From Gianfranco Ferré's notes: "To me, drawing means throwing a spontaneous idea onto a piece of paper in order to analyze it, check it, assess it, clean it up, stripping the basic elements down to simple, precise lines, grafted onto diagonals and parallels and enclosed in geometrical forms and figures as a designer and architect I conceive fashion as design" And it is from his training as an architect that Gianfranco Ferré draws his method, which finds its fulcrum, its starting point, his way of giving shape to ideas, concreteness to insight, in the drawing itself, "by stopping impressions and giving them an outline of consistency": hence, the drawing as "necessity and passion together, a point of arrival in the dimension of reality, but at the same time a point of departure for a project." The aim of this book of Ferré's drawings is therefore to piece together his intellectual development, the evolution of an inner world of research, interpretation, cultural and stylistic synthesis, that will survive as proof and as a source of reflection: drawing as the expression of freedom and rigor, creativity and method, but also a working tool, a daily exercise, a mindset, a concrete approach. But mostly a modus operandi. If, in fact, for Ferré creating an outfit means starting a process of formal construction through the elaboration of simple geometrical forms into complex structures developed into their three-dimensionality, the first stage required in this process of elaboration is the "definition" of the forms themselves by means of a bozzetto, a sketch. Ferré's relentless inventiveness becomes a sign, in his incredible silhouettes that with just a few strokes of the felt-tip pen bring to mind a dynamic figure, often fixed by the line of a pencil, by glimmers of light and gold rendered with foil or with a sprinkling of tiny diamonds, or create outfits resembling patches of color, the twists and turns of calligraphy, an explosion of lines, or the synthesis of a detail endowed with incredible textural impact. This is what we always find striking about Ferré: that even when the image he draws is just a sketch it reveals the precision of the detail. His entire universe, then, is condensed in a quick sketch, usually made in pencil: just a few lines, precise, essential, a silhouette set down in its essential points-shoulders, waist, legs-that spread out on the sheet. They may only be a few lines, but the figure is already there. Another thing that strikes us about Ferré is his ability to perceive things immediately. Not a lifeless outfit on a clothes-hanger but something that's alive, with animation setting the pace and the movement. Just a few lines that in the very next phase develop according to the geometrical principles of a technical drawing, where the forms and details of an outfit are reduced and analyzed in elementary terms, where the sizes and proportions acquire definite contours, so that everything can be read and understood. Even by those who are not wholly at ease with fashion, but who do know how to appreciate the art of drawing and a mind's inexhaustible creative capacity.