“Judgment is an instinct.” “You have already scored this look in your mind, just express it directly.” As Milan Fashion Week came to an end over the weekend, the voice of God was buzzing on the Sunnei show floor. So, who doesn’t know the truth after listening to it?
Each member of the audience held a set of paddles marked with numbers from 1 to 10 and were asked to rate each look as a fashion meta-commentary on the modern state from the brand’s designers Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina. , signed.
This season’s theme is the arena of opinion in the realm of social media, where everyone is free to have an opinion on everything. As always, while the clothes that illustrate the point are fine (Sunnei is essentially trash to thinking people), better is the point.
Sometimes it’s hard to find that feeling amid the plethora of “real clothes,” dizzying showmanship and archival digging that seems to be the default rule in fashion these days.
This kind of pointed social commentary was once the preserve of Moschino, but the brand is doing it among designers. This year marks its 40th anniversary, so instead of throwing a party, store owner Aeffe decided to invite four famous stylists – Caryne Cerf de Dudzeele, Katie Grand, Lucia Liu and Gabriella Karefa-Johnson – to “interpret” the brand in 10 looks. File each.
The results are interesting. Ms. Cerf de Dudzeele’s classic pieces have labels that read—in typical Moschino irony—“Classic Pants” and “Classic Jeans”; Ms. Karefa-Johnson riffs on denim and granny crochet; Ms. Grand created “Loud A bodysuit from the Luxury” collection with painted body parts; Liu mixed a “Protect Me from the Fashion System” T-shirt with ruffled meringue.
But these looks were more about Franco Moschino’s personal legacy than the outside world – which was always his theme. As such, they’re also a reminder of how much of a difference a creative director with something to say can make. Content creation is the buzzword today and it’s not just filler for voracious viewers.
When it comes to clothes, it’s actually another term for design.
let’s go somewhere
Bottega Veneta’s Matthieu Blazy knows this, and it’s what makes his collection so extraordinary. He treats each outfit (or maybe two, since his men’s and women’s clothes often appear to come in pairs, like those on Noah’s Ark) as his own idea. Or maybe a country of its own, since the floor of his exhibition space is tiled like a mythical world of continents and flying fish, where global nomads roam in waves.
They started simple, in crisp black suits and little black dresses with straps just beginning to fall off the shoulders, then gradually merged textures and types: three-dimensional knits delineated new body shapes; cross-reference bustles and tribal fringe of a leather dress; the halterneck is covered in tiny blue scales that extend into threads that move like water across a pen print.
Some were plain old weird (a fishnet dress covered in fluff balls like pods), but more were jaw-droppingly good. The soundtrack is “Let’s Go Somewhere,” and the whole show feels like an argument for appreciating the process and the sheer allure of exploration rather than any single destination.
Moving into the unknown is an increasingly endangered concept. Luke and Lucie Meier are experimenting with the style at Jil Sander, pushing the label’s boundaries with clever experiments with volume, pairing tight ribbed knits with stiff balloon skirts and moving voluminous shirts from back to front, but not yet. In early stages. You get the feeling that Maximilian Davis could do something really interesting at Ferragamo—just look at his finale gown, with layers of black chiffon wrapped under a smooth leather breastplate that looked as if it had been eaten in part fell off—although he was still overly reliant on leather heritage.
But at Versace, Donatella Versace took a trip back to 1995 when her brother Gianni launched a collection of Easter eggs that included ’60s-inspired checkerboard-print dresses, suits and A sorbet-hued South Beach shorts ensemble (Claudia Schiffer also wore a chain-mail gown for added intimacy).
In fact, shorts, especially very short shorts, were the trend of the week in almost every collection. As Miranda Priestley might say: “Shorts? For spring? Groundbreaking.”
Fashion to combat climate disaster
To that end, look no further than Diesel’s Glenn Martens, who (like Mr. Blazy) is becoming one of Milan’s most striking designers; a technical genius who understands how to tell stories with clothes and is willing to take risks in doing so.
Or rather, 6,000 members of the public – 1,000 students plus the 5,000 fans who snapped up tickets online within 15 minutes – were invited to an open-air bash sponsored by Bulldog Gin and projected onto an 85ft x 46in screen The Diesel fashion show concluded with an outdoor film festival on foot.
It had a chaotic, apocalyptic energy that was reflected in Mr. Martens’ clothes, which increasingly looked like fashion designed to combat climate disaster. He’s done something seemingly impossible with surface treatments: etching jersey and denim into transparent nylon and tulle (Diesel owner Renzo Rosso is trying to patent the process) ; Rip deadstock jeans into party dresses; Melt down and mold old blockbuster posters into jackets. Kill Bill as a jacket. why not?
The result viscerally conveys the beauty in destruction. Perhaps to put it another way, the Day of Judgment is coming.
