Some memories never fade. They stay quiet and keep moving inside us. One of them gave rise, in 2022, to the artwork Fluttuando: two Betta fish, the fighters with wide, veiled tails, suspended in a movement that never ends. This year that drawing became a collection of pocket squares.
The memory
The memory is from childhood. In Davide Cristofaro's home there was a large aquarium, full of fish, and he would sit for hours in front of the glass, watching its beauty and its colours. Of them all, the fighting fish was his favourite: its fins followed it like a veil and every change of direction was a curve. The image stayed with him, and the collection is dedicated to that memory. The artwork comes from there, not from a photograph: from what memory had kept, the colour and the movement.
The drawing
The first marks are in pencil: the scales one by one, the fins in filaments, the two bodies seeking each other without touching. Then come the inks, laid down with brush and marker. The coral red of the first fish, the blue and pink of the second, and all around a watery ground where the colours chase each other between light and shadow, with a grain that calls to mind bubbles and refractions.
The work is called Fluttuando: mixed media on paper, 21 × 30 centimetres, 2022. It is a finished artwork, with a life of its own on paper, long before anyone thought of a fabric. It belongs to the archive of drawings by Davide Cristofaro that are now coming back to life in fashion and design.
From paper to file
To become silk, a drawing has to go through the digital stage. It is not an automatic step: the scan is balanced colour by colour until the file gives back exactly what is on the paper. Then the variants are built, set against one another and prepared for printing. This is where Fluttuando, from a single artwork, becomes a family of four.
The samples from Como
The silk printing is entrusted to the silk mills of Como. The first samples arrived in Martina Franca, in Puglia, where Davide examined every shade in person beside the original on paper before giving the go-ahead for production. Silk returns the drawing with a different light from paper: the check is there to decide that the light is right.
Four variants
The pocket squares reproduce the drawing in full, on 42 × 42 centimetre silk twill with hand-rolled edges. There are four colour variants: Deep Blue, Purple & Coral, faithful to the artwork; Lime Green & Coral, the brightest; Warm Sand Tones, a neutral palette of sand, beige and brown; Neutral Mineral Hues, with greys, olive green, navy blue and burgundy in dusty tones.
In the pocket
Worn in the breast pocket, the squares change with the jacket: light blue linen with the blue and purple variant, sage green with the lime green, sand and dusty pink with the two neutral palettes. The drawing stays the same; it is the colour that speaks to the suit.
The collection was told step by step on our social channels, from pencil to silk, and has been on sale since June 2026.
