MILAN — Giovanni Battista Giorgini, a descendant of an old Florentine family, called a group of American buyers who were attending the spring haute couture show in Paris and invited them to a fashion show at his home. Almost 72 years have passed.
5 accepted. They were designer Hannah Troy of Seventh Avenue, he was B. Altman and Bergdorf Goodman of New York, he was I. Magnin of San Francisco, and Morgan’s buyer of Montreal. Giorgini’s experiment was so successful that the show was soon moved to the Pitti Palace, where attendance increased exponentially and laid the foundation for the Italian fashion industry after the war.
I doubt Giorgini could have imagined that an Italian fashion show would attract thousands of guests 70 years later. K He’s the boy of pop, as many as the press and mobs who yell at fashion show attendees like members of his band Enhypen.
As much as trends and runway spectacles (or staff guessing games; meet Gucci) have struck observers this week, it’s the continuity of Giorgini’s vision and the extent to which Italy’s claim to fashion supremacy. Is it durable and robust?
A case in point was the Fendi show on Saturday. Silvia Venturini Fendi’s menswear presentation, held at the company’s headquarters on a set with hanging Rube Goldberg contraptions, may have served as a mission statement on why Italian design still matters. No. It’s not an exaggeration to say that designers have taken on some of the more harassing cultural anxieties, mostly about gender and safety, revealing the male body in unorthodox ways while masking it with clothing. No (one-shoulder sweaters, for example), but at the same time swaddled, protected, and wrapped it up in an unashamedly luxurious way.
A smooth gray woolen overcoat towered over the ground. There was a fringed cape that recalled Fendi’s rendering of the ancient Venetian tabalo cloak. Of course, there were also various bags and intricately treated leathers associated with the brand founded in 1925 as a leather goods store in Rome. But more ingrained are allusions to the low-key, sure-fire ways typical of the Milanese bourgeoisie, like the grandpa-core, The Sartorialist’s street like Scott Schhuman, his style of photography. Attracting attention of the house.
Two labels aren’t often mentioned in the same sentence, but if Fendi represents one facet of Italianness, Dsquared is in some ways the other side of the same coin. Twin designers Dean and Dan Keiten hail from Toronto. Yet, having lived and worked in Milan for decades, they are of honorable local origin, and as such, they are enthusiastic, silly, almost quintessentially Italian, devoid of any particular context. Hire a style tailor.
The Caten twins talk so much about individuality that it’s easy to forget how much their designs celebrate the collective identity of teens. They’ve spent their careers more determinedly than most in his closet, a psychic whose identities are a jumble of goth, emo, gamer nerd, and fanboy.
Tattooed TikTok superstar JeanCarlo León, aka Jashlem, was sent striding down the catwalk in a pink T-shirt emblazoned with a knife-wielding cat and the legendary “Cute & Nasty” button. Distressed jeans worn over a second pair of sewn trousers and belted with an oversized rodeo buckle. What followed was fringed western wear, shredded denim, bared boxer briefs, leather jockstraps, super-sized trapper hats, t-shirt spins on his cycle, and the world-famous Softwear. The logo of the drink is provocatively reproduced as chalk.
Although the show was coeducational, there was a good supply of lacy underwear that was shown mostly to cisgender men. And many maverick labels like Menagerie, Candyman Fashion, and Ciciful have joined mainstream brands like Cosabella, Fleur du Mal, and Savage X Fenty to create ruffled underwear for men with penises. Given what he’s producing, he might have a point.
Placeholder collections are like emails from HR. No one reads it, even though they know it contains important information. So the first Gucci show since Alessandro Michele’s unexpected departure in November was a stealthy brand that reinvented a declining brand, riding a wave of gender disparity to boost sales to billions of dollars. , was removed from consciousness almost as quickly as it was seen.
Like it or not, fashion needs a headliner. To fill the void left by the star designer’s departure, cross-platform celebrities such as Idris Elba, Nick and Susie Cave, Kai, Jaren Ramsey and Elite Gamer his Pow3r have been crammed into the front row, and Mark Ribot’s Still not enough to hire a live band such as Ceramic to fill. Playing Dog, and then introducing Studio His team’s crowdsourced efforts.
Certainly, there was an element in the Gucci collection to approve, if not admire or covet. (Admittedly, the super-sized flasher raincoat on him was pretty cool. A shirt reminiscent of 1970s Florence.
Ultimately, “a reflection of the individuality represented by the multi-faceted creatives and artisans who live in Gucci’s home,” the show features ankle boots, scarf patch denim, sailor beanies and other products at full price at Woodbury Common. retailers and price cut intervals.
And some things were downright puzzling. In short, some goofy pirate boots that forced the model to walk in an oddly minced gait, and a floor-length skirt in industrial gray wool with a deep slit in the front and no zipper. It’s one thing to mess around and ignore anatomy.
As is often the case in this designer’s career, Miuccia Prada, in a show note aimed at elevating the status of fashion, uprooted the cultural hierarchy of her perennial stepchildren.
The show is titled “Let’s Talk About Clothes,” and two designers, Mrs. Prada and Raf Simons, use a strict visual grammar to create groups of traditional men’s clothing that are reduced to geometric shapes. Assembled. Supposedly, the design was obnoxiously reminiscent of the work Italo Zuccheri did at Calvin Klein before being superseded by Mr. Simmons at the label. And where Zucchelli celebrated sexuality, Prada models seemed immature and hadn’t even started puberty yet.
Still, the casting and mostly monochrome circular, tubular, conical, and square boxy collections (jacket, suit, coat, single-breasted, two-button, three-button, hoodie, MA-1 bomber) Both mid-calf duffle coats were snug enough to limp) with little regard for physical comfort. Even the suede work apron was reworked as a tunic that recalls the manual laborer in Augusto’s Sander portrait. Sander’s subjects (apparently like Mrs. Prada and perhaps Mr. Simmons) inherently understood that personal comfort was a rather novel idea in the long sweep of history.
As Giorgio Armani approaches 90, he thinks more and more about his youthful Italy. Armani said on Monday, before a VIP presentation that included guests Ed Westwick, James Norton, Hank from ‘White Lotus’ and Theo James, ‘We’ve done so many beautiful things so far. I tend to forget,” he said.
Sitting on a stage in a palazzo he lives in downtown, Mr. Armani reached out to a set reminiscent of the marmoreal elegance that characterized the entrance halls built throughout the city from the 1920s to the 1970s. .
Over the last few years, Armani has revisited a rich and muted dress style that evokes the elegant yet understated metropolis. For Milanese and Mr. Armani, there is no southern Italian vibrancy. Here, women of a certain age and class still adhere to the song’s Italian maxim, which translates as “low heels, make-up and strings of pearls.”
It’s not an Instagram-friendly way to dress, so the show can sometimes feel like watching old Kodachrome slides: eight-button jackets, plump tweeds, woolen shawls, and belted overcoats. It does little good for his model to move at molasses speed, as one Wag put it.
It’s like staying with a relative whose sense of style, precision and relevance are firmly rooted in the past, in a traditional confectionery shop like Marchesi, founded in 1824. Leave the shitty TikTok and visually noisy Instagram feed alone, Armani often seems to say. Take a stroll through this ancient city and cherish the former.
“Beauty allows you to touch the eternal,” he said.
