Missoni is specializing in surprises at the moment. First, there was last Spring s collection. It polarized the critics, mesmerized the public when it hit the stores. Then there was the collaboration with Target, where a week s worth of pop-up shop sold out in a day during New York fashion week. Now there s this Spring s show, which, in its own way, was as startling as the one a year ago that marked a definitive shift in the Missoni ether. In other words, it will divide opinion.
Angela Missoni has earned herself the luxury of a little experimentation. It s in the family s design genes, after all. She spent the summer in Sardinia watching her daughters arriving home at dawn after a night out dancing, and she got thinking about the kind of clothes that best suited such a situation: something spontaneous, improvised, mobile. And out of that came a collection that dipped and swooped in ruffled tiers, fringed here, patched there, asymmetrical to a dizzy fault, but always in motion.
Maybe that s why it was less classic Missoni than an animal spirit that prevailed in the collection. Lots of zebra, for one thing. It manifested itself in bias-cut ruffles; it snuck under an openwork knit dress. If this was Angela trying to convey the beast within, she captured it in spades.
