Hands up: Davide Marello (Davi Paris)

Gestures of a storyteller

Delicate, untied hands. Hands that hold the brush as well as the pasta machine, that throw shadows and raise watercolour storms. Davide Marello, head of his own house named Davi, chose an 18th-century mansion to present his déjeuner sur l’herbe (lunch on the grass – in homage to Manet). It is a youth hostel located a stone’s throw from the Gustave Moreau Museum. Though born in the Piedmont town of Asti, he seems to have emerged from a new Athens. He wanted to become an art restorer. And it is as a painter of emotions that he defines each silhouette, drawing his prints al dente, which will become shirts, sweaters, jackets. He speaks about how to create a garment, where “drawing is revealing the light on an object, whether it is a statue, a flower, a body. It means understanding how the light shifts, and how the fabric falls.” When he was a child, his hands stood in for words. Today, this aesthete knows how to define his obsessions in impeccable French, such as “building geometry with colours and shapes”. After four years at Giorgio Armani, where he learned “ease in the structure”, followed by nine at Gucci, Davide Marello now pursues his path. “Making clothes is a way to convey emotions, to tell stories”.