First Sportswear Line Is Simple, Soothing
When you’re a purist, the world’s a jarring place. Clashing colors and the wrong jewelry can “make me crazy,” says Carmelo Pomodoro, an Italian-American from New York who has just come out with his first collection of women’s sportswear.
Not surprisingly, it’s on the soothing side. No prints. Nothing but cream, white and beige.
Short Resort Season
“I wanted this to be a very pure collection. I didn’t want to make any compromises,” says the 32-year-old, the subject of a recent trunk show at Nordstrom Westside Pavilion. By introducing the line during the short resort season, he says he was able to focus so narrowly.
“I wanted to start slowly, so I’d be absolutely ready for next fall.”
So calculated an approach might seem out of character for someone who describes himself as a “hyper artist.” But Pomodoro has had a decade to think over his fate. Unlike some classmates at Parsons School of Design, he didn’t begin his own line immediately.
“I had a lot of friends who started collections. They very quickly came on the scene, were well-known for a year or two, and then disappeared.”
Instead, Pomodoro trained with Seventh Avenue designers Bill Haire, Ralph Lauren and Betty Hanson. From Haire, he learned organization, he said. From Lauren, packaging. (“He’s the master at it.”) At Betty Hanson & Co., where Pomodoro worked after Hanson’s death, he had enough independence to determine his tastes.
He prefers simple, interchangeable parts--taking classics, then toying with the formula. He mentions one description he’s heard of himself as “a new-age Calvin Klein.”
“My work is minimal like his but in entirely different shapes than he would do.”
Peplum Top
With Pomodoro, the standard “big shirt” becomes a peplum top. A hand-knit rolled-collar sweater can be worn off the shoulder. And a basic white rayon sweater has a hood, cowl neck or sash, depending on how the attached scarf is maneuvered.
Pomodoro says he pictured “waif-like creatures like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly” when designing the group--which hardly conjures images of ‘80s female strength. Yet the collection, priced $50 to $350, is meant to be forward and realistic, he says. “I’m really looking to the 1990s--modern age.”
The designer, who entered business this year with an investor friend, says he’ll add a dash of color to future collections and even a print to his spring line. It will be toned down and marble-like, he says. Nothing jarring to the eye.
