THE MILAN FASHION WEEK

             
                                 The Top 6 Collections of Milan Fashion Week Spring 2019

With Gucci and Bottega Veneta off the schedule, there were two giant holes in the Milan schedule—the former will show in Paris at the famous nightclub Le Palace tomorrow, and the latter has scheduled incoming creative director Daniel Lee’s runway debut for next February. But as much as those collections were missed, there was plenty to be excited about in the Italian city this week.

Starting with—what else?—Shalom Harlow at Versace. Harlow has proven to be one of the most elusive of the ’90s waifs, rarely, if ever, making runway appearances. Of course it was Donatella Versace who landed her. Donatella is a big proponent of a multigenerational cast (recall the Versace show last September when Cindy Crawford and daughter Kaia Gerber both walked), and then there’s the fact that Harlow was a Versace regular back in her day. She looked glorious in her wrapped and draped long floral-print dress.

Indeed, outside of biker shorts, a millennial-driven phenomenon, the multigenerational cast was Milan’s biggest trend. It gave us Eva Herzigova, Carla Bruni, and Marpessa Hennink at Dolce & Gabbana, a happy-making 150-look ode to the brand’s DNA. And it gave us Guinevere van Seenus at Marni. For many of us, Francesco Risso’s show was the hit of the week: crafty, soulful, and distinctive in its point of view, when much of fashion, and not just in Milan, has come to feel industrialized and cold.

The Etro and Missoni shows were other favorites: Etro for its panoply of prints and chilled-out surfer vibes, and Missoni for its layer upon layer of gossamer knits—the label’s 65th anniversary collection merits a close-up viewing. Miuccia Prada makes our list, too. Those Bermuda shorts and deeply scooped bodysuits definitely “break the rules of classic,” as she described her intentions backstage. Challenging fashion is what moves the industry’s collective story forward.

Here, our highlights from Milan Fashion Week.

PRADA

Placing fashion on an equal footing with an art performance is a prerogative Miuccia Prada has always asserted. It puts people on the edge of their seats, straining to correctly perceive what this oracle of fashion will have to say about the state of the world. 

This time, her address seemed aimed directly at youth. There were cycling shorts and duchesse satin A-line tunics and baby doll dresses; plunging bodysuits with straps under the breasts; sheer black knee-highs implanted with Prada’s triangular logos; and iterations of her ’60s–’70s throwback print jersey ladylike coats, all of it topped off with puffy Alice bands. ”I wanted to break the rules of the classic,” she said. 

“To discuss a wish of freedom and liberation and fantasy, and, on the other side, the extreme conservatism that is coming—the duality out there.” For sure, this was a collection that defied neat taglines. 

In Prada’s head there may have been a war against incipient Fascism going on, but her collection still offered plenty to wear, like the double-breasted jackets, tie-dyed circle skirts, and cashmere sweaters with neat white shirt collars. 

And you wouldn’t need to be a schoolgirl to get away with them. —Sarah Mower

ETRO

There’s always a place in fashion for the bohemian, culturally eclectic vibe that began with hippie dropout countercultures in the mid-1960s. 

In the 21st century, it’s reborn in the mainstream wellness and meditation movement—the modern ideal of a sound mind in a superhot athletic body, clad in an accidentally pretty print dress. 

Etro is the Italian stylistic epicenter for the luxurious version of all that—the torch held aloft in the second generation of the business by Veronica Etro. 

She was well at home weaving happy, easy-to-wear vibes into a rich tapestry of a collection that spanned everything from glam tiered dresses to pajama suits, swimwear, hats, jewelry, towels, and homewares. 

The first look out epitomized it: a multi-pattern patchwork blanket thrown over the shoulders of a girl wearing a full-length paisley-print dress, a cowrie-shell pendant nestling in her cleavage. —S.M.

VERSACE

It was always fun being part of the Versace gang. 

In 2018, it’s a different kind of a gang—far more multigenerational, its diversity a built-in Donatella Versace norm, which is what her collection celebrated: something for everyone under the Versace sun. For those who didn’t register Shalom Harlow’s significance to the elders, there was a brace of Hadids, Binx, Iman, Edie Campbell, et al. 

The collective spirit centered on reworking Versace microfloral prints—unusually soft and fluttery at times—which were swathed and draped into club-worthy body-con shapes. 

It used to be that Amazonian Versace glamour dictated towering heels with everything. Now, not so much. 

Girls in teeny-tiny chain mail or leather dresses are just as likely to want to go dancing in trainers as ankle-strap sandals. 

There was something about the way Bella Hadid walked around in her one-shoulder fluoro yellow leather dress—all legs and sneakers—that showed her genuinely at home with it, acting her age. —S.M.

MISSONI

It was the brand’s 65th birthday—a remarkable milestone for the independent company, founded by Tai and Rosita Missoni on the strength of their knitting machinery and ability to fashion multicolored magic with zigzag patterns and patchwork techniques. 

The occasion was marked not by a retrospective but by a display of Missoni’s relevance to fashion now. 

The lighting picking out the garments, the diaphanous layers of the collection glimmering and sparkling hypnotically—gossamer is a description that covers it. 

There were light layerings, a gentle, barely there palette shading from off-white through neutral to delicate pinks and washed-out indigo. 

As the eye drifted over the textures of tunics, flares, and long slim dresses, it picked out a nice idea—Missoni summer cloaks. —S.M.

MARNI

Oh, the longing for the value of the human touch in fashion! Francesco Risso put his finger on the beauty of the handmade and the happy accidents that happen when a collection is made in a creative studio rather than on computer screens. 

“It started with the processes of the work in the studio, and thinking of it as a painter’s canvas, which keeps changing and modifying in the trials and mistakes—suddenly that becomes the work itself,” said the designer. 

The painter’s blank canvas is very similar to the toile designers use, and the process of 3-D draping of fabric on the body to judge what looks right is a sculptural one. 

This collection captured the vitality of work in progress—the spontaneous moment when a tacked- and pinned-together assemblage of material suddenly comes together and looks lovely just as it is. 

It had the same feeling as when an artist instinctively knows when a painting is finished. 

The skill is in the decision to stop before tidying up and overthinking ruins it all. —S.M.

DOLCE & GABBANA

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have found their true calling in fashion: making people feel good about themselves. 

Smiles were worn runway-side—that’s unusual enough—at their celebratory show about the okay-ness of identity. 

“Each one of us is the king or queen of our own lives!” Dolce declared. 

Meaning each of us is the sole owner of a unique cluster of genes—and why not celebrate that? 

The theme of this season’s show was DNA—the designers’ own fingerprints were projected on screens behind the audience. 

Ultimately? There were some extraordinary clothes, especially the densely elaborate, embroidered tailored jackets that Dolce & Gabbana does so well. 

The designers also showed their equally impressive ability to frame traditional notions of femininity in all-out printed flouncy frocks and, quite the opposite, a canon of curvaceous black dressing. —S.M.

News Credit: Vogue