Walking into Marco Capaldo's Hackney Studio on a rainy Thursday morning, I brace myself for feathers, sequins and tinsel galore. After all, his brand 16Arlington is best known for marabou-trimmed party dresses and skin-tight, embellished numbers. But Capaldo’s office is more like an image out of an interior-design magazine: it’s pared back – almost empty – and extremely tidy, the taupe concrete floors and white walls broken up by a neat row of sky-high cupboards behind a vast marble desk, a canvas evocative of a black Rothko painting hanging to its side.
I can’t help thinking about how my expectation and the reality mirror the nuanced contrasts that run through his brand: high-voltage glamour meets effortless cool. Loud and out there, yet simultaneously minimalist. I also can’t help thinking he has very good taste.
Sitting down with Capaldo is like catching up with an old friend, even though we’ve never met before. It’s easy to be drawn in by his affable, slightly shy demeanour. He greets me with a warm embrace, inviting me to sit on one of two Barcelona chairs (lovingly salvaged from a skip behind Harrods, he tells me) while he curls up on the other in his black tailored trousers, a black jumper slung casually over his white T-shirt.
(He typically wears black, he says. It’s one less thing to worry about.) ‘I’ve always loved design, I’ve always loved beautiful things, whether it’s art or architecture, books or furniture,’ he tells me.
Right now, Ca.
