The designer interview: Veronica Etro
Heading up an iconic brand that continues to evolve and excite, VERONICA ETRO is the creative director with an innate skill for combining heritage and cutting-edge design with aplomb. Here, she tells LAURA ANTONIO JORDAN why the secret to designing desirable collections comes down to connectivity and curiosity – and not losing your passion for play
“I never want to stay with my feet on the ground,” says Veronica Etro. To clarify, this is not the lofty admission of a fashion fantasist but a literal statement of fact. She doesn’t find it comfortable to keep still; she likes to move, to travel. “I’m a curious person,” she says. “I want to know and look at different things.”
This won’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with her work as Etro’s womenswear creative director. There, she has instilled an aesthetic that positively glistens, wafts and jangles with a barefoot glamour and irresistible gypsy spirit, which are at once global and irrefutably Italian. It’s Talitha Getty via the Amalfi Coast, Monica Vitti transported to Laurel Canyon, and today resonates with the kind of women – including brand fans Olivia Wilde and Yara Shahidi – who look like they’re never on one time zone for long.
“I’m a curious person, I want to know and look at different things
”
Of course, for Etro, like the rest of us, travel hasn’t been on the agenda for the past year. Not much has. In March 2020, when Milan went into its first, strict lockdown and her fellow Italians sang from their balconies, Etro busied herself with work and homeschooling. She got up early, dressed as if she were going to the office, and put on her lipstick daily. “It’s a way of not losing yourself,” she says.
“I realized I had a discipline, but it came naturally.” Besides, creativity kept her mind traveling; books, films and art were her passport out of stagnation. When she discovered a half-finished needlepoint her mother had worked on years ago, Etro picked up where she had left off. “I think it was my meditation in that period; of really letting time pass,” she says.
“[Our signature print] is very decorative, chic – aristocratic in some ways – but, at the same time, it can get very psychedelic, crazy, pop… traditional, but also quite rebellious
”
Still, turning her hand to craft wasn’t out of character, but a continuation of a narrative that started more than 40 years ago. Founded by her father, Gerolamo ‘Gimmo’ Etro, in 1968 (a revolutionary year, she points out), the house started life as a textile design company. As a little girl in the late 1970s, on Saturdays she would accompany her father to the studio. “I remember all these big, big tables, high stools; there were watercolors, swatches of fabrics, glue, scissors,” she says, gesturing widely on a Zoom call from her own office, where a collage she did for her father in kindergarten now hangs. “It was a playground; I always loved to work with my hands, to get dirty, to touch.”
As well as Gimmo’s design nous, she also inherited his love of travel, art and a magpie’s eye for inspiration. It was on one of his far-flung trips that he discovered a trove of 19th-century Kashmiri paisley shawls. Today, the swirling print is the brand’s signature, reinterpreted season after season, splashed on everything from gowns to denim. “[Our signature print] is very decorative, chic – aristocratic in some ways – but, at the same time, it can get very psychedelic, crazy, pop,” Etro says, adding that it encapsulates the duality at the core of the brand: “Traditional, but also quite rebellious.”
“It’s not just about doing some clothes. You think about windows, the show, the music, the set. It’s like working on a film in a way
”
Despite being immersed in fashion since childhood, Etro didn’t initially covet a career in the industry, and never craved the spotlight that comes with the role of creative director. But she was entranced by the research – the ‘background’, she calls it. Attending Central Saint Martins in 1993 – drawn not only to the art college, but to London, where she would go treasure-hunting in markets with her antique-dealer mother – she took the opportunity to immerse herself in different design disciplines, printing photos in the basement and dyeing fabrics in the kitchen.
But fashion did, inevitably, come calling. She would return to Etro HQ in the summer vacations and, during those trips, fell in love with the idea that clothes could tell a story: “It’s actually how we work today. It’s not just about doing some clothes. You think about windows, the show, the music, the set. It’s like working on a film in a way. The message; for me, fashion was about that.”
