Men’s – Tactile Legacy. Etro AW23

January 16, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Marco De Vincenzo‘s first menswear collection for Etro is definitely much better than his womenswear debut that we’ve seen last September. The brand’s massive textile warehouse in Como was transported and installed in its entirety into a vast industrial space to become the immersive show’s set, with samples hanging from wooden racks and rolls of vintage fabrics scattered around. It was the homage De Vincenzo wanted to pay to the house’s patrimony of textile culture, which is the groundwork on which he’s building his interpretation of the label’s codes. Connecting with Etro’s history is pivotal for De Vincenzo, and his way of dealing with its legacy is respectful; yet he isn’t intimidated by its scale. At a preview, he said that he wanted to throw a little of his own past into the picture. Cue a little fetish, a small wool blanket from his childhood “which I brought with me, a lucky charm of sorts that gave me not only the inspiration for graphics and colors, but also the sentimental impulse to put my story alongside that of the Etro family.” In his menswear outing for the house, what De Vincenzo was keen to express was a sense of coziness and eccentricity. “Comfort of lines but eccentricity in the image” is how he summarized his take on the collection. The idea of masculinity he suggested came with an aura of artsy domesticity, and the look was balanced between a flair for romantic extravagance and supple refinement. Malleable high-end fabrics were cut into soft, gentle shapes: kimonos, shirt coats, and duffels were fluid, unstructured, and unlined, with rounded shoulders, often nonchalantly belted and wrapped as robes de chambre; fuzzy teddy bear pajamas embroidered with florals had an ironic childlike charm. Knitwear was outstanding, with big, chunky sweaters handknitted in imaginative kinetic patterns rendered in an acidic-rainbow palette. On the playful side, tight-fitting jumpers crocheted in open-weave cashmere were appliquéd with 3D bunches of mulberries or kumquats, and worn with roomy high-waisted flares in bright-colored windowpane checks or with low-slung washed denims. At the opposite end of the spectrum, said De Vincenzo, “I wanted tailoring to look sexy.” Inflected with a ‘70s groove, pantsuits were cut in eye-popping tartans, with double-breasted fitted blazers worn over fluid roomy flares, or with long pleated kilts open at the front.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Teenage Madness. DsQuared2 AW23

January 14, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

I just love it when DsQuared2 goes naughty, sleazy, hot and unapologetically DsQuared2. While other brands are trying to desperately capture the Y2k style, Dean and Dan Caten don’t have tii force it – they simply have it in their blood. And with styling help of Haley Wollens, they delivered a great show on the first day of men’s Milan Fashion Week. “Teenage madness!” shrieked the Caten twins in unison backstage before the show. “We’re looking back to look forward, thinking of what we’ve done in the past, and the energy of the Dsquared2 rebels,” they said. “We’re celebrating what we were already pushing a long time ago – being yourself, being individual, and the freedom of feeling comfortable in your own skin. No judgment.” The Dsquared2 posse of teenagers flaunted a string of characters straight from the Catens’ dorm room years: the geek, the goth, the starlet, the emo, the femme, all in their own broken-up/put-back-together-again finery. The dorm room in question was actually meticulously reproduced as the catwalk’s backdrop, furnished with all the cool paraphernalia which has populated the teenage years of every generation, from X to Y to Z and everything in between. Describing the zillion combinations the twins were able to concoct would, in fact, be madness. To very partially summarize, Western fringed jackets, Canadian outerwear, crystal-studded destroyed denim, cowboy leather jockstraps, ultra-low slung cargos, exposed boxers, teddy bear bombers, lace panties and see-through camisoles were put into their fashion percolator, spit out and re-assembled into beautifully body-revealing crazy ensembles. “Playing with girl things, playing with boy things, nothing is hotter than a hot guy in girly panties!” they enthused. “So we kind of went there. Openness! Playfulness! Courage! And no judgment.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – Fill The Gap. Gucci AW23

January 14, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The menswear Milan Fashion Week started with the first Gucci show without Alessandro Michele’s creative direction. The designer’s abrupt exit in the end of 2022 left the brand in a confusing position. Michele’s Gucci definitely needed some rest – those last collections were just over-the-top, feeling more like a parade of costumes. Nevertheless, the designer created an inclusive wonderland with his vision for the Italian brand. And the studio-designed autumn-winter 2023 collection foreshadows the end of that colorful world that kept the industry dreaming for the last seven years. Skinny boys are in, bland indie-sleaziness is in, subtle (but very subtle) echoes of Tom Ford are in. The first look said it all: a white T-shirt with oversized chinos, From this beginning unfolded a collection that Gucci said in its notes was an act of improvisation, a freestyle “reflection of the individualities represented by the multifaceted creatives and craftsmen who inhabit the house of Gucci.” In other words, a collection that lacked overall coherence. After the opener we drifted into a section of volumized tailoring which was possibly purposefully banal. Suiting with detachable arms and legs, a rugby shirt worn above an unpicked trouser-like skirt, oversized vintage-design womenswear bags with Tom Ford era hardware and hilariously described “vintage-like” silk scarfs used ’90s-style to patch denim were more dynamic elements. We saw the occasional horse bit loafer, apparently distressed. Around halfway through, the collection began to come freighted with identity beyond the jackets featuring a 1953-issue logo boasting of outlets spanning “Florence-Rome-Milan-New York” (plus those near-ubiquitous pirate’s boots and sailor’s beanies). Volume was replaced by indie sleaze in a section epitomized by a look featuring black patent-sheened five-pocket pants, and a sheer scarlet shirt that strangely echoed the first ever look put out by Michele. The furry leopard bag and pink boots that accompanied it added a touch of hustler-ish glunge. Moto pieces, knitwear, and pastel sportswear were thrown in to evoke a purposefully peripatetic, thrown-together aesthetic. Thick socks worn over jeans is a thing to consider, though. Still, this isn’t a good moment in Gucci’s history.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Character. Bottega Veneta SS23

