For this season's collection entitled "Believe", Barcelona-based designer Karlota Laspalas worked on the concept of people's hope of coping with events, facing facts : "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", as the saying goes. It was her belief that strength can overcome everything. Hope belongs to anyone after all, even those who lost everything. "Belief is the vital stimulant to the lack of evidence", she said. The image that evoked this idea was 'The veiled Christ' by Italian sculptor Guiseppe Sanmartino (1720–1793). This masterpiece was commissioned initially from the Venetian sculptor Antonio Corradini in 1753 -who did not live to complete the work. Guiseppe Sammartino interpreted his sketches freely to create a masterful sculpture which can still be seen in Sansevero Chapel (also called Capella Sansevero de' Sangri or Pietatella) in Naples. The life-sized marble sculpture reproduces in stone the effect of a thin shroud and it's probably one of the most impressive works of art in the world. The original stylistic message is in the veil, but Sanmartino’s late baroque feeling and sentiment permeate the shroud with a movement and a meaning far removed from Corradini’s rules. The modern sensitivity of the artist sculpts and divests the lifeless body of its flesh, which the soft shroud mercifully covers, on which the tormented, writhing rhythms of the folds of the veil engrave deep suffering, almost as if the compassionate covering made the poor limbs still more naked and exposed, and the lines of the tortured body even more inexorable and precise. The swollen vein still pulsating on the forehead, the wounds of the nails on the feet and on the thin hands, and the sunken side finally relaxed in the freedom of death are a sign of an intense search which has no time for preciosity or scholastic canons, even when the sculptor meticulously embroiders the edges of the shroud or focuses on the instruments of the Passion placed at the feet of Christ. Sanmartino’s art here becomes a dramatic evocation, that turns the suffering of Christ into the symbol of the destiny and redemption of all humanity. A long explanation that clearly vindicates the use of linen and light cotton throughout Karlota Laspalas' current collection in a palette of ivory, nude, ash gray and terracotta. Nomadic and ethereal outfits that deserved the 080 Barcelona Fashion 'Best Menswear Collection' award, reasserting the work of this young Spanish designer as one of the most promising of the moment.
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