Bataclava: the New Alpine Dress-Code

Mainstreaming the ski wear

Before entering the luxury sphere, the balaclava existed for 170 years as a utilitarian garment. While it was a staple of early alpine style in places like St. Moritz during the 1920s and 1930s, the item was later sidelined in the 1970s and 1980s as skiers sought alternative, mainstream accessories to break away from tradition. Its modern transformation into a contemporary fashion statement began with Demna at Balenciaga, who integrated this heritage headcovering into a broader, romanticized post-Soviet aesthetic that quickly turned viral online. Then Miu Miu directly referenced that early high-society winter glamour by staging its Fall/Winter 2021 runway in the snow of Cortina, introducing pastel crochet versions that gained massive appeal among Gen Z users on TikTok. Other major maisons adopted and subverted the trend: Jonathan Anderson for Loewe introduced surrealist versions with heart-shaped face cutouts for the Fall/Winter 2022 men's collection, Givenchy incorporated uncommon horn details, and outerwear brands like Moncler solidified the item through technical luxury collaborations. Looking ahead to the upcoming Winter 2026/2027 season, designers are fully untethering the balaclava from its sportswear roots, blending it with everyday prêt-à-porter and formal evening outfits to create a new trend of fluid volumes in fashion. Its fundamental purpose is subverted: an item engineered for extreme thermal protection is now a pure status symbol, driven by the urge to appear avant-garde wearing this accessory in a 25-degree room with a roaring fireplace, while a blizzard rages outside. This paradox invites reflection on how and when the fashion system reinterprets garments to drive new markets and revenues, commercializing the human experience to feed an ever-growing obsession with appearance.

AI video LPS

The Blue Klein New Era: how it will return in our lifestyle

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ef8d7d_52bb2b5b6a9740d5ab699793d64b476d/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

From Yves Klein to Chanel: the most iconic blue ever comes back, and it's here to stay for the long haul.

The international Klein Blue is famous for its property of "radiating" the viewer: Klein wanted a color that expressed infinity, space, and pure energy. Given that it was proposed by Klein in the 1950s, it was an artistic expression of rebellion back then. It pairs perfectly with the Cherenkov light of nuclear reactors, which is precisely an electric, deep, and supernatural blue. When he patented this color in 1960, he had already started producing works in this shade, which completely shook the worldwide art market. This global shift is directly validated by the world's leading fashion and design publications, who confirm that the era of desaturated blue is officially over: The Wall Street Journal and Grazia UK point straight to the luxury market, describing this specific shade high-impact, dense, and heavily pigmented tone. This is echoed in the product design areas, where RUM Magazine and Elle Decoration NL are tracking how this color acts as a radical visual magnet in high-end spaces, replacing soft pastels with monochromatic objects that project raw strength. Finally, Elle Decor Italia, Living il Corriere, Interni, and Ideat all confirm the ultimate transition highlighting how major designers are applying it as a total statement. This movement is confirmed within the high jewelry sector, where the international houses are focusing on the deep saturation of the Kashmir Sapphire. Tiffany & Co. is shifting from clear diamonds toward these intense center stones, using unenhanced gems in geometric layouts to introduce a heavier visual weight. At Van Cleef & Arpels, this direction is reinforced through deep selections that prioritize dense color over reflective sparkle. Meanwhile, Chanel anchors this shift with its Reach for the Stars high jewelry collection. The house enhances the tone through an innovative design that blends the concept of the starry sky with modern silhouettes, using the blue stone as a structural statement. This shift represents a medium-to-long-term trend cycle serving as a visually stunning anchor for forward-looking design.

AI video LPS

Gocce di Memoria: a visual cultural and social time-machine project.

Christine

Gocce di memoria is a breaking-the-boudaries cultural social project created by me and Professor Stephen John Cowley, an internationally renowned scholar at the University of Southern Denmark and expert in the field of organizational cognition and distributed language. We built a sort of visual time machine in our town, Zavattarello (Pavia, Italy), through shooting portraits, filming, and voice recording 52 elders over the age of 75. This project captures a significant part of our local history through the memories, the different points of view, and the hope for the future of these people.

I shot and filmed the entire project in my photo studio using a classic photographic B&W style and a white limbo backdrop, aiming for a timeless aesthetic applied to real historical memory in which all the subjects leave a digital legacy for the local adults of tomorrow.

By having the possibility to hear the voices and see the faces of their grandparents, the next generations will have access to a professional web archive and a dedicated Facebook page where the precision of the studio portrait meets the raw power of filmed history.

The goal of this project is to give our future community these voices as a guide to be better than the society we are living in today.

A special thanks to Stephen because his contribution was essential in guiding me through dedicated lessons on how to ask the right questions. His expertise was the "other half" of this idea and the key to the final and emotional impact of the work.

Concept LPS + Professor Stephen John Cowley

Photo + Film LPS