The new A Passion for Fashion, fashion that makes the heart beat faster

A collector's cover and a fashion shoot realised in four stages. The first: a traditional photographic set where stylist and model interpret, in front of Robin Berglund's lens, some of the current season's masterpiece dresses. The second phase: the chosen shots are printed with high precision on cotton fibre. Step three: the canvases are entrusted to the hands of the most virtuoso brodeuse Parisians, Alexandra Latour and Héloise Guérin, to embroider the images with pearls, leather, sequins, micro-crystals. Using the sophisticated technique of aiguilletage, they give a material and three-dimensional thickness to the surface. Step four: each of these handmade tapestries is re-photographed in plan and is finally ready to be printed on newsprint. Thus is born, in a preciously conceptual operation that goes back to the philosophy of the Latin texere, of weaving and unravelling text and fabric, speed and slowness, preciousness and human gesture, the celebration of savoir-faire.

A red thread runs through the entire special issue of HTSI, on newsstands with Il Sole24Ore from Friday 20 March. The theme is A Passion for Fashion, fashion that makes the heart beat faster. Here then is the interview with Matthieu Blazy, whose creative direction has infused Mademoiselle Chanel's historic maison with the sap of a renewed joie de vivre. Here is the interview with Alessandro Michele with his reinterpretation of the codes of the Valentino maison. And then face-to-face encounters with the art of Sylvie Blum, the scientific and entrepreneurial talent of Philippe d'Ornano, the digital genius of Carmen Busquets, the creative force of Laura Weber, the style of Nina Flohr. These are just some of the protagonists of this issue, which gives space to art, with the usual meeting between collectors by Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, to young emerging talents with the craft 4.0 column edited by Sara Sozzani Maino, and to an investigation into bio-fabrics and cosmetic fabrics, the latest frontier in functional clothing research.

Finally, an emotional exploration of the quintessence of elegance in nature: Siamese, Persian, Ragdoll, Manx. A review of cat portraits by an undisputed master of the genre, Walter Chandoha. To celebrate fashion also through the subject most loved and reproduced by stylists and creative people. After all, how do you say catwalk in English? Catwalk!