Milan designers are breathing fresh air into Milan Fashion Week, quite literally.
Many fashion houses are showing their collections outdoors this season, or at least throwing open the windows on their grand palazzi venues, betting on Mother Nature with open-air shows. The late summer-early autumn weather has cooperated fully.
Here are some highlights from Milan as previews for next spring and summer’s womenswear collections mark their fifth and penultimate day on Sunday:
DOLCE&GABBANA
There was something for everyone on Dolce&Gabbana’s Queen of Hearts runway — even an elaborate, colourful applique jacket reminiscent of the $51,000 (Dh187,283) number that Melania Trump famously wore to a summit in Sicily.
Could the message be that there is a queen — or first lady — in everyone?
While Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana maintained their pact to supply the world with sexy dresses for day and evening, they also gave the collection some decidedly off-beat touches.
The Melania floral jacket, for example, was worn over a vegetable print dress that is unlikely to attract the First Lady’s eye for clean lines.
Dolce&Gabbana’s Queen of Hearts was a central theme for the season, appearing in its most elaborate version in heavily bejewelled dresses or as brightly sequined tops and leggings.
But prints featuring vegetables, Sicilian deserts or animals of the savannah certainly competed for billing — paired with funky eyewear featuring fringe or tiny jewelled hands or ornamental earrings shaped like eggplants or holiday decorations.
In a more unusual turn for the designers, a wrap dress with an abstract print was paired with yellow tights with oversized blue polka dots — a more eccentric, or perhaps just more youthful, combo than usual Dolce&Gabbana look. It suggests the designers are taking some cues from the Millennials who have packed their front rows in recent season.
A raffia weave top in primary colours definitely fits the duo’s Sicily vibe, but a rainbow weave corset over a matching diaphanous evening gown had Harlequin feel that veered toward costume.
____
MARNI
Marni is undergoing a colour and floral revival in Francesco Risso’s second womenswear collection at the 23-year-old fashion house.
Risso said the collection represents a treasure hunt of objects collected by a scavenger, who then adopts and incorporates them into her life. There’s a vein of nostalgia that runs through the collection, in both the prints and the slightly retro silhouette made contemporary by its proportions.
So in Risso’s fashion treasure hunt, a 1950s-style print bathing suit in sturdy yesteryear cotton becomes a top, worn with a seafoam green floral skirt. The hemlines are left unfinished and the proportions slightly oversized.
The florals aren’t mere prints but attic-trove brocades that offered texture or dainty, orderly granny flower prints. Other pieces are bejewelled, as if for some off-beat royal court.
The silhouette had a strong daywear vibe and primarily consisted of dresses and skirts, with some boxy boyish pants and bowling shirt combs.
The brand’s trademark furs included one inspired by Cruella Deville.
The Marni woman “has this sort of ‘20s languor, that is sculptural at the same time,” Risso said backstage.
____
STELLA JEAN
The fierce Cholitas Luchadoras female wrestlers of Bolivia inspired Italian-Haitian designer Stella Jean’s latest collection, which combines elements of the Cholitas traditional costume with Western tailoring and sportswear.
Jean said she was impressed by the way the Cholitas, who were spurned for their traditional colourful dresses, defied the discrimination by becoming professional wrestlers.
“They claimed their independence with true sport,” Jean said. “It is incredible because they fight in their typical clothes. Now they are considered goddesses.”
Jean’s Cholitas wear white peasant dresses with embroidery details layered with bowling shirts, or full skirts and men’s shirts with a wrestler’s body overtop. Wrestling capes were emblazoned with “Stella Jean Wrestling Team,” and the looks were finished with tall Peruvian hats.
_____
MILA SCHON
Alessandro De Benedetti next-season creations for Mila Schon have a clarity of line that defies the craft behind them.
In keeping with the brand’s identity, De Benedetti concealed the closures on his looks. But he went even one step further, creating elegant, ankle-length dresses by simply — or not so simply — draping fabric, up to seven meters of it for each dress.
De Benedetti said Kim Novak was one of his inspirations, and he dubbed one of his creations, a sleek suit with a dizzying optical effect, Vertigo, after the Alfred Hitchcock movie in which she starred.
