FOR ART’S SAKE: For its first presentation in Paris, fledgling Italian label Retori chose a location charged with historic significance: the former workshop of French antiques dealer, interior designer and patron of the arts Madeleine Castaing in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
The brand tapped Rooms Studio, a female-run design studio based in Tbilisi, Georgia, to deck out the space with collectible furniture, and displayed two paintings by artist Miko Veldkamp in the back. They were not just there for decoration: the collection, titled Chapter 02, was based on the Dutch-Indonesian artist’s work.
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Launched by Alsara Investment Group last year, Retori is a women’s and men’s ready-to-wear and accessories collection that draws inspiration from a different artist each season. Founder and creative director Salma Rachid has designed it for a cultured and cosmopolitan clientele.
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“Retori is a brand for the travelers, for the explorers, for people who are exploring within or outwards, but it’s more someone who is going through a journey,” she said at the presentation during Paris Couture Week. “It needs to be elegant. It needs to be timeless. It needs to be practical. It needs to be versatile.”
The line is rooted in outerwear, which includes wrap coats in twin layers of double-faced wool; reversible jackets with one side plain, the other patterned; and crinkled unisex trenchcoats that pack up neatly into a travel pouch, printed with a bicycle pattern drawn from Veldkamp’s art.
His work, which is shaped by his multicultural upbringing and reflects on the layered nature of identity, informed the season’s color palette of chocolate, lilac and green, as well as the clay color of the brand’s new knitwear capsule, made from a custom yarn that bends cashmere, virgin wool, linen and silk.
“It’s a very easy silhouette, and it’s very timeless, and it’s very ageless, and it’s very seasonless,” said Rachid. “I mean, look at the weather today in France: it’s 15 degrees [Celsius] and two weeks ago it was 39. It’s understanding what people need in today’s world.”
Conceived for fall 2025, the collection will arrive in select global boutiques and on the brand’s official website in the next few weeks.
The inaugural collection was sold at around a dozen outlets worldwide, including a pop-up at Harrods in London; Istanbul department store Beymen; Takashimaya in Tokyo; Stanley Korshak in Dallas, and the Al Duca d’Aosta boutique in Venice.
Chief executive officer Zaccheo Manzoni said expansion will be intentional. “This is a project that needs to be displayed in a curated way in department stores, because we need to have the space to tell the story, and where we have the possibility to do that, we are succeeding,” he explained.
“Paris is giving us the possibility to talk internationally with a community that can understand what we do,” Manzoni added.
Salma Rachid is the daughter of Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who established Alsara Investment Group in 2017 and is the chairman of Valentino and chief executive officer of the brand’s parent company Mayhoola, which also owns Balmain and Italian menswear brand Pal Zileri.