Doppiaa: Double-A For Attainment
Relatively new Italian brand Doppiaa is administering a chutzpah jab to menswear yet still keeping its garments versatile
Is the decade we’re now embarking on set to be as “roaring” as its equivalent of the last century? One during which bob-haired, cigarette-touting flappers and the Harlem Renaissance raised a middle-finger to Prohibition laws and racial stereotypes respectively?
It certainly feels like a world in a heightened state of flux is primed for cultural volatility: which is perhaps why Italian brand Doppiaa – which was founded five years ago by friends Alain Fracassi and Albert Carreras, who is the son of the Spanish tenor José – is taking its healthily disruptive approach to the long-standing tenets of Italian menswear into overdrive with its new Spring/Summer collection.
Doppiaa gives the notoriously amorphous notion that is ‘sprezzatura’ shape, credence and coherent expression, in the process demonstrating that “studied carelessness” needn’t be an oxymoron. These guys don’t so much blur the line between formal and informal: they tie that line in a knot and flick it into touch where it belongs.
The shirts in the new collection project unflinching gioia di vivere with every fibre. Whether striped or floral patterns suit your summer mojo, the Doppiaa Jacquard looms have been on the case for you, creating pieces that are on message whether Cap d'Antibes, The Hamptons or London’s swankier rooftop bars are to be your main haunt when the mercury creeps north.
Other shirts in the collection, made from loom-woven Japanese fabric and inspired by the unadulterated comfort of pyjamas, testify to the inextricable link between comfort and style. Elsewhere in the new range, V-neck sweaters call to mind the preppier realms of sport; cotton sweaters in signature Doppiaa colours (tobacco, plum, mango, navy and powder blue) call to mind Messers DiCaprio and Pitt sat in a 1964 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; Madras fabric jackets in tartan or floral print turn the flamboyance up way beyond 11; and single-tone double-breasted suits, calling to mind many a paparazzi shot of Lapo Elkann, bring things down a notch, allowing measured flamboyance to come through layering instead.
If indeed the world emerges from the current crises bolder and more brazen than ever before – as it did after the First World War a century ago – then this fresh-minded, exciting young label will have you kitted out perfectly for the revelry to come.
