Putting on a couture show wasn’t exactly what Gabriel Figueiredo had in mind when he started working on the spring 2025 collection ofWhile doing “proper couture” is a career goal for 34-year-old Figueiredo, he’s adamant that the brand remains a ready-to-wear line — for now.
The opportunity to work on this came with the forced downtime due to France’s first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, when he put down the foundations for his genderless label. Describing the De Pino wearer as someone who loves fashion as much as Figueiredo does, the designer said his references were equally rooted in the history of fashion as they are in tongue-in-cheek observation of the industry’s characters.. “She lives for fashion and she’s so extremely sophisticated that it becomes a parody of fashion,” he pointed out.
He named the label after his grandmother, who taught him how to sew. Giving it a moniker that wasn’t his own last name but had a deep connection to him nonetheless was a way to keep work separate. Priced from $400 for shirts and up to $1,500 for coats, the label also took part in the Tranoï trade show and garnered orders from a clutch of edgy multibrand retailers such as Apoc in London, Casimir Pulaskiday in Tokyo and Nolm in Sydney, Australia. It is also now stocked in the shop at the Villa Noailles in Hyères.
“This is really something that shaped my taste,” he said. “It was mainly fancy dresses and high heels so there was something really fashion about that I really like and that I miss a little bit nowadays.”