This is the city that gave the world the roar of Alfa-Romeo sports cars, the squeal of Pirelli tires, the jolt of Memphis furniture and the fizz of Campari liqueur. This week Milan has given the fashion world a look at the shape of things to come.
As the first stop on the whirlwind international fashion circuit that also will hit London, Paris and New York in the next six weeks, this stylish city sets the tone and introduces some of the key themes that will define the cut of fashion for fall-winter 1988-89.
And as they do twice a year, more than 1,000 journalists and photographers and about twice as many retailers from around the world have made the pilgrimage here this week to get the first word on the latest look from the oracles of Italian design, who will stage marathon showings in coming days.
The fashion people are not the only pilgrims. During the course of a year, thousands more will come to trade fairs here to glimpse the future in architecture, office equipment, industrial and interior design, publishing, heavy machinery and home furnishings.
These are no ordinary trade shows. Particularly in the last decade, this city has developed a peculiarly prophetic hold on the pulse point of international style. Indeed, the sleek, understated approach of the Milanese, with their fondness for luxurious, high-quality materials in everything from lamps to clothes to typewriters, has become synonymous with the image of the Eighties.
This approach is strictly in keeping with the nature of Milan and the Milanese themselves, neither the exuberant stereotype of things Italian nor the languorous, sun-drenched country of tomato sauce and marble ruins of the travel posters.
A city of about 2 million, about an hour`s drive from the Swiss border, Milan is the ultra-industrious capital of Italian commerce, banking, publishing, communications and design. The richest place in Italy and hub of European trade routes since ancient times, this city is all business-and looks it.
Lined with austere gray-stone buildings, virtually bereft of ancient ruins and crisscrossed with trolley tracks, Milan`s major streets have a more Middle European than Italian look. The Northern Italians, often taller and fairer than their southern countrymen, further this impression. And their restrained, coolly elegant manners also set them apart from the more voluble, earthy quality of Rome and points beyond. Indeed, the refined and serious-minded Milanese tend to distance themselves from anything south of
Florence, an area they refer to as ”Africa.”
Although no strangers to fashion-the word ”millinery” comes from
”Milaner”-the Milanese have become a major power in the international fashion world in just the last decade. Fashion generates more than $10 billion in sales for Italy, almost half of which comes from exports. Even the French, vaunted masters of the the fashion world, come here to buy much of their fabric, as do many of America`s top designers.
Food, opera and shop windows displayed with a panache seen nowhere else- such are the pleasures of Milan. But there also is a down side for visitors here, particularly for Americans. Although in recent years Milan has been spared the more horrific episodes of terrorism, there is an abiding awareness of the threat in Italy, and there is the dispiriting decline of the dollar against the Italian lira.
For the legions who come for the fashion shows, there are myriad logistical obstacles simply to getting the job done, not least of which is the little matter of tickets. They cannot be bought at any price. Issued solely at the discretion of each fashion house, tickets to the shows are the coin of the fashion realm.
”Discretion,” with all its dangerous ambiguity, is the key word here. In general, those known to the fashion houses or those equipped with proper professional credentials (those who also have sent letters and telexes to the designer firms detailing their arrival dates and hotels in Milan), tend to do best. But there are no guarantees, and each season is replete with its small ticket-related melodramas.
Delivered to the hotels by messengers on motorbikes, the tickets literally are kept under lock and key by nervous desk clerks who have had more than a few purloined from their charge over the years.
The fortunate find these precious documents awaiting them. The unlucky are doomed to forage. In the hours before a particularly hot show, the ticketless may be seen besieging the harried officials of the fashion house for that slim bit of paper without which there is no hope and no admission.
Some supplicants storm and rage, some whine and cajole and others simply slump dispiritedly against the walls. In this case, the law is iron-clad: no ticket, no watching. And here, watching is what it`s all about.
For most of the visiting press and retailers, mornings begin at 7 with the brisk knock on the door that signals the arrival of the waiter with breakfast. Ready or not, he or she barges in, as many bathrobeless and pajamaless travelers have discovered.
