For autumn-winter 2022, Prada “ate” (that’s how TikTok kids communicate that something is absolutely brilliant). There are two reasons why this collection, which opens the fourth season of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons‘ ever-exciting creative dialogue, is truly mind-blowing. Exactly 10 years ago, Prada invited some of her favorite actors to walk the runway, from Adrien Brody and Gary Oldman to Willem Dafoe and Tim Roth. That 2012 collection was a refined, at points ironic, take on the Old World elegance. In 2022, the brand invited a new pack of actors, with Kyle Maclachlan opening (he’s definitely Team Raf – this is the ultimate Calvin Klein 205W39NYC guy!) and Jeff Goldblum closing the show (the Prada-print-loving-Insta-Zaddy is an obvious Team Miuccia choice). All the men that were casted for the show walked out of an “A Space Odyssey“-like entrance, wearing garments that can be described with two words: “cosmic” and “dandy”. The line-up focuses mainly on investment tailoring and voluminous outerwear. Exaggerated shoulders and faux-fur patches in unexpected colours are this season’s key take-aways, and I really loved how Prada and Simons managed to make this futuristic style feel elegant (please, lets have a major comeback of elegance in menswear!). You could see how these garments elevated the movements of the models. And Goldblum looked utterly alien-chic in his long, black coat. There were also nylon boiler-suits, plenty of rubber-ish leather and a great selection of color-block turtlenecks. The Internet, as always, debates whether this collection is more Miuccia or Raf. To me, it’s a balance, which wasn’t always present in their previous creative endeavors.
Kean Etro‘s autumn-winter 2022 collection is to die for! The Etro offering for men delivered rushes of wildness and preppy, a combination that isn’t that easy to pull off. Royal velvets meet knitted sweaters with tearings; shearling jackets with folklorish embroideries styled with slightly scruffy, vintage-y denim pants; wolf motif layered over the brand’s signature paisley pattern. This is certainly a wardrobe for lovers of eclectic dandy-ness with a hedonistic twist. I wonder if Etro had Luke Edward Hall‘s style on his moodboard, because I definitely see him wearing most of these outfits. The collection orbited around the idea of contrasts. We’ve got a cool, solid PVC coat in purple, and the other moment a billow-y, romantic, chest-revealing silk blouse in mustard. This is one of those collections that are both desirable and filled with styling tips ready to be implemented into a guy’s autumn wardrobe.
Men’s Milan Fashion Week has officially started! And here’s lesson number one: you just can’t go wrong with Zegna. I know it myself – I’ve got a couple of my dad’s clothes coming from the brand, and really, this brand is not just timeless, but its quality is indestructible. Alessandro Sartori, Zegna’s creative director, embraces what the Italian brand stands for with every season, delivering absolutely desirable, refined and relevant investment pieces for a contemporary man. For autumn-winter 2022, Sartori said he was presenting “il nuovo abito“: the new suit. Yet this collection represented something far bolder than that. It was a tilt at meeting that migration by erasing the categorical imperatives that have long codified menswear. These old-fashioned either-ors include formal and casual, sartorial and sporting, street and fashion, executive and worker, masculine and feminine – all of them habit-forming dichotomies that signpost the traditional menswear roadmap. This shift came in sync with multiple others in Zegna’s landscape. Early last month the company dropped the Ermenegildo from its title and also quietly phased out the really excellent sub-brand Z Zegna in order to combine everything under one mainline menswear empire. The simplification is meant to add emphasis to the Zegna identity, which is now represented by a signifier-logo that sandwiches the brand name within two vicuna-toned strips of brown with a strip of black between them. The logo represents the road that winds through the 100 km2 of land – the Oasi Zegna – that the original Ermenegildo purchased, reforested, and conserved in order to increase the quality of life and wellbeing of the employees and their families at the original Zegna lanificio, which continues to operate today. Another categorical dichotomy that Sartori has worked to blur is that of physical vs digital – fashion-wise, phygital was first coined here back in 2020. Today’s presentation had been planned as what Sartori