Milan Fashion Week on Saturday was bookended by two shows which were all about motion; albeit with radically different approaches. Ferrari ignited the day, and Bottega Veneta finished it.
Bottega Veneta: Celebrating allure
Sometimes the most important question to ask of any collection is, “how new are these clothes?” And nothing felt newer or more original this week in Milan Fashion Week than Bottega Veneta.
Devoid of print, free of embroidery, but constructed with true originality and boasting a tremendously unlikely but always cool silhouette, these were the freshest clothes in Italy this past five days.
“Reduce, reduce and not to the minimum but to the maximum. To celebrate the idea of the everyday, the idea of allure,” explained the Bottega Veneta’s cerebral designer, Matthieu Blazy.
His opening passages were cocoon-shaped jackets or car coats all cut with raised seams and hems; leather jerkins had bat wings, high collars and long cuffs. Everything was a little out of proportion, which was what gave each look its allure.
Bottega under Blazy has always been about unexpected leather, treated and sliced to be malleable or stiff depending on the sculptural form the designer demands – from mega-ruffled flamenco skirts, to elongated cabans with low-slung pockets.
Staged inside a warehouse in south Milan, redone with fancily stained wooden crates as seats, the cast marched at high speed around the figure of eight runway. Backed up by a beautiful soundtrack starring the famed Gabriel’s Oboe by master cellist Yo-Yo Ma, imparting a sense of majesty to the event.
Blazy’s interpretation of deconstruction was also very novel. Like assemblage dresses of a grey trenches and olive frocks, connected diagonally from right shoulder to left ankle. Displaced seams, super-high noble collars and mutton-chop sleeves gave grand sweaters a sense of volume and movement that was highly attractive on both guys and gals in a co-ed show.
“I started by looking at the news. Not represent it but to have a point of view. I wanted to make a monument out of the everyday. That was the point, so we stripped out every decoration,” Blazy explained quietly backstage.
He explained that he developed the unusual volumes, after walking his dog at night and seeing how silhouettes gradually became shadow.
“Daywear during the night, where you don’t see details just a shadow. That’s what makes people chic – their allure,” he added.
Hence, his palette became night time too – olive, ashes, carbon and a little flame at the finale.
Partly explaining how the collection went into overdrive with a female Yeti that looked composed of a circuit board that had suddenly sprouted hair.
“I like the idea of a certain form of resilience, and the idea of hope. When you walk in the desert and you see fire,” he mused, before fellow designers, and former bosses, Pieter Mulier and Raf Simons embraced in praise.
Ferrari’s reflective power
Every look in the latest show by Ferrari seemed built to reflect light, a shimmering collection of iridescence, reflective surfaces and shiny fabrics.
Staged inside a show set that was made entirely of faux-patent leather, from the tubular seats to the corrugated walls, the better to reflect light again.
In this latest collection by designer Rocco Iannone, presented on sunny Saturday morning in south Milan, the opening looks were all in Ferrari’s signature fireball red.
Most looks attempted to suggest speed and power, many of them successfully so. Like opening power shoulder sweater dresses, dimpled surgeon’s smocks or spy coats – all made techy wool or patent leather, and all in the auto’s signature fiery red.
In a co-ed show, the women were very much the party gal variety; with gray blazer worn like mini coat-dresses over taught liquid metal like leggings; black bodices worn just with board chairman gray flannel ankle length coats. Plus, classic-with-a-twist looks often had great punch – most especially the suit on veteran Natasha Poly – a bankers’ double-breasted with multi-fold full skirt.
Rocco has certainly a fertile imagination, seen in his battered silver series of pants suits for men and women.
He called the collection, “an expression of sensuality and dynamism, of precise shapes and sinuous lines, of sharp contours and soft curves, of intrinsic energies bubbling to the surface to break down and recompose silhouettes into quintessential tailoring.”
But, at times it felt like the collection was having a difficult time about making up its mind what sort of bran it really is. A fully fledged fashion marque, or an ad campaign for Ferrari brand extensions. Like its new sunglass launch which feted in the same space after dinner on Saturday.
How else to explain the see-through metallic baby blue shirts and jumpsuits, pure runway looks.
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