A GLASS TO BREAK
A meditation on fragmentation, resilience, and the audacity required to fracture invisible ceilings, Rivas makes the language of rebellion literal in his latest collection.
Its genesis reads like modern myth: in Berlin, two encounters with shattered glass – first, a pane marked by a bullet’s impact; later, splinters scattered across a pavement – became quiet omens. For Rivas, a self-taught designer navigating an industry often guarded by opacity, these images crystallised into metaphor. What began as rupture evolved into reconstruction. The result is a fashion lexicon forged from breakage, healing, and defiant strength.
Across 26 predominantly womenswear looks, punctuated by sharp menswear interventions, tailoring becomes architecture. Shoulders are exaggerated into battlements; sleeves stretch and extend as though reaching beyond constraint. Jackets split open to reveal sudden flashes of fabric – slashes of red against black and slate, like wounds refusing to close quietly. Proportions elongate, silhouettes teeter between fragility and force. It is emotional engineering.
The palette is stark and cinematic: deep blacks and mineral greys pierced by luminous silvers and arterial reds. Yet it is in materiality that Rivas’ rebellion finds its most compelling voice. Printed silks, mohair, and denim collide with next-generation biomaterials developed alongside innovators such as Ponda, BioFluff, and Banofi. Ponda’s regenerative plant-based textiles (designed to help restore wetlands) appear as insulation in both featherlight pieces and padded jackets. Those jackets fuse reclaimed ocean-sourced nylon with plant-based bio-fur engineered by BioFluff under its Savian line, reframing outerwear as both armour and activism.
Banofi’s plant-based leather alternative sculpts dramatic dresses that blur the boundary between sustainability and avant-garde spectacle. Accessories echo the innovation, extending texture experimentation into the smallest details. And in a runway first, a full-length coat crafted entirely from plant-based fur signals a decisive shift in the narrative of evolving luxury.
Handcraft tempers the technology. Intricate closures, acrylic detailing, and sustainable denim experimentation underscore a devotion to process. Headpieces – co-designed by Rivas and milliner Roberta Cucuzza – crown the looks with sculptural intensity, some integrating biomaterials into their very structure. They feel less like adornment than proclamation.
The aesthetic oscillates between delicacy and rawness, classicism and insurgent modernity. Beauty and brutality coexist. Hair direction by Richard Philipart and makeup by Manuel de Castro heighten the emotional charge, sharpening each silhouette into something almost confrontational.
A Glass to Break does not politely acknowledge the glass ceiling. It stares at it. Studies its fractures; and with precision and intent, brings it down.
