Gilda Midani describes garment design as a way to make the body “peaceful.” To free her wearer from the nag of fit and form is to refocus them on life’s sunshine.
This is where she begins her process, with an attention on how her chosen textiles feel against the skin; how a mix of dyes flows across the form; how a carefully placed seam adds definition to an otherwise unstructured silhouette. By mastering shape and color, Gilda achieves the impossible: a wearable ouvre that feels as joyful and easy as it looks.
Despite Gilda’s inherent levity, a spectrum of emotion is captured within her color – exuberant pink, energetic yellow, carefree aqua, resolute black. Navy waning into white for contemplative, orange splashed against red for confident. The possibilities are vast. You could spend hours analyzing her pieces and still only wade in her creative shallows.
Gilda pulls from a variety of sources to distill the essence of a life well. She draws inspiration from the modern sculptures of L’ Atelier Brancusi, obscure Impressionist painters and 14th Century Malinese architecture to understand the simplicity behind the complex. Her deliberate consciousness then permeates her pieces – an investigative thread weaving through ancestral batik dyeing, classical Italian seamwork and the best weaves for linen fiber. To count her work among your collection is to pursue these tenets yourself and revel in the ideal: the Gilda Midani definition of peace.
“My personal gallery is made up of the patterns the waves sketch on the beach… the imprint [of] time…. the deep forest where I find treasures…”
– Gilda Midani
