The Italian look for spring-summer, 1986, is generally spare and often bare.
Italy`s top fashion designers, who have just wrapped up five days of showings at Milan`s Fiera exhibition complex, didn`t set off any fireworks this season, but they did deliver some sparklers. The talents of Giorgio Armani and Gianfranco Ferre may have burned brightest, but the Milanese overall delivered confident collections generally free of gimmicks and full of clean-lined shapes and attractive ideas.
Using minimal accessories and a color palette anchored by black and white, the designers proposed a dual look: casually sexy and sporty, and seriously chic in a high-fashion, ”alta moda” manner that went beyond the masterfully cut sportswear for which they have long been known.
The fashion geometry for spring plays off the triangle. As it has in past seasons, the inverted triangle defines the basic silhouette: softly pronounced shoulders and snugly cinched waists.
But this season, the triangle goes further as a recurring motif, and that`s where the fun starts: shallow and deep V-necks and backs, halter tops and skin-baring cutouts that focus on the tummy, but also slyly flash the flesh on backs and sides.
While the Italians are playing a skin game this season, it`s more invitingly ”come hither” than brazenly ”come and get it.” Aside from the ubiquitous plunges in necks and backs, there is an abundance of Bermuda shorts, short skirts, racer-back tank tops, bandeaux, strapless tops and high- cut one- and two-piece black stretch bathing suits in nearly every collection. This season, the Italians are busy slitting the backs of shirts and jackets instead of the sides of skirts.
CITIFIED CHIC
The flip side of this breezy, sexy look is a well-bred, citified chic, underscored by long, slim jackets over short, straight skirts; short jackets over long, swingy skirts or tapered pants; shapely coatdresses; and simple silk dresses. These clothes have the sort of serious beauty, tailoring and dressmaker details that distinguish couture, or custom-made, clothes from the smartest ready-to-wear.
Milan`s move in this direction stood out in the eveningwear, which was particularly glittery and abundant for the usually more casual spring season. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the serenely pretty, precisely detailed collection shown by Giorgio Armani. Although the usually buoyant mood at this top fashion house was quieted by the recent death of Armani`s business partner, Sergio Galeotti, the collection`s evening segment was larger and brighter than ever, and the overall show presented more color and floral prints than usual.
Although he hasn`t abandoned his love of black, white and beige, Armani recolored some of his signature plaids in tones of coral, pink, blue and mint. There were sweet, pastel gingham-checked skirts, fragile Ming blue and white china-pattern florals, aggressive fuchsia, orange and pink chiffon evening skirts. And this season`s prime motif, the bow tie, appeared as a print and ingeniously trompe l`oeil at the neck of silk T-shirts.
ARMANI SEES DOUBLE
Among the new ideas, Armani is seeing double this season. There are double chiffon skirts on his evening dresses, double doses of polka dots with tiny pointillist prints and, most beguiling of all, double T-shirts, worn short over long. For day, they are in different colored silk and jersey. At night, they are gilded with paillettes or with a glaze of the thin plastic fabric coating he uses, and paired with floaty chiffon.
Along with his usual impeccably tailored collarless jackets, Armani introduced a shapely new silhouette he called a guru jacket. Strong-shouldered, long and sleekly fitted to the body, it evoked the collarless tunics worn by the waiters at Armani`s Indonesian-themed pre-show cocktail party. Shimmering in ribbed silver raw silk, with its back slit subtly from the waistline down, it was a knockout over a long, pale floral skirt.
Armani also introduced a new blouse look this season: a quilted ring neck that split into a shallow V. His favorite short dirndl skirts and crisp Bermuda shorts were paired with it, along with new, soft shorts that look like split dirndl skirts. Some of these also were in a softly colored batik print, underlining Armani`s Indonesian subtheme this season. The overall collection was exquisite, thrilled the crowd and bagged this season`s Golden Eye award here for Armani.
The Asian theme was more pronounced at Gianfranco Ferre, who turned in a solid, eminently wearable collection. Despite unseasonably somber colors, it had a lightness and grace that brought the audience to its feet.
The classic Japanese kimono, with full, straight, cropped sleeves and obi-sashed waist, was the message from Ferre. He reflected it in fluid double- jersey tops and jackets, pairing them with cropped jersey pants, egg-shaped silk jackets and draped, samurai-inspired skirts. Other top notes included silk blouses buttoned to the neck and open from the midriff down, strapless printed tube dresses, elongated obi tube tops and Ferre`s signature officer`s shirt interpreted as a navy jersey jumpsuit.
Gianni Versace came up with pre-wrinkled silk-and-linen suits, dresses and jackets. The wrinkles in the fabric gave it a pretty, shimmery look when it caught the light; he likes it best in long, V-neck jackets that almost reach the hems of his short skirts. In a collection that was less tight than Versace usually prefers, some of the prettiest items were soft silk chemises, gently draped in a black-and-white speckled print.
SHAPELY AT FENDI
Karl Lagerfeld, in his collection for Fendi, showed shapely jersey dresses in navy sprinkled with white stars, terrific thin-plastic polka-dotted raincoats and a wonderfully tailored group of denims lined in the signature bright Fendi double-F print. Denim also showed up in several other
collections, including Complice, Basile, Ferragamo and Moschino.
Fendi fans will surely collect the line`s new crested polo shirts, and the daring will want the short satin-appliqued dresses covered with sparkly black-net smocks for evening.
At Krizia, where this season`s signature motif is the butterfly, designer Mariuccia Mandelli also picked up the triangle theme. She cut it into tops and doubled it with low V-neck suits over V-neck white silk T-shirts.
The Missonis were into music this season, so they showed their V-neck silk tea dresses printed with dancers, piano keys and tragedy-comedy masks. Their knits drew on bright combinations of jewel tones, as usual, but it may have been a booboo to bring back the muumuu dress. But, where at least one could wear that to the beach, it was hard to imagine where one could wear the Saran Wrap turbans they showed with them.
Claude Montana, designing for Complice, was having a love affair with the paparrazzi this season. He led off with foreign-correspondent trenchcoats belted in wide leather over tight Bermudas or long, loose jersey culottes with jersey T-shirts. He followed this up with a series of prints borrowed from the newspapers, shown over T-shirts and short-shorts or bandeaux with clamdiggers. He got his woman out of the newsroom in one of the prettiest shirts of the season: a long collarless linen shirt with a rectangular vertical cutout baring the back.
For fun, Montana took on the Girl Scouts, sending out a series of pale blue camp shirts with navy shorts, all garnished with the signature Girl Scout kerchief looped through epaulets or shirt loops. A decidedly un-Scouting end note, however, were his black bandeaux and chiffon skirts shoved into long-line black satin girdles. —
