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Every once in a while, a designer delivers a show so astonishingly good that everything else pales in comparison. That was Matthieu Blazy’s second outing for Bottega Veneta, the €1.5bn-revenue leather goods brand he took up after his former boss Daniel Lee departed last year.
This season, Blazy combined forces with the 82-year-old Italian architect Gaetano Pesce, who conceived the colourful resin floor of the showspace and also designed the hundreds of bright, blocky resin chairs lined up for guests. “The idea was to really represent [human] diversity . . . different characters, and put them in the landscape of Gaetano,” Blazy said backstage.
What he offered was a full wardrobe, shown on a cast of models not all in the first flush of youth and the more interesting for it. His wardrobe began with the casual, or what Blazy called “perverse banality”: tees and faded overshirts with chinos and baggy jeans fashioned not from cotton and wool but leather, each layered with eight to 12 prints to create depth and then shaved thin, Blazy said. These were succeeded by smart clothes for professional life: single-breasted suits with trousers swept back and stitched in a gentle arc behind the calf, as if caught by air; immaculately tailored blazer dresses and coats that swelled at the hips; and, for evening, knit dresses and trouser suits in a mash-up of pattern and fringe inspired by the futurist painter Giacomo Balla.
The clothes were not just terrific-looking and invitingly wearable but strategic too, designed to underline the USPs of the Kering-owned brand — its leather craftsmanship and also, Blazy said, its legacy as “a bag company”, which links it to travel and the idea of “going somewhere”. Thus those swept-back trousers and the shiver of fringe on shoulders, skirts and trouser hems. Any of these garments would be recognisably Bottega’s on a shop floor, no logo needed.
His approach offered lessons for the designers who made their debuts at other labels this week in Milan. Expectations were riding highest at Ferragamo, the 95-year-old Florentine shoemaker now helmed by former Burberry chief executive Marco Gobbetti and Maximilian Davis, a 27-year-old hailing from Manchester and the first black designer to cover the creative director position at the house.
In recent years, family-led Ferragamo has forfeited market share to bigger rivals, becoming a small fish in an increasingly large pond, and turning it around will be no easy task. Sales last year amounted to €1.14bn, still shy of pre-pandemic revenues.
The family has urged Davis to be “as risky as possible”, he said backstage, and the show had the fizz of a major debut, with a palace for a set, its floors and walls blanketed in an orangey red, and Ferragamo’s new, all-caps, ever-so-slightly-seriffed Peter Saville-designed logo blown up opposite the entrance.
In hiring such a young designer, the Ferragamo family is hoping to draw in a younger customer, but Davis designed for a range. There were bandeau tops and short skirts, sure, but the emphasis was on tailoring and the kind of slick, jet-set sportswear perfected by Michael Kors and Tom Ford. The slinky, backless suede dresses were more vibrant and energetic than what came before Davis, but did not thrill. And Ferragamo needs to thrill in order to cut through the noise of its much larger and better-financed rivals.
New Missoni designer Filippo Grazioli, who worked under Riccardo Tisci at both Burberry and Givenchy, certainly aimed to thrill. His debut collection was short, sheer and glittery, but its flat chevron- and zebra-patterned bodycon dresses and miniskirts did little to showcase the house’s rich savoir-faire.
For his first Etro show, Marco de Vincenzo, who also designs accessories for Fendi, did not play up the label’s signature paisley but did enlarge its logo, embroidering it on the pockets of striped shirts, the corners of skirts and the sides of carpet bags upcycled from past-season fabric. The problem with that approach is that Etro lacks sufficient brand equity to make the logo widely desirable — de Vincenzo has work to do to get it there.
It seems it is no longer enough simply to be a leather goods brand today — those that have successfully evolved into luxury fashion houses, such as Louis Vuitton and Hermès, sell more handbags than dedicated handbag brands do, and more shoes than shoemakers. And so Swiss leather goods label Bally is trying its hand again at fashion, hiring Los Angeles-based designer Rhuigi Villaseñor to put together its first runway collection in 21 years. His suede suits and slinky cut-out dresses would look right at home in LA, but they did not help to establish a clear identity for the brand.
Versace and Dolce & Gabbana both leaned into the power of celebrity this season, and the fashions of the ’90s and early aughts. Donatella Versace cast OG influencer Paris Hilton in a vaguely vampiric show of black cowl dresses, purple boudoir gowns and dark eye-liner. Dolce & Gabbana teamed up with Kim Kardashian in what it labelled a “curation” and not a collaboration: she chose archival pieces from 1987 to 2007, which the designers lightly reworked, stitching a label with the year of their original creation into the garment. There were corsets and elastic dresses, silky cargo trousers and head-to-toe leopard print — all pieces Kardashian might conceivably wear. She took a bow with the designers in a glittering jet evening dress as her mother and three of her children looked on from the front row.
It was smart marketing and a moment of light-hearted fun in a week overshadowed by the national election. On the final Sunday of shows, Italians headed to the polls, where they are expected to elect a rightwing coalition that is quietly worrying many in Italy’s fashion industry. Armani’s closing show offered another moment of respite, with its swishy lightweight trousers, embroidered jackets and shimmering evening gowns in soft, pale colours. After a week of so many Gen Z-focused shows, it was nice to see clothes for grown-ups.
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