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Change. It’s all around us this season. Hustling for attention in a shortened fashion week, New York designers turned their shows into experiences, the kind that play well on social media. London designers headed off the threats of Brexit with joyous fortitude; the collections that mattered put an emphasis on individuality. Even with its global powerhouses, Milan isn’t immune to change either. That’s why owning your own heritage has become such an important talking point here. Nobody made a bigger splash embracing their past than Donatella Versace this season. Judging by media impressions—and by every other measure—Jennifer Lopez owned the week with her Versace cameo. Twenty years after wearing Donatella’s iconic jungle print dress—and helping invent Google Images search service in the process—she walked the runway in an even more daring update and somehow looked better than ever. Designers everywhere are cycling through their press clippings in search of a similar kind of magic. In their own ways, Miuccia Prada, Angela Missoni, and the Dolce & Gabbana duo went in search of their roots, too, and their fans were rewarded. Inching up to his fifth anniversary as Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele felt the itch to make a shift of his own. His collection was cleaner and more streamlined, but still recognizably him. That’s the mark of a talented designer: moving the story forward without losing your essence, or your brand’s. Daniel Lee is still at the beginning of his Bottega Veneta journey. What’s remarkable about him is how quickly he’s managed to convert fashion’s early adopters and influencers to his side with his directional square-toed intrecciato shoes and pouch clutches. A unique point of view is especially crucial at a brand’s genesis. Lucky for Marco Zanini—and for us—he’s sure of his taste and of his eye for exquisite materials. Of course, the scariest of changes are the ones climate inaction will bring. Milan is just beginning to take on this issue. It will be a challenging road weaning hungry consumers off animal products, as the experts think we must. “It’ll be a difficult conversation, but it’s one we’ll have to have soon,” Stella McCartney said from the stage of the Green Carpet Fashion Awards last night, where she accepted the Groundbreaker Award. It will help if designers approach the subject of designing differently with as much energy and verve as Marni’s Francesco Risso.
Here, Milan’s top collections.
“From the get-go, this was the brand in familiar yet intriguing top form. And then there were the clothes: spare, elegant, a smidgen ’70s, a hint ’50s, unabashedly adorned yet beguiling for the esoteric gals among us. The core items include a tailored jacket, long of line, fabulous in double-face, and with belt loops that suggest a waist without being insistent; a dress in cheesecloth, slightly transparent and possibly finished with gold sequin swirls or a necklace of enormous shells; a skirt, pencil or pleated or in embroidered leather, that bisects the shins and is sleek as hell; serious gray wool trousers with a hint of a flare; and summer knits in stripes, chevrons, and skinny cables to keep everything close to the body—vaguely artisanal and graphic yet soft. For lovers of Prada, this is the dream wardrobe: elegant, irreverent, unapologetically pretty, and devoid of conceptual gimmicks.” —Sally Singer
“So what does Zanini believe in, precisely? To start: fabrics with a hand. All of the materials here were uniquely developed for him, from the comparatively humble ‘crispy’ checked cotton of a prodigious smock dress to the super-deluxe washed ivory satin of a tank dress, double-layered for ease of wear and discretion. He also believes in paying attention to the small stuff. The way a coat sleeve gathers at the elbow . . . a chiffon ribbon circling the hem of a dress . . . the tie at the back of a mannish jacket that creates a womanly hourglass shape. . . . Zanini’s point of view has been at least partially formed by his roots—he’s Swedish on his mother’s side. ‘Scandinavia is in love with little details that you could call nothingness,’ he said. ‘But they are everything to me.’” —Nicole Phelps
“Lee’s got accessories bona fides, without question, but does he have the ready-to-wear to back it up? Spring marks his second runway outing, and what it tells us is that he’s a designer with conviction—there’s no wavering. He extrapolated on the pieces that worked for Fall, showing many iterations of clingy ribbed-knit dresses with interesting twisting elements and cut-outs. Men got sweater versions with similar skin-baring details. And without changing course, he reconsidered the items that were less successful. The leather pieces, which ranged from anoraks to all-in-ones to trenches, had a lighter aspect this time around. The women’s tailoring, which was more extreme a season ago, was softened somewhat too.” —N.P.
