS15 menswear catwalk collections will drop into La Perla stores and on La Perla in December 2014.
by Liam Feltham
Images courtesy of La Perla