Put Carmen Miranda through the Milanese fashion blender, and you might end up with a sweet-tasting fashion cocktail that looks something like Moschino for Spring 2005. Take a few puffed sleeves, exaggerated forties prints, and eyelet frilled petticoats, throw them in with vertiginous stripy platforms and lamp-shade hats, and voilà: The mood is set.
The down-Mexico-way theme is, of course, merely this season s excuse for adding decorative froth to an essentially easy to wear, girly collection. (The show also took in the current feeling for handcraft, in the raw-edged appliqué on a flowery chiffon full-skirted coat, and the naïve animal embroideries applied to a flouncy, floor-length peasant skirt.)
But when these runway ideas translate into retail reality, as pieces on a rack, they won t look like literal retro. Apply the Moschino spring spirit to blouses, or the edgings on a black trench, and the results look like sane propositions for a normal wardrobe. Still, even on the runway, all that forties stuff can strain credibility. Who s up for a pair of shorts with an outburst of lacy ruffles at the knee? We d like to know.
