MILAN, ITALY — Who says Italians have the market cornered on sartorial classicism? Simon Cracker’s Spring/ Summer 2027 show offered a distinctly quotidian commentary on current trends, proving that smart, conscious design knows no borders.
Most of the season’s usual suspects were present and accounted for: billowing jackets, lingerie-inspired pieces, flounces and micro shorts, eveningwear influences, and utility details. But Simone Botte is one of those designers who can reference the themes of the moment without relinquishing his own crafty identity.
“For Spring, I focused on an annoying summer fairy tale, so I took a mega cauldron and threw in everything that annoys me about this season,” the designer told GLASS in a preview ahead of the show. Botte also reflected on what has caused frustration throughout the brand’s history, devising newness on a tailoring level while revisiting mistakes he had made that may have contributed to poor sales.
“I took all of this and stretched it to the max, making it a distinctive feature, while recreating the effect I used to get when I couldn’t manage to sew fabrics properly,” he says. There was plenty of excess on display, but Botte softened razor-sharp jackets by cutting them in pale magenta cotton and feminised sporty motifs through the use of wide, three-dimensional details wrapped around bodices and running down the seams of deliberately dishevelled tailoring.
“I made these Simon Cracker ice lollies drip onto glasses, accessories, and leather bags,” says Botte. “I took a fairy tale, but it couldn’t be a normal one. I started with the first story that introduced me to upcycling: Cinderella, particularly the scene in which the mice gather scraps from the stepsisters. With those pieces, they create a wonderful dress.”
Paradoxically, Botte preferred that dress to the one eventually created by the fairy godmother. “I focused on this whole process, which has been mine forever – who would have thought, when I was little, that this would become my job?” he muses. Botte also longed for colour. “I tint the clothes with natural dyes, and I choose four key hues: magenta, green, black, and a midnight blue that appears black. Once dyed, however, each fabric reacts differently,” he says.
“Working with scrap fabrics means everything responds in its own way, and so an entire spectrum of magentas and greens emerges,” he continues. “I started with a forest green, but it also became a very faded sage green. That’s part of the process, and it’s a compromise with upcycling that I’ve come to accept.”
Spring’s key takeaway pieces arrived in the latter part of the collection, which featured a series of wedding dresses. “We created these tops that are deconstructed but still look elegant,” reflects Botte. “When you get closer, you realise that the fabrics have been ripped apart, reassembled, and paired with denim, which becomes the urban element that keeps the fairy tale grounded in reality.”
It is, in essence, a fairy tale for real people. “It’s also the responsibility of designers today to tell fairy tales, because people need to detach from a reality that is not always beautiful. But those stories shouldn’t be unattainable, because the woman sitting in a hairdresser’s salon, leafing through a glossy magazine, wants those clothes for herself too. We can’t make them feel so distant. People already start from the assumption that they will never be able to afford them, which is very sad. Clothes are for people.”
Botte remains optimistic about the future. “I’m approaching some companies, and I have some interesting materials in mind,” he says. “For me, it’s a continuous game. I don’t like to play it safe; I prefer to venture into unexplored territory. On a material level as well, I like to experiment. The brand is doing well because I know exactly the story I’m telling, and that makes me much more confident in what I do.”
Botte has largely insulated himself from the pressures of selling. Sometimes the work will resonate; at other times it will not. “The important thing is that the story convinces me from the beginning,” he says. “If I don’t believe in it, I can’t convince anyone else.”
by Chidozie Obasi