Riccardo Maria Chiacchio
June 3, 2022
Behind the garments in Riccardo's practice there are elements of family, southern roots and intimate moments. In recent years his work has focused on the memories that clothes can hold and how they can express feelings and ideas. Riccardo treats garments like individual entities as he did in the picture he took for us last year in Posillipo, where he captured himself surrounded by numerous white garments on the ground. Inspired by these white, flat clothes we designed a limited capsule of white and grey pieces, along with two garments featuring Riccardo’s photo.
What is your background?
I started by wanting to be a fashion designer as I love to understand garments, their starting point and their endless ways of trasforming. I naturally and very smoothly dived into styling and direction as I think it is more artistically fullfilling for me.
(1) Chille ch'e ncuolle a 'tte n'e' rroba toja (What you're wearing isn't yours), 2020
How would you define what you do?
I would define myself as a visual storyteller, the media that I use isn't relevant for me, either it's film, photography or fashion. Although the three things are extremely connected in my work.
What do you want to express/do or say through your work?
Every project starts by a personal urge of expressing myself, making my work quite autobiographical wether it's about my life, my city, my dreams etc. I then always very naturally insert more broad themes to keep myself in some sort of shadow.
I take my work very seriously when it comes to understanding that fashion/art are very therapeutic and explanatory.
(2) Chille ch'e ncuolle a 'tte n'e' rroba toja (What you're wearing isn't yours), 2020
How has your work developed in the last couple of years and where do you think it’s going?
The biggest change in my work has definitely been taking the courage of creating images by myself and that happened as I always felt 50% satisfied because as I mentioned before I use fashion and art as a tool of expression and sometimes, for specific projects, you've just got to do it yourself.
Fashion has endless categories and possibilites so I see myself exploring and developing new ways of image making.
Who or what is an important artistic reference for your work?
Films and books. I like stories and I like memories but even better I love to read or watch stories and embrace the urge to see yourself in them.
(3) Chille ch'e ncuolle a 'tte n'e' rroba toja (What you're wearing isn't yours), 2020
How did this piece come about?
I'm obsessed with clothes and what they could mean to you. I like to remember or sometimes imagine memories that clothes can hold on to and I'm very affectionate to them. Also a skirt can tell more about "what happened last night" then words ever will.
This piece is a big meltin pot of past,present,future but even a very contemporary self portrait, a starting point if you may.
