For its tenth anniversary, The Attico wants to show us what happens when no one is watching. The SS27 collection delves into the secret selves that emerge beyond the gaze of others. Against a dreamlike backdrop of beds and dimmed lights, Gilda Ambrosio and Giorgia Tordini reject a singular vision of femininity, introducing instead a cast of women shifting between glamour, intimacy, eccentricity and nonchalance. After ten years, The Attico seems less concerned with defining its woman than with discovering just how many women she can be.
For its SS27 collection, presented during Milan Fashion Week, The Attico marked its tenth anniversary with a show conceived as an exploration of intimacy, identity and the selves we reveal only to ourself. Staged inside a dimly lit tunnel lined with a row of beds, the collection was fittingly titled Quando Nessuno Guarda (in engloish When Nobody Is Looking). Despite the suggestive setting, founders Gilda Ambrosio and Giorgia Tordini dismissed any overtly sexual interpretation, instead framing the bedroom as a space where one can exist freely, away from the gaze and judgement of others.
The collection drew its primary inspiration from an idea attributed to Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez: that every person lives three lives, a public life, a private life and a secret life. It was this third, hidden dimension that fascinated The Attico. Rather than imagining a single woman, the runway unfolded as a succession of characters, each born from the possibility of being entirely herself.
A multitude of personalities emerged.
There were glamorous divas and women who looked like undercover detectives; others seemed to have just stepped out of a Berlin nightclub, while some appeared to still be wearing their pyjamas (decidedly seductive ones). Fur-clad socialites shared the runway with polished Upper East Side archetypes and women dressed as though they had just left a gala. Elsewhere, more alternative figures appeared, seemingly indifferent to conventional rules of style. Together, they formed a fragmented yet compelling portrait of femininity, one defined not by consistency but by multiplicity.
The clothes reflected this breadth of identities. Sculptural corsetry gave the body an almost statuesque structure, while skirts and dresses dominated the silhouettes. Fabrics evoked the heavy velvet of theatre curtains, contrasted with sheer, satin-like transparencies and leather. The tension between softness and structure, exposure and concealment, glamour and nonchalance reinforced the collection’s interest in the different personas a woman might inhabit when freed from an external gaze.
The refusal to focus on a single type of woman, or to reduce femininity to one recognisable archetype, ultimately speaks to how far The Attico has expanded its stylistic vocabulary over the past decade. Ten years after its foundation, the brand appears less interested in defining who “the Attico woman” is than in exploring how many women she might contain. When Nobody Is Looking therefore reads not only as an anniversary collection, but as a point of departure: a reflection on the identities the brand has accumulated so far, and a suggestion that it is now ready to venture into new, less predictable territory.
The Attico SS27 Images