“On a day in which people the world over took to the streets as climate activists, it was a relief and a pleasure to sit on recompressed-cardboard benches under a recycled plastic jungle (reused from a repurposed prior set built of reclaimed waste) to watch Francesco Risso’s Spring-Summer 2020 show for Marni. Bravo to a major Italian house for putting sustainability front and center! And kudos to Risso for showing a collection that had charm and beauty by the bucketload and upcycled textiles, organic cottons, and ‘recuperated’ leathers. He wanted to create a ‘joyous protest’—‘an homage to nature and our sense of humanity’—and he succeeded.” —S.S.
“The surprise guest factor [of Jennifer Lopez] energized Donatella. This was the sharpest and sexiest she’s gone in some time. It was definitely less merchandised than last season’s outing, and in that sense it felt quite late ’90s. Go back and look at the original jungle-print show and what strikes you is how streamlined and unaccessorized the overall aesthetic is. There are other similarities. Though the prints were the ostensible story then and now—after all, prints are what register in images on a screen (that’s one small way technology has changed fashion; there’s plenty more)—the designer didn’t ignore black in either case. And here it was the black looks that really registered. The tailored coatdress that opened the show was a killer outfit. Interestingly, a particular kind of ’90s sexinesss—heavy on the black and the stilettos—is trending in Milan. With this collection, Donatella confirmed that she has a more vital claim to the era than just about anybody. As for fashion as entertainment, the stakes have just been raised.” —N.P.
“‘Backstage,’ Angela explained, ‘Where I started was this idea of a man and a woman—a couple—exchanging clothes. That couple—who was in my brain from when I was a young teenager—was Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. She was getting clothes from his wardrobe; he was getting pieces from her.’ Nothing complicated, then. Just suits and dandyish separates for the guys, and for the girls bohemian dresses with the occasional slouched-on shirt or masculine jacket worn over the top. So simple it almost sounds basic, but that’s where the house signature knits come in. Space-dyes, stripes, zigzags, polka dots, crochet, patchwork, ombrés—they were all in play. More often than not several came together in one outfit.” —N.P.
“Over the course of 124 looks, the designers touched on all the elements of their chosen theme and then some, starting with safari suiting (minus the pinup girl patches of their recent men’s collection, which covered the same territory) and cycling through animal and tropical prints, scarf dressing, and resortwear designed for lounging poolside but absolutely too special to actually swim in. The jungle has been a big topic of this Milan season—everyone from Giorgio Armani to Donatella Versace has weighed in. Where Dolce & Gabbana’s collection stands apart is in the extraordinary craftsmanship on display. Apparently the raffia pieces from the June menswear show were so successful with clients they redoubled their efforts here. Crocheted, woven, or embellished with crystals, they were surprisingly soft to the touch, not at all scratchy as might be expected.” —N.P.
“Michele’s eye has shifted. Regard the preponderance of black, a color he’s more or less shunned until now. And consider the near absence of print. Instead he used graphic color-blocking to add interest to tailoring that evoked the lean lines of the brand’s ’70s heyday and Tom Ford’s ’90s reinterpretations of same. The biggest shocker was Michele’s embrace of sexiness. He’s typically preferred quirk to kink, but not today. Riding crops (a reference S & M and to the house’s equestrian heritage) accessorized lace-inset slip dresses, and black vinyl chokers put the finishing touch on scoop-neck leotards and high-slit midi skirts. Tailor labels on the sleeve cuffs and pant hems of those ’70s-by-way-of-’90s suits read Gucci Orgasmique or Gucci Eterotopia.” —N.P.