MILAN — How should a woman look? That was the question that hovered over the third day of Milan Fashion Week as visions of femininity paraded down the catwalk.
At Prada, the women looked like dolls as they stalked the scaffolding set in tousled hair, reshaped sack dresses, coats falling here and there and too big boxer shorts roughly tied at the waist. Dolls, not metaphorically but literally, evidenced in the odd, doll-like proportions and the big buttons. It’s a concept that has been widely explored by both Martin Margiela and Marc Jacobs, but the goings didn’t look derivative. Not at all. Marc Jacobs’ dolls, in any case, were openly inspired by Miuccia Prada.
After the show, Mrs Prada and co-creative director Raf Simons referenced “raw glamour,” but what they were really exploring was the way clothing relates to the body. There was something familiar to the pieces, which were inflected with the well-to-do tropes that Prada has owned since day one. But there was also something odd about them, as if they were found in an attic or a market stall and repurposed for bodies that were totally different from those of the original owners. “Everything looks kind of wrong, but it actually took a lot of effort and study to get it all right,” said Mrs Prada backstage.
“There’s this idea of total liberation,” added Simons. “Within feminine beauty, there are a lot of restrictions on the body — here, it is free. And ideas can be liberated also: we didn’t want to limit ourselves with a narrative or a theme. We like to take a risk — we like to create something different.”
Meanwhile, at Roberto Cavalli, designer Fausto Puglisi has found his stride: one either likes his over the top, proudly tacky vision or not, but the elan he puts into his work is authentic, and his love for women as fiercely attired glamourpusses is everlasting. Cavalli’s eccentric poetry has completely evaporated in favour of hard edge, but that’s a minor problem. The fact is, Puglisi is better when he uses a lighter hand, which was not the case this season. The collection was inspired by Pompeii, and it featured lots of red — the kind found in the city’s frescoes — plus some lava-like devoré velvet. Literal, but fine. The problem was the plastic coatings on a series of siren dresses: they were clearly meant to look futuristic, but came off as rather clumsy. The same goes for the militaristic outerwear. Puglisi is in the right place at the right time. But exercising some self restraint will do him good.
Over at Etro, Marco De Vincenzo delved into matter and texture — a main focus of the season, overall — so much so that even prints had some kind of pictorial thickness to them, and certainly didn’t look flat. As for his idea of femininity, over the last few collections, De Vincenzo has fine-tuned a kind of post-hippie wanderlust that fits the house codes but is free from the Milanese, caviar gauche constraints of the past. It’s an interesting persona, but judging by the guests at the show, it may be misaligned with the label’s real client base. Whatever the case, this new outing was thick with tempting items, from printed dresses to fringed knits to delicious handbags to wonderful brushed wool coats and printed denim, but it didn’t quite gel. It was probably a matter of styling: Etro’s eclecticism demands a bonkers approach. In other words, the outing was good, but it could have been better.
