Serena Gili recently graduated from Central Saint Martins (2012), and has awed everyone with her final collection, which happened to earn the 2nd runner-up spot for L’oréal’s Professional Design Talent Award. Serena’s design work is creative and precise, with great attention to fine details, combined with a strong interest for innovative and unconventional materials. Her collection has been inspired by disciplinary institutions like schools and convents, as well as the austere portraits of the 16th century. The repetition of the pattern produced by the pleating, the control of the knit through the resin which forces the body into a straight posture, and the graphic effect created by a one by one beading work, are a few of the techniques she used as tribute to the distribution of the bodies and their spatial arrangement in schools, to the dedication and self-discipline of nuns in cloisters, and to their coded and hierarchical activities. This collection is her interpretation of a uniform, embed with ritual, tradition, and with respect for rules and routine. In regards to her work, she says, “I guess this collection is a reflection of my family…When I completed it, I knew exactly where it came from…It is a tribute to my family somehow.” A collection subtly thought and staged!
