Author: Angelo Flaccavento
MILAN — Fashion watching cinema watching fashion: Day five of Milan Fashion Week offered a very meta moment as Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci brought the crowd at Dolce & Gabbana to their feet, entering the room in character as Miranda Priestly and Nigel. They were seated directly across from real-life editor Anna Wintour. (Scenes of the upcoming sequel to The Devil Wears Prada are currently being filmed in town.)On the runway, the tension between stripping things down and piling them up continues to mount. Bottega VenetaAt Bottega Veneta, there were both layers on layers and a sense of precision…
MILAN — Fashion watching cinema watching fashion: Day five of Milan Fashion Week offered a very meta moment as Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci brought the crowd at Dolce & Gabbana to their feet, entering the room in character as Miranda Priestly and Nigel. They were seated directly across from real-life editor Anna Wintour. (Scenes of the upcoming sequel to The Devil Wears Prada are currently being filmed in town.)On the runway, the tension between stripping things down and piling them up continues to mount. Bottega VenetaAt Bottega Veneta, there were both layers on layers and a sense of precision…
MILAN — Stories that begin and stories that end. We had both on the fourth day of Milan Fashion Week.Despite suggestions that he was out before he’d even begun amid an ownership change, Dario Vitale delivered a blasting Versace debut that was both exactly what the industry was expecting and its opposite. Did it look like Versus? For sure. Truth be told, it looked like Istante, too. But most of all it felt utterly personal, in every way: more brazen, younger, brainier, for a new customer. Vitale, a Miu Miu alum, clearly knows how to pack a punch, with an…
MILAN — Stories that begin and stories that end. We had both on the fourth day of Milan Fashion Week.Despite suggestions that he was out before he’d even begun amid an ownership change, Dario Vitale delivered a blasting Versace debut that was both exactly what the industry was expecting and its opposite. Did it look like Versus? For sure. Truth be told, it looked like Istante, too. But most of all it felt utterly personal, in every way: more brazen, younger, brainier, for a new customer. Vitale, a Miu Miu alum, clearly knows how to pack a punch, with an…
MILAN – Sunnei’s show in collaboration with auction house Christie’s — conceived as a mock auction — was in fact the last one with founders Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina at the helm. Friday afternoon, the pair symbolically put up for auction both themselves and the brand. Sardonic, dry, left-of-centre, and amusing in a way that makes you think: the gesture was a very “Sunnei” way of signalling that they are stepping down, ready to explore new ventures.But Rizzo and Messina did not say anything openly at the event. They are doing so now, faithful to a very personal, idiosyncratic…
MILAN — Designers grappled with their own identities on the third day of Milan Fashion Week.Backstage at Prada, co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons spoke about “a process of distillation, of filtration through clothes”; “juxtaposition as an act of creation”; and the adaptability required to navigate the uncertainties of contemporary life. Read: wear everything all together at once. Pile biker jackets over cocktail dresses, put suspenders on skirts, render bras inside out, throw on jewels at every hour of the day.The notion of colliding opposites served as the conceptual underpinnings of a collection that began and ended with nearly…
MILAN — Designers grappled with their own identities on the third day of Milan Fashion Week.Backstage at Prada, co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons spoke about “a process of distillation, of filtration through clothes”; “juxtaposition as an act of creation”; and the adaptability required to navigate the uncertainties of contemporary life. Read: wear everything all together at once. Pile biker jackets over cocktail dresses, put suspenders on skirts, render bras inside out, throw on jewels at every hour of the day.The notion of colliding opposites served as the conceptual underpinnings of a collection that began and ended with nearly…
MILAN — The second day at Milan fashion week was about the face-off between minimalism and maximalism. Simone Bellotti’s much anticipated debut at Jil Sander, after his successful upturning of Bally, had profound clarity, the kind that glorifies items and makes them desirable. The outing was almost surgical — going back to the stark, severe foundations set by Jil herself — at the risk of feeling, at times, a little chilly and scholastic. But hey, it was an assured start and a resolute homecoming, in which Bellotti’s own signature — as fragile as it is twisted — registered lightly, leaving…
MILAN — The second day at Milan fashion week was about the face-off between minimalism and maximalism. Simone Bellotti’s much anticipated debut at Jil Sander, after his successful upturning of Bally, had profound clarity, the kind that glorifies items and makes them desirable. The outing was almost surgical — going back to the stark, severe foundations set by Jil herself — at the risk of feeling, at times, a little chilly and scholastic. But hey, it was an assured start and a resolute homecoming, in which Bellotti’s own signature — as fragile as it is twisted — registered lightly, leaving…
MILAN — Fashion’s reset started today in Milan, but the notion that a new creative director must wipe the slate clean doesn’t necessarily make for the most effective strategy.Case in point: Demna’s debut at Gucci — first dropped on Monday as a lookbook of Catherine Opie-lensed Italian archetypes — referenced predecessor Alessandro Michele’s work for the house, particularly his penchant for building characters and then dressing them up, as well as the legacy of Tom Ford, scantily clad and chillingly cool, not to mention Demna’s own work at Balenciaga, give or take a GG.The effect was something like a collection…