It was only a matter of time before one of the established European houses snapped up Umit Benan, the cosmopolitan 30-year-old Milan-based designer with a gift for sartorial storytelling, a sophisticated color sense, and charm to spare. The only question was, would it be a good match? What drew him to his new gig at Trussardi, Benan said at a preview a few hours before his debut presentation, was the fact that the Italian company s golden age was the eighties, the era that he continues to mine so assiduously for his own line. Though he didn t say it, you also suspect that he likes the idea that the house codes aren t necessarily set in stone. He sees the essential characteristic of the label as a certain mood—what he called the "charisma" of longtime driving force Nicola Trussardi. That leaves Benan with a reasonably blank canvas on which to weave his particular brand of magic.
The conceit he hit on today was to restore a little of the fun and luxury to travel. As editors stood squeezed into the Trussardi store, a series of fancy cars pulled up outside on the Piazza della Scala, their arrival first spied on video screens inside the shop. Benan s protagonists—men he described as an Ocean s Eleven-type gang or soccer players returning victorious from the World Cup—jumped out. Each toting a different set of luggage, they took a lap through the store before depositing their bags with a "doorman" by the elevators. There was an unreconstructed eighties feel to the clothes they wore. Mark Vanderloo, emerging from a low-slung Mercedes of the kind Richard Gere drove in American Gigolo, had on a white boiler suit and mirrored shades. A bearded model wore a navy duster coat that Benan had taken directly from the archives, adding a contrasting collar in crocodile. Other models wore rakish safari jackets or double breasted jackets in the sort of rich shades that the designer favors for his own line, albeit in a rather more traditional cut. There were only around 20 looks, but part of Benan s strength is his refusal to be pushed too far too fast. It s the same confidence that allows him to resist over-modernizing that duster coat.
In many ways, it feels like the designer s work here has barely started (he will tackle the label s womenswear too in the Fall), but he has already begun to transform Trussardi from an item-driven label to one with a story to tell.
