As in Chicago, it seems to be summer all over again in Milan, which is quite appropriate as Italy’s top designers unveil their spring/summer 1998 women’s ready-to-wear collections. The shows end Thursday.
But for the fashion-minded residents of this northern industrial city, the warm weather is presenting a sartorial problem. The barely there summer clothes that are just right for current temperatures are all wrong for the office. So the notably fashionable Milanese look just a touch less chic, their suits a bit less crisp, than is normally the case during the city’s fashion week.
Beyond that, it is one of the most important seasons in the history of Italian fashion, and all who are witnessing it know it. They are spectators for the change of hands in the house of Gianni Versace, where his sister, Donatella, has become, by the slaying of her brother, the most powerful female designer in the world.
On Saturday night, her show for Versus, which has been her own collection for many seasons now, was exactly as it should be: It was fine.
If it were too sound, the judgmental fashion insiders might doubt the sincerity of her mourning. If it were unsound, they might doubt her ability to make the house strong enough to go on.
There is not a designer in the world, despite the power of her position, who would change places with her this season.
Because of the size of the Versace empire, the drama isn’t limited to the high-end ready-to-wear collection. Donatella Versace’s first effort there will close the spring Milan shows Thursday night, with Giorgio Armani, Miuccia Prada and Karl Lagerfeld among the designers expected to attend to lend support.
Besides Versus, there is Istante, designed by Donatella Versace with Versace’s companion of 11 years, Antonio D’Amico, on the design team. The death of Versace has forced those who surrounded him to be strong. And the work from the house has been just that.
It has been a weird year for fashion, when two figures who had touched the lives of many in the industry — Versace and Princess Diana — died violently. But in a strange way, the violence of those deaths seems to have driven a lot of the phony pretension out of the industry. The sort of shock tactics, trends and avant-garde posing that have run rampant for many seasons has given way, in the face of real-world shocking events, to a yearning for beauty.
In an exquisite collection, the designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana seemed to be reacting to just that. Their show was inspired by the religious processions in their homeland, the south of Italy.
That procession of models wove through the designers’ own book-lined villa. Guests were seated in the voluminous catalogued reference library (seven books about Marlon Brando, 12 about Marilyn Monroe) or cloistered within the leopard-covered walls and leopard-swagged curtains of the living room, where a Keith Haring painting hung, bursting with its message of life.
Throughout the collection, there were clothes covered with handmade butterflies, created by Anna Pagliani, a woman whose family has hand-painted couture flowers for years. Those butterflies, along with the medals of saints pinned to the black clothes of mourning, suggested life and rebirth.
Glistening heart-shaped religious icons of red stone decorated the front of sheer stretch dresses, and golden embroideries climbed up shoes and stockings as if they were each a magic trellis. Beneath a cloud of sheer black fabric, hand-painted and embroidered images of the Madonna showed through.
Last season, Miuccia Prada made a powerful case for second-line collections, with her Miu Miu show setting more fashion direction for the season than any 10 other designer collections combined. The side-slit mini-skirt she introduced is now nearly sold out worldwide; the polka dots and bright sequins she showed have been everywhere. This time, sure to be as influential, she showed peasant blouses with cropped sailor pants buttoned in a square at the front, wool melton skirts with vests laced up demurely in front or back, and skirts and dresses with naive patterns of hands, cherries, deer and hearts. A zigzag of indecisive ribbon darted along hems of skirts.
This season marked the first collection by the second Missoni generation — daughter Angela.
Her show definitely had a new edge to it — an urban collection that had shed the folklore feel of many a past presentation.
Knitted tops were worn over leather jackets. Copper and gold techno fabrics appeared for both short daytime dresses and more extravagant evening gowns. Overall, new weaving techniques highlighted a more current knitted look.
Diagonal geometric patterns in the traditional Missoni color schemes sharpened the knitwear without changing its trademark style.
Sweet naive prints were also the highlight at Emporio Armani, where Giorgio Armani brought out his niece Silvana, who has been working in the design studio. Perhaps another consequence of the Versace death is that the presence of the family, which can continue a house, has become more important here than ever.
Armani showed his most attuned Emporio collection in years, young but not painfully hip and in step with the times without losing the hand of the designer. There was a delicacy throughout the show, ruffled hems of light dresses, tiny chains as dress straps, banded shirts without straps and trousers with notches in the front. Instead of cloying beaded flowers, he scattered a few stems of fruit among the bead patterns, and some skirts had the block prints of dandelions. The collection was simple — and serene.
