Now on her third season in Paris, Veronica Leoni is growing ever more confident in the direction her label Quira is taking.
“It’s about taking ownership of a point of view,” she told WWD. “I really try to tell the story of womanhood in a personal way without layering or allowing someone to say how a woman should dress.”
To express this, she invited American photographer and model Guinevere Van Seenus to capture herself, as well as choreographer and dancer Imre van Opstal, “getting physical with the clothes,” as the designer put it.
At times the photographer’s fist closed around the camera’s remote-control telegraphed boldness and defiance, an impression furthered by silhouettes that appeared more strict than sensual this season.
That impression was belied in person. To better help women embrace themselves, Leoni said she’d followed an urge to “peel off silhouettes,” both in the number of layers and in cuts with few flourishes.
Instead, she offset these with the hand and density of her fabrics — melton, double-face wool cash, tweeds, wool gabardine and cottons — to great effect, along with a palette of gray, which she felt worked best to highlight the combinations.
Exhibit A: a fitted collarless trouser suit made coolly elegant in black bleached denim.
Elsewhere, it’s her knack for construction that made her work pop, from the exposed seam of a jacket shoulder and a dramatic draped poplin shirt to a skirt shaped out of a single triangle of suiting, and could be turned into a sculptural mini thanks to a hidden button.
“You want to see your designs on the street, because ultimately that’s the success of a creative direction,” said Leoni. Those were the kinds of details that make you stop and ask for the brand name.
