SUNFLOWERS 2022

In the light fabric of this collection, barely discernable at first, and then with undeniable power, a sunflower appears. On a deep blue or an unforgettable red, with quick brushstrokes and pure colours a flower appears that does not admit competition, that eclipses with rotundity any other that might join it. On the fabrics we see another sun, planted in the earth, a sun that hasn’t forgotten where it comes from, and thatreturns its vegetable gaze to the light, with all its cells eager for life and warmth. Heliotrope, the one who seeks the sun.

In the golden metal, on the neck, intertwined with the fingers, more sunflowers: they seem to sprout from the skin, that they seem to intermingle with, with a warmth that pierces the cold material and transforms it into a flame: like the sunflowers themselves, they are not jewels that combine well with insecurity or shyness. In a field, in the high vase of a house, in the low wing of a dress, or anchored on the chest, the sunflower asks us to look at it, without arrogance or artifice. I'm here, it seems to tell us, I'm a reminder that beauty exists, a brushstroke of life in the dark, on the gauze, in a choker.

In the 19th century, Oscar Wilde, the arbiter of elegance, chose to wear a sunflower on his premieres. If it was small, in the buttonhole; if it was very large, in the hand. It was not just an aesthetic decision, a rupture of conventions in a gray society, trapped by their own prejudices and gagged in corsets: it was a way of starting a new fashion, to recognize his own kind, to send a message to those who were different. A heliotrope is not chosen as a accesory, not even as a shade for a dress chosen by chance. It requires a determined will, the desire to capture what the flower transmits.

And it is here where Ailanto and Suma Cruz have found each other, precisely, thanks to the sunflowers: on their own, but at the same time, as if a ray of light enveloped them and forced them to turn, these luminous creators had begun to draw sunflowers, to turn the material that awaited them into flowers of sun and life. Each of them wore his own version of a sunflower to recognize himself, to illuminate this waiting time after the darkness. This collection is the result of that work and that encounter, of the powerful strokes and the delicacy of the materials. Beautiful, resounding,

undeniable, the sunflowers await anyone who knows how to understand them. The world is full of messages: it only takes the arrival of the genius to interpret them.