MILAN (AP) — Milan Fashion Week opened Wednesday with a sense of renewal.
Milan’s five-day schedule returned to pre-COVID-19 levels with 68 shows, 104 performances and 30 events. A crop of new designers appeared, including many of color, for perhaps Milan’s most diverse week of fashion shows.
Among the week’s highlights: Haitian-Italian designer Stella Jean returns after a two-year hiatus; Bally makes her Milan runway debut with Filipino-American designer Rhuigi Villasenor; and Maximilian Davis debuts as Salvatore Ferragamo’s new creative director.
Here are snaps from Wednesday’s shows, including Fendi and Diesel.
STRUCTURED FRESCO IN FENDI
Fendi womenswear designer Kim Jones has stripped down Fendi’s normally lavish showroom and left it with polished concrete floors and painted steel beams and tiers to showcase her upcoming warm-weather collection.
He saved the luxury for the catwalk looks. The Spring-Summer 2023 collection was a studied balance of construction, texture and color.
Twisted satin aprons created a flowing layer over pants, while perforated leather versions were like sweaters over see-through dresses.
The overlap was key to the style. Jones played with texture, pairing an asymmetrical knotty wool coat over a sheer blouse, both in neutrals, saving the bold color for the platform boots. Silk dresses were draped and tied to the form, and carefully constructed satin coats had peek-a-boo openings and were tied elegantly in the back, like an elaborate Japanese bow.
The silhouette ranged from body-hugging ribbed knit dresses with demure cut-outs to asymmetric flowing silk gowns. Ribbed square-neck cardigans gave a school touch to skirts with sexy deep slits on each side, or silk pants with utility pockets with back pocket closure.
Neutrals in sage, copper and white anchored the color palette, which exploded with accent pieces in cream-infused versions of seafoam green, cornflower blue, mandarin orange and flamingo pink.
The final look underscored the simple elegance of Jones’s offerings: a racerback tank top tucked into white trousers softened by this season’s midi skirt, all in the silkiest of whites.
“What is particularly interesting to me about Fendi is exploring the notion of functional utility alongside femininity because Fendi women are strong women with full, busy lives,” Jones said in the show notes.
Fendi’s smallest bag to date was worn on a chain around the neck. The logos were subtle: woven into the inside hem of the sweaters and visible only if they were twisted up, or with the double F logo on the linings or stamped like initials on the back of Jone’s new arched Obi belt. .
Footwear featured colorful platform boots or sliders. Jones is moving the brand away from his fur heritage and focusing instead on Silvia Venturini Fendi handbags, which use shiny leather, canvas and shearling.
DIESEL DRIVES DENIM STYLES
At a rare fashion week open house event, Diesel made room for the general public in the upper levels of his show arena, around huge inflatable dolls entwined in a full trio.
On the ground floor, the models walked beneath a crouching female figure, past a prone man, his head turned demurely.
Glenn Martin’s cohesive men’s and women’s collection expanded the meaning of denim.
Nailing the low-rise vs. high-rise debate from the start, her first look offered the suggestion of a low-rise silhouette becoming a high-rise panty—the illusion of having it both ways. The look was completed with a matching bra.
To him, the pants looked baggy and a faded sleeveless sweatshirt in a denim wash was tucked in.
Denim effects were dyed into sheer halter tops, worn open over Daisy Duke-esque shorts with matching denim stilettos. The male counterpart was considerably more covered up, in a double-hooded trench coat paired with distressed pants and denim boots.
The denim itself was well crafted in innovative washes that suggested the desert, and could be paired with a bright palette of separates in orange, green or pink.
The collection evolved into increasingly dystopian looks that seem inspired by the sci-fi classic “Dune,” in sand-colored and tattered styles, while a soundtrack suggested the call of the giant sandworm. They included loose, layered halters and skirts secured by multi-notched belts, or a gray hoodie over a tattered skirt. The new iterations of jeans had large panels on the legs, as if to take flight.
Adding to the sci-fi vibe: A model with green-hued makeup wore a shimmering reptile minidress.
HOLLYWOOD GLAM IN CAVALLI BY FAUSTO PUGLISI
As he looks anxiously ahead to Italy’s parliamentary elections on Saturday, Cavalli’s creative director, Fausto Puglisi, drew inspiration from the glamor of Hollywood’s golden age.
“I am very afraid of the new elections. We are going to take a lot of risk,” Puglisi said backstage after the show, expressing his concern that a far-right party has led in the polls.
To calm her nerves, Puglisi created looks using the finest textiles from Lake Como, which she draped, pleated and fanned for diva-like impact. “I wanted this kind of freshness, something naive,” she said.
The first look appeared as “Ave Maria” played: an angelic white brocade midi dress with a demure neckline, setting an understated tone that Puglisi maintained for a few more looks before unleashing Cavalli’s DNA on a livelier soundtrack.
So: A strapless cocktail minidress was constructed from an overlapping pleated skirt and bodice, as if a pinwheel had stopped. It is a construction that reappeared in maxi skirt looks and with dresses with deep openings. Cavalli’s silhouette encompassed everything from form-fitting dresses and jumpsuits with diamond-cut torsos, to pretty skirts and silk maxi dresses in museum-quality pastoral prints.
The looks were accented with cute pineapple, grape bunch and palm tree brooches and earrings. Motifs also appeared as prints and, in one case, a beaded minidress evoked a pineapple down to the prickly leaves at the neckline.
Puglisi said his references were “the new Hollywood Renaissance from the ’30s and ’40s. … He didn’t want excess. He wanted to play with colors, with very classic fabrics”.
THE LOVER OF N. 21
The “lover”, or lover, of the N. 21 brand by Alessandro Dell’Acqua is in a hurry, barely dressed, with his underwear showing, his hair tousled and his mascara running.
She, or he, wears see-through elements: a see-through shirt tucked sideways under a red sequined jacket, carelessly buttoned. The back of a gathered skirt is not completely closed. The rush is evident.
Sheer dresses with a 1940s silhouette show off bright red pointy bras and panties, or hang languidly off the shoulder. Masculine touches, like wearing button-down shirts, are supposed to be borrowed. One is worn with a full pleated skirt.
Twisted rhinestone necklaces complete the looks. The shoes are cantilevered, an architecture that the show notes say makes the actual heel “superfluous.”
“The collection deals with all the moods of a lover: from love to anger, sex, eroticism and the deepest passion. The mood can go from one to another in a very short time,” said Dell’Acqua. “The concept is very cinematic.”
Not to give away the ending, but the show closed with tattered wedding dresses made from leftover lace.
Source: news.google.com