September 26, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Milan Fashion Week had a strong finale in form of Matthieu Blazy‘s second collection for Bottega Veneta. Don’t let the first impression of eclecticism, or even incoherence, fool you – the collection had a truly convincing plotline. It was about character and personality, which are conveyed by the clothes of the wearer. Knowing Blazy’s great affection for art, you could be sure to receive a full visual, as well as sensual, experience from his new season offering. To start, he set a fabulous scene, enlisting the 82-year-old Italian design pioneer Gaetano Pesce to create a site-specific installation that included a colorful, swirling poured resin floor and 400 unique chairs (all will be sold during the upcoming Design Miami). As the crowd filled the space, it appeared to be a meeting of unique personalities: Cicciolina circulated, Erykah Badu posed for pictures with Raf Simons, Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee chatted with friends, and Pesce soaked it all in from the front row. “Unique” is really the operative word here. Backstage, Blazy said, “the collection started with meeting Gaetano. I went a lot to visit him in New York and we had a lot of discussions about diversity. He worked on his side and I worked on mine and we did a juxtaposition. The idea was ‘the world in a small room.’ We went full on,” he continued. “The idea was to represent different characters and put them in the landscape of Gaetano.” Picking up the thread from last season, the opening looks, though they looked like denim, flannel, and cotton tees, were all leather. Modeled by Kate Moss herself, a flannel shirt required 12 layers of prints to achieve the depth of color Blazy was after. “It’s this kind of casual comfort and we put it to an extreme and we call it perverse banality,” he said. Speaking of Moss, she looked as effortless wearing that ensemble as back in the 1990s, running from one show to another show, wearing the same look, not all-leather, rather all-thrifted. Blazy also revisited the “dynamic” silhouette he established last season, exaggerating the sense of clothes-in-motion by adding what could be described as fins to the back of pant legs. Similarly, the storm flaps on trench coats seemed to have caught a breeze and stayed there. The curving funnel necklines on jackets and shirts gave them a streamlined profile. These are subtle details, but if they’re missable by the uninitiated, they matter a lot to fashion obsessives who watch for such changes. This was a highly resolved collection, a reminder in a Milan Fashion Week (that included some shaky debuts and tedious tenures) of the importance of experience. Blazy has a lot of it, and it showed in all aspects of this show, including in the knit jacquard dresses and separates – “highly technical,” he said, “but the results are not technical, they’re emotional” – and in the trio of fringed finale dresses in colors lifted from Pesce. “It’s a new technique where you weave with fringe integrated into the fabric and they’re all knit by hand. That’s also very technical,” he laughed.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Excavation. Trussardi SS23

September 26, 2022September 26, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Serhat Isik and Benjamin Huseby‘s vision of Trussardi takes shape with the designers’ second season for the Italian heritage brand. Presented in the gilded salons of Palazzo Clerici, the spring-summer 2023 offering gave hints of how they’re easing into their role, after a strong first outing which was a break with the past, clean to the point of subversion. “This time it was more about trying to develop a wardrobe that makes sense for Trussardi,” they said backstage. “It may sound boring, but we’re bringing our own vision, mixing modernity with history.” Digging into the brand’s archive was “excavation work,” they explained. “There’s lots of richness there – the exceptional leather work, the ’80s and ’90s sexy and cinched silhouettes, the sensuality, the femininity, but also a masculine glamour.” Some of these elements were brought back for spring. Sensuality was played out in fluid dresses in liquid jersey with twisted necklines and cascading hemlines; floor-length satin gowns were wrapped around the neck, draped and ruched; slits and cut-outs opened to reveal bare skin. The best representation of leather work was a faux embossed crocodile bomber, round-shouldered and cinched, paired with a ruched miniskirt. The designers also tried their hand at denim, one of the house’s signatures, offering sculpted pieces glamorized with crystal appliqués. “It’s a learning process,” they offered. “Absorbing and adapting to the Milanese culture is a sort of anthropological exploration. We’re learning to work with things that we don’t always like, or which make us slightly uncomfortable. Our view of history isn’t linear, rather it’s often chaotic“.