EcoSalon at NYFW: Costello Tagliapietra

Crazy for chrysanthemums and other vibrant prints at Costello Tagliapietra’s Fall/Winter 2012 runway show.

One day last spring, fashion designer Robert Tagliapietra came home to find a workroom filled with chrysanthemum sketches drawn by his design partner and now husband, Jeffrey Costello.

“For some reason I was painting chrysanthemums all spring,” Jeffrey told EcoSalon just after their Fall/Winter 2012 show on Thursday.

“He was obsessed with them,” Robert added.

Designers Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra

The duo behind fashion label Costello Tagliapietra took the sketches, played with them in Photoshop, and used AirDye technology to digitally print the resulting patterns onto vibrant dresses and separates for their Fall/Winter 2012 collection. These looks, with others, paraded down the runway at Milk Studios on Thursday afternoon to a packed house, which included Susan Sarandon, Padma Lakshmi, Miss J. Alexander, and the Misshapes’ Leigh Lezark in the front row.

“New York Fashion Week is an important stage to showcase your work and we feel blessed to have had the opportunity and the audience for as long as we have been in business,” the duo told EcoSalon just before the show. “It would be a sad day when, as a designer, we would do all of this hard work and put in all of these hours of work and not get to showcase it!”

The audience certainly appreciated the parade of gorgeously draped gowns, cocktail dresses, and separates. But while the solid colored pieces were masterful, the printed ones seemed imbued with an entirely different energy.

“We love the prints this season,” Jeffrey told EcoSalon. “We love what they do to the clothes. They have movement to begin with so they give the pieces so much more movement.”

One reason for the vibrancy of the prints is the aforementioned AirDye technology, which Costello Tagliapietra has been utilizing consistently for six seasons and which appears on nearly every piece in the line. AirDye is a sustainable way to apply color to textiles without the use of water, which makes it environmentally preferable to traditional dye methods. The technology also allows for more precise color placement.

Below we’ve posted a selection of our favorite printed pieces from the show, with the chrysanthemum pattern up at the top. See what we mean about energy?

Images: Jessica Marati

Jessica Marati

Jessica Marati currently resides in New York City and covers travel and sustainability for EcoSalon. Catch her weekly column, Behind the Label.