Many will remember the impact and influence of Costume National in the 1990s. The Italian brand, founded by brothers Carlo – current president of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion – and Ennio Capasa in 1986, defined an era of great success for Made in Italy for years, collaborating with international celebrities and regularly showing in the official calendar of Milan Fashion Week. A chapter officially ended in 2016, when Costume National was sold to the Japanese fund Sequedge.
However, Ennio Capasa chooses to launch a new brand in 2022, Capasa Milano, and just recently announced that he would expand the brand’s vision by introducing a section dedicated to shoes. A direct link to Costume National’s heritage, of which footwear was a fundamental part and an authentic style statement. “Costume sold up to 90,000 pairs a season. It was a shoe that changed the way of thinking about heels, structures and leathers,” Capasa said in an interview with MFF.
And today this new creative phase starts again from the same root: quality footwear with a minimal chic aesthetic. The designer’s desire is to return to considering the shoe as an all-around object: handcrafted, but with extreme heels and bold shapes. After all, in the 1990s Costume National always stood out for its innovative approach, being among the first to work with raw cut, a process considered impossible until then.
Even today, the desire to experiment with awareness and craftsmanship has not died down. Although Capasa specified that he did not bring back specific Costume National silhouettes, there is no denying that memory played a key role in this collection. The shoes will be produced by Peron Shoes, a Veneto-based excellence with 50 years of history, a testament to the manufacturing value intended for the project.
But the shoes are just one of the projects Ennio Capasa is pursuing. Ideas in the pipeline include an advanced skincare brand and capsules of contemporary knitwear and tailoring. Capasa considers today’s tailoring to be either too fashion-oriented or excessively classic; in his vision, he envisions essential tailoring, with a few unisex, masculine shapes.
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