Delving once more into the world of performing arts, Arturo Obegero imagines a universe based on a fictional dance company, the Academia. Obegero took inspiration from 5 of his favorite classic ballet plays – Manuel de Falla’s El Amor Brujo, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Jean-Louis Vaudoyer’s Le Spectre de la Rose, Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice – to create clothes that speak not only visually but emotionally.

Obegero explored the meaning of these romantic as dramatic love stories to fuel his creativity before reinterpreting them in today’s sartorial language. A surrealist crossover occurs as the characters from the plays merge with Obegero’s own dramatis personae. They all navigate through darkness and light, love and betrayal, sensuality and abstraction.

Silhouetting is a key part of the style vocabulary Obegero is creating. With ACADEMIA AW20, the designer sharpens his signature high-waisted silhouette – with an emphasis on cinched silk-satin waistlines – and proposes shapes evoking or creating movement.

Obegero sourced silk crepe, ribbed cotton, and technical jerseys to fulfill the utmost of comfort without forgetting style. Obegero’s go-to pitch black and pure white meet a palette composed of scarlet red, the burgundy of a dried rose, and the softness of a periwinkle blue. White ostrich feathers dancing in-between two layers of revealing jersey convey the poetry and emotions of twinning ensembles.

“I wanted to create a collection of garments with a soul, and with a story to which the wearer can add his own.”

Arturo Obegero