Photo Credits: Courtesy of Antonio Grimaldi
There are collections that do not simply wish to be seen: they demand to be felt. In “Edonism Couture,” Antonio Grimaldi dresses more than bodies: he dresses states of being. “Edonism Couture speaks of conscious hedonism, where fashion is not just about aesthetics and beauty but is an act of freedom, personal well-being and strength. With this collection, I wanted to give that strength, that pleasure of existing fully, without asking permission” – the designer reveals. These are not garments as ornaments but constructions that claim the right to exist with intensity.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Antonio Grimaldi
At a time when dressing often means performing imposed roles, Grimaldi reverses the logic: his creations inhabit the self, not the persona.
The show presents 27 appearances that alternate between flowing dresses and near-sculptural constructions. The shapes are not static: they move and transform in a continuous interplay of laser-cut ribbons that metamorphose into bodices, stoles, capes, skirts and architectural details. Vast volumes of tulle unfold into macro-ruffles and sculpted petals, also laser-cut, shaping mini dresses and overcoats that seem to breathe with the body. The focus is sensory: deep velvet, impalpable organza, crêpe cady, chiffon, tulle and silk cady construct a tactile and visual narrative in which each fabric accentuates the contrast between structure and lightness. “I wanted each material to have a voice, each texture to participate in this dialogue between rigidity and fluidity, between strength and the whisper of the ephemeral,” Grimaldi explains.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Antonio Grimaldi
There is a constant dialogue between weight and lightness, between the ethereal and the monumental. Dress-capes emerge like transient temples for bodies that refuse to exist in silence. Geometric lines reveal and protect, translating the idea that vulnerability, too, can be luxury. There is no nostalgia in the evocation of the 1980s that permeates the collection; instead, there is a contemporary re-reading of that decade’s audacity, now filtered through the gaze of someone who understands that pleasure is resistance.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Antonio Grimaldi
Grimaldi does not create to adorn: he creates to propose. His couture is not an ornament superimposed on the world — it is a call to transform it. Edonism is an invitation to aesthetic disobedience, a reminder that dressing can be an existential declaration. Each embroidery, each cut, each monumental ruffle seems to declare: luxury is not a prison, it is a language. A language that speaks of freedom, desire, and the strength of inhabiting one’s own body with radical wholeness.
In Rome, beneath the classical geometry of the Casina Valadier, Grimaldi erected a silent manifesto: to live is also to dress oneself in one’s own essence. Edonism is not merely a theme, it is a state — an invitation to celebrate existence itself, with pleasure, with audacity, and with the solemnity of those who know that being alive is already art.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Antonio Grimaldi
