Boss, Brioni and Antonio Marras

A wet Wednesday morning in Milan Fashion Week and a busy schedule as two venerable marques – Boss, Brioni – and one theatrical showman – Antonio Marras – presentation noteworthy collections.
 

Bend it like Boss

After several year’s where Boss seemed to drift off the stylistic radar, Germany’s biggest fashion brand suddenly seems relevant again.
 
Cries of excitement by hundreds of fans, Boss’ new ambassador David Beckham and tennis star Taylor Fritz – entered the show. The English soccer player’s choice a smart move by Boss CEO Daniel Grinder to give this Mittel European marque greater global impact. Looking spiffing in a crisp executive’s suit, his hairs wept up in a curl, Beckham took his front row seat inside Palazzo Senato.

Like the brand the storied palace had been given a make-over, a central mirrored catwalk in a courtyard that was rewilded with hundreds of shaggy plants. The cast then marching briskly around the exterior loggia on a grass runway.
 
All backed up by an excellent re-mix of Bronski Beat’s classic Smalltown Boy courtesy of sound architect and ace DJ Michel Gaubert.
 
Created entirely in mono-color, absent all prints, the collection concentrated on polish, poise and contemporaneity. The cast was deliberately mature, some models even had gray streaked into the hair.

See catwalk

For women: spruce linen blend suits with mannish jackets worn with wide pants; excellent wrap blazers and cinched, buttonless coats. Pairing whisper light nylon jerkins and shirts with crisp suits or combining ribbed knit dresses with flowing trench-coats. All very busy career gal, not work-from-home looks. For evening – rippling silk cocktails in nylon, or a very elegant dressing-gown cocktail combo that would flatter most women.
 
For guys, in a co-ed show, classy linen sack suits; classy splash tops and graceful coats.
 
The palette was putty, petrol, ecru and stone and – Almost Armani like, and no bad thing.

Plus, in a cool insider joke, the cast included a quartet of hip and popular international editors, the Four Horsemen of the Catwalk were George Cortina, Alix Badia, Ben Cobb and Luke Day.
 
A heavily applauded collection and show, which ended as a score of designers emerged collectively from the backstage to run around the verdant garden to much applause.
 

Antonio Marras

See catwalk

You can’t keep a good man down, especially if he is Sardinian, like Antonio Marras who returned to the Milan runways with a rockabilly show, inspired by the actress Anna Maria Pierangeli.
 
A great tragic beauty of the 1950s, Pierangeli was the lover of Kirk Douglas and partner of Jimmy Dean, whom her family forbade from seeing because he was not a Catholic. Friends say she had nightmares about Dean’s 1955 death in a car accident the rest of her life.
 
Pierangeli died aged 39 of an overdose in Los Angeles in 1971, but Marras remembers her in all her glory, imagined dancing in a glitzy bar to the Little Til and the Gangbusters quartet playing dance classics like I’m all shook up. 
 
One of fashion’s greatest showmen, Antonio had a troupe of dancers stage a wild display of jitterbugging on a tinselly set to kick off the show. Before the cast strode out like movie stars, exiting a Hollywood sound studio en route to dinner.
 
The models/actresses attired in bustier frocks in rather divine patchworks of floral prints, windowpane checks and broken pattern herringbones. Though his big idea was an obsession with raffia, seen in huge pagoda hats; shaman cocktails and a truly outlandish lime green screen goddess gown with two-meter train. South Pacific chic.

See catwalk

In another co-ed collection, the men often wore similar fabrics and prints, sometimes in Antonio’s signature dark florals with dashes of black. Guys out on Southern Californian or Mediterranean dates in silk pajama suits, or dandy flower power cotton blazers.
 
Gals walked on posh retro kitten heels that often matched the look, guys on a brilliant new shoe – a patent leather brothel creeper with posh punk straps at the toe. 
 
The collection marked the first runway show in four years by Marras, a much-loved figure in Italian fashion. And it felt fitting a fellow Sardinian inspired him to return to the podium.
 
Not for nothing did Paul Newman – who started opposite Pierangeli in boxing classic Somebody Up There Likes Me – call her “the most beautiful Italian actress of the century.” Today that unique personality breathed life into a charming show and touching fashion moment.

A kinder, gentler Brioni

Building a women’s wear business into a distinguished gentleman’s tailor is never an easy project, but one brand that is managing it successfully is Brioni.
 
On Wednesday it presented a 21-piece women’s capsule, and showed the collection on actual live models, unlike in previous seasons with just stockmen. One was also able to discover Brioni’s new showroom in a particularly distinguished cut-stone Liberty style building on via Senato.
 
The clothes whispered wealth and spoke gently of elegance. Nothing revolutionary, just pure class, where designer Norbert Stumpfl manages to incorporate the brand’s bespoke tailoring DNA into a kinder, gentler Brioni.
 
Silk and T-shirts reaching the ankles, that are finished with pockets, and worn with slim pants. The perfect double-breasted blazer finished with matching fabric buttons – made in founder Gaetano Savini’s favorite color, orange red.
 
For evening, swishly shaped fracks, with satin lapels, cut off at the waist and worn with matching pencil pants.  Along with ivory silk and cashmere double-breasted suits in a barely visible herring bone, or a classic jeans jacket shape, except made in a black silk seersucker finished with a windowpane check.
 
A cleverly judged array of style. Explaining why Brioni, though the smallest of Kering’s six fashion houses, is also currently its fastest growing.
 
It’s often said that Brioni’s 1952 show in Florence was fashion’s first menswear runway show, igniting the Peacock Revolution. Now, the girls can be a little egotistical too.