It wasn’t until the 1990s that the house expanded into ready-to-wear, and, in 1997, Etro officially joined the family business assisting her brother Kean, who is now creative director of the menswear division (brothers Jacopo and Ippolito are also on staff). With the Etro aesthetic literally in her DNA, she was tapped as the womenswear creative director in 2000. “It’s very similar to my taste,” Etro laughs, today offsetting the sprezzatura of an oversized shirt with a colorful necklace and a handful of chunky rings. “Maybe because I’ve been working here 25 years, I’ve grown with the brand; it’s very much a part of me. It’s not just about the clothes, it’s more about the lifestyle.”
“Fashion is still something about dreams; it’s about creating a desire – it’s not just about making clothes
”
‘Lifestyle’ is a word Etro uses over and over. “Free-spirited. Eclectic. It’s about a whole world,” is how she sums it up. However, she’s keen to point out that, in essence, the concept is utterly subjective: “It’s not a way of dictating. I love seeing how different people mix and match and interpret [it] in their own ways.”
Defying the claustrophobia of the past year, freedom was the starting point for Etro’s pre-fall 2021 collection. On her mood board was Jimmy Hendrix – “rock, ’70s, but in a chic way” – and legendary ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev (the Etro family collection even holds some of his personal belongings) – “I grew up with [them], the untouchable pieces of Rudolf!” She was bewitched, Etro says, by his off-stage looks; Nureyev papped letting loose at Studio 54, “noble but at the same time savage”.
She imagined the dancer between “dream and reality, the stage and the street”; a suspension between two states that feels particularly resonant. This translates into a collection with a rules-do-not-apply soul. Multi-pattern robe coats are designed to be thrown over fluid maxi dresses with the same ease as they are denim; an intarsia knit hoodie can be the ultimate WFH ally, but it would also pair perfectly with a tailored jacket. Sure, a frilled paisley-print mini dress would look great on a dance floor (soon, we hope), but wear it with flat sandals and one of Etro’s languid, belted cardigans and it could just as easily work for a Sunday coffee run. “I didn’t want it to be boho. I didn’t want it to be costume,” she says.
“I wanted to pare down and find a balance between the pieces. There was no distinction between function and aesthetic, between smart and casual, between outdoor and indoor,” Etro says of her singular pre-fall collection. That it felt effortless was essential. “Luxe, yes, but, at the same time, it had to be easy – that was the most important thing. I want to bring dresses into reality.” But the Etro triumph is to allow that ‘reality’ to take flight with fantasy. “Fashion is still something about dreams; it’s about creating a desire – it’s not just about making clothes.”
For now, she is determined to keep on pushing beyond her comfort zone. The post-pandemic world is an exciting time for the industry, not least because “there are no rules. We broke the rules. Every brand can choose their own way of doing things.” Etro’s way of doing things now means tightening the collections and imposing rigorous questions on herself, like: “Why should people buy that?” She also wants to keep on serving up surprises. “You need to play with it and to go a step further each season. I never want to stay at the same level.”
Etro’s work hasn’t just been a creative outlet but a personal salve – this year more than ever. “I always say I could never work in a bank. It’s important always to fly, in a way, with your mind,” she says, adding that while she works hard, she’s still “in my playground”.
“You always need to keep a door open to express yourself, to do madness sometimes – and to have fun
”
With her wide-eyed enthusiasm, it’s easy to imagine Etro as a young girl in Gimmo’s office, surrounded by all those swatches and sketches. “You always need to keep a door open to express yourself, to do madness sometimes – and to have fun,” she says. “I never want to be too serious.”
It sounds optimistic, I say. She tells me that’s not a struggle – she’s lucky, grateful. “Maybe it’s because I love my job that I keep on being positive. I’m a person who always tries to see the glass half-full. There’s so much to do, there’s so much to play with, there’s so much to be inspired by. I mean,” she says with a smile, “life is beautiful!”
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