Bottega Veneta was the show of Milan Fashion Week for me. Backstage Matthieu Blazy said he wanted to “make a monument of the everyday.” It’s such a great soundbite, a six-word exegesis of the job of high fashion—to make things that we can simultaneously aspire to and live in. Blazy was focused on silhouette first and foremost, emphasizing rounded shapes like the couturish, cocoon coat that was the show opener, but he also worked on some novel prints, which he divided into two groups: the “memory” prints that were made from layer-upon-layer of passport stamps and the “future” prints lifted from blank pieces of loose-leaf and graph paper.
It was an uncanny choice. Milan can feel a little bit stuck between its past and future, with designers revisiting and revising their own work, or if they’ve inherited a heritage label, trying to light their way forward by resurfacing the glories of its past. Blazy, with his fount of ideas, belongs firmly in the future camp. On the subject of the future, I’m looking forward to seeing where Adrian Appiolaza takes Moschino. Appointed as creative director in January—a little over three weeks before his show!—the Argentinian designer who spent a decade at Loewe is coming at the brand in a fresh way, mixing the camp icons it’s best known for with, yes, some cool clothes for everyday.
The announcement that Glenn Martens’s Y/Project show in Paris was canceled came early in the week, a bit of a heartbreaker for his fans, and another reminder of the challenges emerging brands are facing. (His Diesel show was a blast, by the way.) Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana deserve a shout-out for the platform they keep giving up-and-comers from the UK. Being a New York-Milan-Paris reporter, I miss out on all London action, so I get a lot out of the rotating series. This season it was Feben’s turn. I liked the long, lean print dresses as well as her signature puckered-fabric Twist dresses, and the way she put women of all sizes on the runway. Size diversity shouldn’t be a box you check one season and then forget about, and all over again we’re not talking about how thin most models are. Luke, Tiziana, over to you.—Nicole Phelps
Immediately after Giorgio Armani’s last show this morning I came home and passed out for two hours (to hell with that alarm). This Milan Fashion Week has been so insanely packed that trying to think of my favorite and least favorite shows now feels like trying to recall the distinct flavors of a 10-course gastronomic tasting menu that you were obliged to eat after it had been shoveled into a food processor, blasted to mush, then force-fed you in a rainstorm.
But in between the Lime bike wet legs and collegial lifts and lax Metro decisions a few semi-coherent impressions remain. On Friday Sabato de Sarno showed Gucci in front of an audience in which there are some who relish being down on his direction for the house. Personally I think he should adopt the stoic “never complain, never explain” approach and wait for them to catch up (or not) with a direct, details-oriented vision that entails making the most beautifully Gucci clothes he and his team can muster. Nicole rightfully identified a paucity of pants in the lineup, but if you mentally cut and paste a beautifully cut jean or a lean cigarette pant into the Vogue Runway gallery where necessary, suddenly you can see a pretty appealing suite of looks that would stand out in the street, but not, admittedly, fit into the circus.
One cool detail about De Sarno is that he is steering clear of the ivory tower he could so easily be settling into. Not long after his own show, with all it megabrand hoopla and celebrity blah-blah, he turned up at Sunnei and sat without any pomp or circumstance to enjoy a runway in which Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina gave us access to the interior monologue of his models (he was at several other shows too). At Sunnei I mostly identified with the model who really needed to pee, but again enjoyed how these guys are designing an approach to fashion as much as they are clothes.
Adrian Appiolaza’s hastily convened debut at Moschino prefaced what looks like another promising approach in the making, and which contained a political message that was broad enough not to trigger partisan controversy but which also came across pretty clearly: refreshing. I enjoyed Fausto Puglisi’s “gentle Cavalli,” admired Francesco Risso’s surrealistic cave-people Marni, was most transported by Matteo Tamburini s venue for his first season with Tod’s, most wanted to shop Simone Bellotti’s Bally, most enjoyed previewing Glenn Martens’s Truman Show Diesel, and most wanted to stay in Prada’s menacing Eden.
At Ferragamo, Maximilian Davis’s collection made me think about Daniel Lee back in London at Burberry, if only for the similar-but-different challenge these designers face (De Sarno too) in changing the fortunes of their respective supertanker houses. Fashion is supposed to be new every season, but every big house—and many designers too—contend with an ongoing, endlessly renewed pre-expectation in their audience, at least the kind of audience that goes to the shows, or the secondary audience that has passionate opinions about them in the comments sections of whatever Instagram account they are clustering under. So, for example, just as it is assumed Prada will always be good-to-brilliant, it is taken for granted that Max Mara will always be efficient-to-dull. Those positions affect the outcome of every new collection—even if the truth is that not every Prada collection can be brilliant and not every Max Mara collection can be dull. Those assumptions, based on both experience-based perception and marketing generated position, create a self-fulfilling prophecy that it can be hard/impossible to rewrite once the narrative momentum is up and out there in the world, growing, growing, growing.
Sometimes I like to play a form of fashion Wordle, considering single looks as letters in words (or houses) whose identity I pretend not to know (and therefore have my preconceptions fired by). Do I really like it? Why? Or do I think I like it—or dislike it, or am ambivalent—because of what the brand signifies? So why is that? If you’ve done the real Wordle for the day (the Italian one is fun too), this can be a useful form of fashion brain-training. For now, though, Milan is done: It was a pretty fun one, hyper-stimulating to the point of eyestrain. But never complain. At least Paris—with its luxurious abundance of days—should feel relatively chill after this.—Luke Leitch
I agree with Luke. Milan this season has been insanely packed, but hey! We survived it, despite stress levels skyrocketing to new heights. Hurrah! Trying to be concise here, extracting from my tired synopsis some pearls of Fashion Week wisdom. Favorite shows: Marni, Bottega, Bally. Here’s why: Francesco Risso sent out one of his strongest collections to date; Marni turned 30 and he sort of referenced Consuelo Castiglioni’s work on shapes and volumes, only warping and stretching them fearlessly into artworks. The pieces closing the show were handcrafted with such exceptional ingenuity, they need to go straight to some fashion museum. Bottega Veneta: loved that Blazy moved away from indulgence to displays of craftsmanship bravura and played on the volumes-versus-textures dynamic. His range and variety is just mind blowing, and clothes become sort of great pieces of design —the show’s set referencing Le Corbusier and cool Japanese woodworks was the most elegant of the week. Bally: Simone Bellotti is doing a great job, and his sophomore collection simply confirmed it. He’s putting a dormant, dusty Swiss brand on the map—no small feat. He’s a cultivated designer, sensitive and imaginative but grounded; the overlooked Swiss culture feels all of a sudden the epitome of cool—his moodboard had lots of strangely compelling arcane references you’ve never heard of, it was the best of the week.
Best debuts: Matteo Tamburini at Tod’s and Adrian Appiolaza at Moschino. I agree with Nicole and Luke on Adrian, as I saw a clear potential for a stronger Moschino identity, built on Franco Moschino’s early years at the Italian label Cadette—beyond his irresistible clever irreverence, he was a fundamentally chic, elegant, sophisticated designer. He wasn’t gimmicky at all. I believe Appiolaza got the message. Matteo Tamburini’s was a fully-formed debut, totally confident and aligned with Tod’s raison d’être. Being a Bottega alumni, he got the fundamentals just right, and he will give Tod’s a further layer of polish. As per Prada, who would’ve thought that Raf Simons was partial to inordinate amounts of bows and to the TikTok-certified coquette look? Fashion life is full of surprises. Onto the overextended Paris Fashion Week!—Tiziana Cardini
