Sicilian designer Salvatore Piccione has won the tenth edition of fashion talent-scouting competition Who Is On Next?, co-sponsored by Vogue Italia and the organizers of Rome's bi-annual haute couture shows AltaRoma.
The designer behind edgy brand Piccione.Piccione has previously worked with Mary Katrantzou for Swarovski, Topshop, and Longchamp, and has freelanced for leading French brand Céline.
The designer, who describes his style as "dynamic, colorful and feminine", currently works for London-based brand Hobbs as well as for the label he created in Milan in 2012.
He won the sought-after prize awarded annually to up-and-coming international talents with a capsule collection of clothes intricately embroidered with flowers in a colorful palette. "It was a difficult decision, as the quality of competitors has increased," Vogue Italia Editor-in-Chief Franca Sozzani said Monday.
The jury who picked the winner included former International Herald Tribune fashion journalist Suzy Menkes, who now works as an international fashion editor for Condé Nast, Daniela Agnelli, fashion director of the Telegraph magazine, and Beppe Angiolini, president of the Italian chamber of fashion buyers.
Israeli designer Daizy Shely won a special jury mention.
The nine finalists included Marianna Cimini and jewelry designer Caterina Zangradi.
The competition has launched a number of Italian talents.
Among them are Stella Jean, who has caught the attention of the international fashion crowd with her unique mix of African wax prints and Western staples like natty Oxford shirts, and Marco De Vincenzo who has been showing his ready-to-wear label in Milan since 2009. French luxury group LVMH announced earlier this year it was buying a minority stake in his fashion brand.
Previous winners also include Fabio Quaranta, who debuted a unisex spring-summer 2015 collection during the AltaRoma event, which wraps up on Wednesday.
The Roman designer drew inspiration from a number of top players in art, music and literature over the past five decades - including George Harrison - to design classic clothes with a quirky work-wear twist, like the oversized jackets and shirts inspired by factory workers' uniforms in the 1940s.
The classic jacket-with-shirt combo was often mixed with funky waistcoats with big pockets designed for both men and women.
Another rising star in Rome who showcased her fall 2014 collection Monday was Sabrina Persechino, an architect-turned-fashion designer, whose sculpted clothes were inspired by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Persechino dipped into the creative process behind Frank Lloyd Wright's projects to create feminine silhouettes replicating the museum's inverted-ziggurat design as well as the precious Nautilus seashell. Simplicity and complexity played one another in stunning silhouettes enveloping the body, enhanced by precious duchesse, mikado, shantung, cady and chiffon silks, as well as laser-cut leather, in the seashell's natural colors - dark red, light pink, black and white.
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