4 days of men’s fashion shows in Milan is both an obstacle course and a race.
Show tickets turn up late, or not at all. I lost my driver on the corner of Via San’Andrea and Via Montenapoleone among 80 identi-kit chauffeurs and navy sedans – twice. And some stylish Milanese is, ratcheting up an off-the-scale bella figura, probably wearing my Persol 714 limited edition sunglasses that I left on my seat after the Roberto Cavalli show. Dammit!
And let’s not forget the barrel of Chianti on my last night due to the relief of getting through it all, ensuring I could scarcely focus on any moving object the following day.
Reassuringly though, many designers returned to the core values of their brands, which in Gucci’s case led to a show of such understated elegance – vintage silk scarf-lined beige jackets, narrow pants and classic snaffle loafers – that the bling of the last few seasons was as quickly forgotten as last month’s Xmas decorations. Creative director Frida Giannini said that by looking in the archives she’d found a way of pushing the brand forward – which could be a motto for this season.
Salvatore Ferragamo under the design reins of Massimiliano Giornetti (a name that can only be said after a slug of Barolo), took above-the-knee great coats and oversized scarves as his vaguely Argentinian theme played out to a soundtrack of beating horses’ hooves. Autumnal browns and deep reds stood out in a season that was more often than not monochrome. In fact, outer wear, especially coats, played out on catwalks far more than suiting, accessories or hats. It was as if Milan was saying: buy yourself just one over-sized coat and you can brace against whatever the world throws at you.
Of course not all followed this simple idea. Alexander McQueen took a post-apocalyptic theme with a show dominated by sand-blasted, skull-printed suits and skin-tight head stockings as if the future may well resemble the world of Cormac McCarthy’s bleak novel, The Road.
I think I’d rather sweep through life in a Ferragamo great coat, or if I was feeling futuristic, donning one of Versace’s skintight leather biker jackets. Alexander Plokhov, the house’s new design director said he was – just like Giannini at Gucci – going back to Versace’s brand values. The Versace man suddenly looked purposeful again in his Matrix-esque sunglasses and ultra-slicked hair.
For those excited that fashion is going to end up eating itself, proof was found on the Prada runway. A third of the show’s exits were women wearing the brand’s pre-Fall collection, which looked oddly like what the men were wearing, and strangely hardly any press commented on. Perhaps they’d all been on the Chianti too and hadn’t noticed the 15 girls filing past them. Both genders wore golfing shoes that had certainly hit the bottle labelled, ‘Drink Me’, sprouting impossibly long tassled tongues. They were hardly desirable, but I could see Tiger Woods sporting them – anything to distract from his imploding personal life.
Milan Mukmirovic, creative director at Trussardi, didn’t show a catwalk collection at all, preferring to present his ideas on the top floor of the Trussardi store opposite the famous La Scala opera house. Which was a surprising venue for his dressed down chunky knitwear, Alpine boots and puffa jackets. “We’ve brought our prices down by about 20%,” said fashion’s very own renaissance man. “Men aren’t interested in the catwalk any more, they just want to find clothes they can wear.” Which was probably the sanest but also the dullest thing I heard all week.
So a pat on the back then for Vivienne Westwood who took a very special curtain call after her A/W collection, which was kick-started by a model stumbling out of a cardboard box onto the catwalk (how long had he been in there? Poor man). Dame Viv was wheeled out to take her applause on a hospital trolley. It was a Derelict moment straight out of the film Zoolander. Catwalks. How could we possibly live without them?
