Italian designers said “ciao” to the dandified suits and clunky footgear, the fanciful cuffs and military gilt they loved so dearly for fall and replaced such folderol with spare clothes, pale colors and a whiff of exotica for spring ’94.
Of course, along with their understated fare, designers also showed dresses that looked like baby-doll nighties, schoolgirl jumpers teamed with ruffled anklets and even ripped and perforated punk, complete with safety pins-jeweled safety pins.
But that’s the show-biz stuff that fashion presentations were made of, according to press reports and interviews with retail executives who attended the spring fashion showings last month in Milan. Beneath the exaggerated accessories and aside from the extreme clothes made exclusively for the runways, there were tailored suits, linen dresses and elegant evening finery that could translate to real life.
Though retailers indicated that the spring offerings from the Italians are less than stellar (“too bare,” “too sheer,” “too ingenue”), they’re unrestrained in their praise for Milan’s maestro of fashion, Giorgio Armani, who is said to have presented the best clothes of his career.
Even the doyenne of fashion journalists-Suzy Menkes, who is not given to frothy adulation-wrote in the International Herald Tribune: “This magnificent collection-received with an emotional ovation-was a rare fashion moment.” What he did, she said, was to redefine “how women want to dress at the end of the 20th Century.” That refers to Armani’s vast array of jackets (semifitted to loose) with fluid, sometimes billowy pants, no-color colors, a tempered aura of India and soft evening dresses (sometimes over pants) and no skirts.
Other design houses cited for specific stylish contributions included Dolce & Gabbana and Jil Sander (their tailored pieces and some elements of lingerie), Gianfranco Ferre (day and evening suits), Prada (young and charming items for individualists), Krizia (Chinese-inspired) and Gianni Versace (fun and games, trendy and young).
What these and other Italian houses came up with generally fit into the following trends:
– Clean lines: A simplicity occasionally bordering on starkness. “Uncomplicated, but not somber.”
– Pastels: One buyer calls them “delectable”-peach, lilac, lemon. Such pretties, however, are in second place behind white, beige and every shade between ivory and taupe.
– Lingerie looks: A continuing phenomenon, though the emphasis now is on nightie-like dresses, see-through slips, pajama pants, Jockey-like shorts.
– Layering: Light, airy, floaty sheer fabrics in short and long dresses; sweaters, shirts, boleros, T-shirts added to jackets and pants.
– Ethnic influences: India via raj and Nehru jackets, tunics, lean trousers and embroideries; Greece; Morocco; peasants; gypsies.
– Texture: Buyers repeatedly emphasize their delight in the tactile aspects of spring fashion-fabrics that are crinkled, wrinkled, puckered; rough, natural weaves; silky knits.
– Items and ideas: Cropped tops; flat shoes; shirts; vests; stripes.
– Tailored suits-most often with easy-fitting pants.
– Short.
