Rizza started this label with dresses, and it still shows in how much attention the silhouettes get relative to everything else. The couture background from Giambattista Valli surfaces in the draping and finishing, but the mood stays deliberately undone rather than red-carpet. Think slip construction and cut-outs borrowed from nineties minimalism, not gala dressing.

The shirting is where the brand's contrast idea is easiest to read: structured, almost severe cuts softened by sheer or bias-cut fabrications. Rizza has talked about designing from memory rather than mood boards, and these pieces read like a specific photograph rather than a trend report. It is quieter than the dresses, but it is doing the same job.

DES_PHEMMES skirts lean into the bias cuts and slip references that anchor the whole collection, closer to something pulled from a nineties contact sheet than a current runway. The construction is precise underneath the undone surface, a habit left over from Rizza's years finishing couture in Paris. Nothing here is trying to look polished so much as lived-in.

Tailoring is the part of DES_PHEMMES that owes the most to Rizza's years at Giambattista Valli, and the trousers carry that structure even when everything around them is deliberately loose. The shorts pull the same sharp waist and clean line down into something more casual. It is a small category in this edit, but it clarifies what the rest is reacting against.

Outerwear is where the couture training is least disguised: clean shoulders, real structure, tailoring that could have come out of a Paris atelier. Rizza built his early career finishing exactly this kind of garment before he ever put his own name on a label. Paired against the label's slip dresses, it is the formal half of the brand's push and pull.

The rest of the edit rounds out the accessories and smaller pieces that let the label's nineties references show up in accents rather than whole silhouettes. DES_PHEMMES has been growing its retail footprint, including a recent showroom activation in Paris, the city where Rizza's career actually started. These pieces are the connective tissue between the dresses and the tailoring.

DES_PHEMMES works because Rizza is translating a specific, defensible reference point, his own years in Paris couture, rather than chasing a generic idea of sexiness. The dresses and slip pieces get most of the attention, and deserve it, but the tailoring is the part that proves the couture training is real. It is a young label, only founded in 2019, and some categories here still feel thinner than others.