Misunderstood Monsters: Marco Capaldo Goes Skin Deep for 16Arlington’s Fall 2024 Collection
16Arlington’s East London studio is a clean, white high-ceiling space with spots of embellishment on the cutting table as the brand readies itself for its fall 2024 show at the Curve Gallery at the Barbican Centre, which has never been used for a fashion show before.
“It’s this idea of lurking behind corners and the curve has no corners — it’s just this continuous stream of concrete and you don’t quite know what’s coming,” said Marco Capaldo, the brand’s creative director in an interview.
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The entire space is being rendered in black with streams of light coming through as models walk in from one side and exit through another.
Capaldo has worked with the composer Felicita, who has captured sound as if the audience are outside a club remixed with little threads of birds chirping and leaves rustling.
“There’s a little bit of Madonna in there, but it’s very subtle,” said the designer, who has titled the upcoming collection “I’m Not Sorry, It’s Human Nature,” an ode to the American pop star’s 1994 song “Human Nature.”
To form the collection, Capaldo has been reading about monsters.
He has fixated himself on the work of the author Charlie Fox, referencing his exhibition “My Head Is a Haunted House” that took place at Sadie Coles HQ in 2019 and his books, “My Head Is a Haunted House / Dracula’s Wedding” and “This Young Monster,” a collection of essays that touch on the idea of beauty inside monsters with chapters on Harmony Korine, “Alice in Wonderland” and Mark Frost and David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.”
“We see monsters in fairy tales and in society as these quite scary things, but actually, beneath the surface, there’s something very beautiful and very endearing about them,” said the designer.
“I love these ideas that Charlie puts forward about the vulnerability of the monster. They’re fragile creatures that are physically immensely complex, but what’s so inspiring is that they define the criteria of the unknown and challenge the status quo; they go against the grain,” he added.
There has been a dark recurring theme in Capaldo’s last two collections — his fall 2023 show unfurled a set of ground coffee that riffed on the act of awakening, referring to his grieving process for Kikka Cavenati, his partner in both life and work, who passed away in 2021 following a sudden illness. Meanwhile for spring 2024, he played with Lynch’s 1997 surrealist neo-noir “Lost Highway,” by way of clinical white shirts paired with pencil skirts.
This collection presses on darkness in a different way with shades of monstrous purple and green; leather that feels like pimpled skin; prints that when layered create an illusion of smoke underneath the skin; a large black shearling coat that’s been half shaved to create a chevron print in a nod to the floor in Fox’s exhibition; a stray dog on mohair jumpers cited from Fox’s book; pumps covered in fuzzy shearling and boots without the toe box to give the impression of a monster trying to escape from inside a body.
16Arlington collaborated with the 70-year-old London-based footwear brand Gina on the shoes, which are for solely for the show, although there has been an appetite for footwear from buyers.
Small cutout images are pinned to a board illustrating the show’s running order that takes into account the monster theme. The fitting models faces are hidden with jumpers tied around the neck and shearling and feathers that only allow a glimpse of the model’s faces.
Despite the dark collections, Capaldo is quite the optimist in person. He’s cheery and engaging in his all-black uniform worn with Adidas sneakers and a silver Cartier watch.
When 16Arlington made its London Fashion Week debut in February 2019, the brand was heavy on the embellishments: multicolor sequins, cheetah-printed suits, feather-trimmed, extra short minidresses; but in recent years, those codes have become more gentle and slither in in unexpected ways, such as a layering white feathers under a red vinyl dress.
“The best part of my job is creating clothing for people to make them feel great and that’s not just after dark, that’s throughout the day,” said Capaldo, whose business was once synonymous with party and eveningwear, and is now transitioning into new categories such as separates, menswear, knitwear, tailoring and accessories to sit alongside its fruitful sales of sequin dresses worn by Amal Clooney and Hailey Bieber.
The team and budgets at 16Arlington are growing, too. The brand hired Fabrizio Viti’s chief executive officer, Fatima Geffrin, in September 2022 as head of business operations, and promoted her to managing director last year.
Capaldo is candid in admitting that he leans on and surrounds himself with a community of women that are both his friends and part of the 16Arlington world, from Geffrin to the cast that worked on the brand’s spring 2024 campaign starring model Edie Campbell, shot by Zoe Ghertner and styled by Julia Sarr-Jamois.
“Starting the brand with Kikka and having been with her for 10 years personally and five professionally, there was always that duality in the view of what we were creating, there was a male and a female perspective,” said the designer.
“After working with each other for so long, I have to thank her for everything I’ve learned about women. She taught me so much about how women move in things and how they want to feel wearing them — a lot of that is ingrained in my design process now as a man [designing] solo,” he added.
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