Kean Etro likes to spin yarns, in both senses of the term. After his fabrics are woven and his designs made, he attaches a story to them. This season s was titled ManWash, and the first thing the audience saw on entering the room was a full set of car wash paraphernalia. The impenetrable program notes suggested that Kean was keen to put his models through the same processes as fabric—washing, treating, drying—in order to create a bond between clothes and the man who wears them. Mercifully, this oddly off-putting notion translated into another of the designer s usual upbeat romps.
For all his wayward intellect, Etro does possess an infallible and often thrilling sense of color—as in a grass-green velvet jacket under a pumpkin velvet topcoat. But while oranges, lilacs, and greens are the label s lifeblood, his fall palette expanded to include rich heathery tones and the colors of changing leaves. He also explored the dressy-casual clash that is obsessing Milan at present. Skinny sweaters hung below jacket hems, suit trousers came with tracksuit stripes or ankle-height combat pockets, seams on jackets and coats were exposed. Only Etro, with his can t-help-himself decorative drive, would trim those seams in floral motifs—not to mention line a tapestry coat with an eighteenth century print, and march an orange ponyskin coat through the car wash.