While sipping steaming cups of creamy cappuccino and chewing on crusty rolls, Americans, who make up about one-third of the fashion visitors, tend to read the International Herald Tribune, the only English-language newspaper with daily, extensive coverage of the fashion collections.
For years, until her death recently, Hebe Dorsey, the paper`s fiery French Tunisian-born fashion editor, delighted morning readers with lively, acidic reviews that often went beyond the clothes and under the skin of more than a few designers.
By 9 a.m., the battle for scarce taxis and the 30-minute commute to the Fiera exhibition complex behind them, the fashion masses assemble for the first show of the day. It may be 12 hours before many of them leave the Fiera, and it may be 18 hours before they fall into bed.
One of the mercies of Milan is Fiera itself. Until London followed its lead a year ago, Milan was the only stop on the international fashion circuit where most of the shows were held under one roof in a permanent exhibition site.
In Paris the shows are held in tents thrown up in the courtyards of the Louvre; in New York they are scattered in designer showrooms on 7th Avenue and in hotel ballrooms around town.
Vast, sprawling and host to close to 100 international trade exhibits annually, the Fiera offers a number of rare amenities, not the least of which is protection from the elements while awaiting the start of the fashion shows. Within its sleek, modern spaces, the Fiera has four arena-style theaters seating as many as 1,000 for the fashion shows, and there are restaurants, snack bars, a bank, a hairdresser, a newsstand, a post office, telex facilities, press rooms and temporary showrooms for some designers.
Although most of the designers show within the Fiera, there are a few important exceptions. Giorgio Armani started a vogue for ”personal theaters” several years ago when he built an elegant piccolo teatro, or little theater, in the basement of his palazzo on the posh Via Borgonuovo, complete with upholstered banquettes to seat several hundred, and a lighted runway. Three years ago the house of Krizia followed suit with a gray-and-black high-tech teatro of its own, adjacent to its headquarters overlooking the Milan Zoo.
At the other end of the spectrum is young designer Romeo Gigli, who persists in showing his successful New Wave collections in his showroom above a dank mechanic`s garage on the seedier side of town-and draws standing-room- only crowds.
Among the throng there is the occasional glitter of a celebrity guest, such as Catherine Deneuve, Princess Caroline of Monaco, singer Patti La Belle or even, as happened at one recent Armani show, Larry Hagman and Linda Gray of TV`s ”Dallas.” Italian actress Claudia Cardinale is another frequent visitor. Britain`s controversial Princess Michael of Kent arrived at one show ringed by beefcake bodyguards.
In general, however, Milan assiduously avoids the glitz and flash of the Parisian shows, where last season a baby leopard was dragged down a runway, an ”accessory” at a show.
In total, about 40 shows, averaging 90 minutes each, are crammed into Milan`s five-day whirl. If the days seem excruciatingly long, the nights are woefully short. After the last show of the day, which may end as late as 9 or 10 p.m., the journalists write, the photographers drop off their film to be developed and the retailers closet themselves in the designers` showrooms, many of which schedule appointments late into the night to accommodate the buyers` desires for privacy from the eyes of competing stores.
For many, as the days pass, dinner becomes a hazy memory. Even those with the free time to dine are hard-pressed to find a free table: Most of Milan`s top restaurants are booked well in advance. Those who are savvy call ahead, across the time zones. The desperate bribe their hotel concierges. The exhausted gnaw leftover rolls from breakfast.
Not surprisingly, as glucose levels rise and fall like hemlines, people faint. Bodily functions speed up and slow down with alarming impropriety. Circles ring every eye, lines deepen on foreheads, resistance erodes, and by the end of the first week people start getting sick of each other as well as with whatever illness is in vogue at the moment.
On Friday, the fashion caravan will decamp, first to the traditional damp of London, then to the relentless chill drizzle of Paris and finally to the cramped warrens of New York`s 7th Avenue. There`s a long way to go before it all ends on April 15.
