Amy Assogna
NO MORE OMERTA
During the mid-19th century, the Mediterranean island of Sicily was famous for its abandoned fields of lemons. With the boom of the citrus market, nocturnal thieves started stealing lemons for their own profit. The same delinquents, then, would offer to guard the fields at night - and if the farmers dared refusing, serious consequences would be promised... from these ‘agricultural disputes’ to more recent bombings and killings, Sicily has lived with a threatening reality, Cosa Nostra, or more simply the Sicilian Mafia. Whilst the Mafia’s crimes are nowadays carried out more subtly, the global conception of this territory is one of a land still tormented by violence, which ultimately (and sadly) obscures what Sicily truly is.
With this in mind, my collection wants to exalt the real essence of this Italian region: an Island of many beauties, brimming with traditions, rich in culture, and - most of all - populated by strong women who throughout the decades have fought for their freedom and the one of their beloved land. Ladies who throughout the decades had to face up discrimination and a harrowing control over their lives and their values.
This SS’23 womenswear collection will start by looking at Antimafia-supporting women like Rosaria Costa, and will later focus on farmers and policewomen uniforms that can remind one of Sicilian tailoring. I moreover want to tell and highlight the island’s traditions through the study of folk clothing and typical crafts. I will create this idea of deconstruction and reconstruction throughout the collection by creating patchworks, with the underlying intention to restore the real image of Sicily.