today called “metatheater – not the metaverse – a combination of cinema, fashion, and live… My goal is a digital background to a live presentation, and I am sure we will do it in June.” The latest offering was shot between the Oasi Zegna and a Milan TV studio over five days. But those clothes don’t need any additional, fancy background. A dark, gabardine jacket that featured an eye-catchingly unorthodox notch lapel construction, no bolstering material in the shoulder, and no buttons at its split cuff. This was worn atop matching pants, vaguely carrot shaped like most here, and the handsome galvanized slip-on ankle boots that were also shown on most looks treading through the snow in the Oasi. Under the jacket was an oatily-toned midlayer that featured a one-sided, curved flap that lent the look a roguish, piratic air. When the model took the jacket off, it turned out that midlayer was a soberly silhouetted technical turtleneck whose curving came from the shape of the zippers running across the body. You could see the fossilized remains of both sportswear and tailoring in the look’s elements, but when worn as an ensemble it did, indeed, look like an outfit that was uncategorizable as either. Other highlights included sharply silhouetted deformalized jackets and pants in ultra-thin padded fabrics, parkas in wool ripstop, and shirting with fabric-soft panels of leather cut into their cashmere whole. Knitwear featured tonal jacquards whose abstract shapes reflected the patches of forest and snow they were shot against. Whether in camel hair, scuba, or cashmere, the shacket-and-pant fusion ensemble – a luxury-chore-jacket-workwear outfit meets supremely-soft pajama – was well represented and made a powerful candidate for Sartori’s post-abito habit.
It’s no secret that Victoria Beckham‘s brand had some rough time financially. Wisely, the company scaled-down to its main line, at the same time incorporating a lower price point and limiting the range of new products. Looking at Beckham’s pre-fall 2022 offering, this new approach has a positive effect on the designs. Less is really more. We’ve got great, business-ready tailoring, a fine balance of neutrals and neons (Victoria certainly understands that a wardrobe has to offer different attitudes, depending on the wearer’s ever-changing mood), and languid dresses that come with sexy zip details and erotic cut-outs. All the clothes have that kind of smart discipline about them, which makes it additonally appealing for clients who want to finally exit the too-easy comfort zone of dressing caused by months (actually… years) spent in the pandemic world. And even if the pandemic will last forever, at some point we will all want to dress up a bit more demandingly – even if it’s for another Zoom call.
People might find Thom Browne’s work monotonous, if they look at it superficially. Gray wool suit, pleated skirt, rakish tie – these distinct Browne signatures are always there. However, Browne rarely does the same thing twice. Sure, he has a very stable gray wool core, but each season he delights in trying out an outrageous new silhouette, a clever in-joke, or a cheeky rethink of an American staple. While this women’s collection carries over motifs from Browne’s men’s pre-fall, including lovely jade floral intarsias inspired by his bedroom wallpaper and a fixation with lobsters resulting in an exceptional Shetland wool lobster skirt – he introduced new whimsical proportions here. A cropped puffer was so short and bulbous it almost looked like a mushroom cap atop slender black trousers. Browne has never made a womenswear silhouette that exaggerates the upper body in this abbreviated way before. Elsewhere, khaki shorts do the opposite for a woman’s lower half; they’re cut wide, loose, and sexless enough to look dementedly funny. The signature Browne suit has evolved, as well: The shoulderpads and the canvas are cut out of the brand’s cropped blazer so that it’s as soft and snuggly as a cardigan, constructed from an elegant black-and-white tweed. The check gray skirt suit in look 28 might seem standard, but look closer and Browne is doing something strangely new: here is a single-breasted blazer with a vest long enough to be worn as a dress and a loose, almost shapeless skirt. For a designer with famously strict tailoring, silhouettes that skim the body and waft in the breeze are practically revelatory. Browne says the suit is “the most important look” of the collection, unlocking an idea that will carry to the silhouettes we’ll see in his autumn-winter 2022 outing in a couple of weeks.
Design & Culture by Ed 