Italian sports fashion brand, ellesse, has announced its collaboration with British designer Liam Hodges to produce a capsule collection for AW19.

Inspired by the ellesse snow-sports archive, the collection incorporates designs that experiment with alpine colour and outlines of geographical maps; echoing Liam Hodges’ distinguished futuristic style, while also including technical skiwear aspects.

Liam Hodges commented: “We spent the first part of our research going through the ellesse archive, looking through the garments, what the brand is and their heritage, how it started with skiing and tennis. Then we focused on skiing for AW and then took it from there – their technical campaigns and the garments they made and started to put our spin on it.”

The finished collection juxtaposes ellesse’s archive skiwear designs with Hodges’ unique dystopian look.  Ski jackets, trousers, t-shirts and tracksuits draw inspiration from a mountain colour palette and are available in grey, white, black and electric blue.

Some of the prints have been developed from microscopic details of snow, with the two brands logos colliding on pieces in the form of crackle effect and embroidery.  Footwear draws heavy influence from classic snow and moon boot styles, teamed with modern sneaker design details including Velcro and chunky rubber soles.

On the partnership, Hodges said: “I think it’s really exciting that you get a brand like ellesse who want to work with a brand like me, whereby they aren’t just re-hashing their past, they are actually looking further forward to developing something and looking further to the future.”

The capsule collection debuted at Liam Hodges’ AW19 show at London Fashion Week Men’s this month, with the full collection available to buy at www.ellesse.co.uk from September 2019.