Crises – may they be political, financial or social – usually disrupt people’s lives.
Yet it’s undeniable that, while they push us to dramatically and drastically redefine our goals, projects and ambitions, they also prompt us to find new solutions to our problems.
Take Italy: despite what Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may want you to believe, the country is lying in a deep social, cultural and political crisis.
Unemployment rates are constantly going up, while politicians are investigated on a daily basis by the authorities or end up in jail for corruption and affiliation with criminal organisations (again on a daily basis). Just a couple of days ago, Italian banking group's chief executive, Alessandro Profumo, resigned over Libyan state bodies increasing their combined stakes in the UniCredit company.
Interestingly enough, though, in these chaotic and rather confusing times, fashion designers in Milan re-organised themselves for the first time and came up with a much more balanced calendar.
In this balmy September, the ghost of Anna Wintour shaking her chains like the evil spirit of a bleak present and an even bleaker future for Italian fashion and dictatorially disrupting over the phone the catwalk calendar, seems to be a distant memory.
Who knows, maybe Mario Boselli, head of Italy's Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (Italian Chamber of Fashion) had to threaten at gun point some of the designers, but if he did so, maybe that was the right thing to do.
There have been some big changes in the Milan presentations: bland lingerie and swimwear collections have been excluded from the main calendar and the shows moved to the 16th-century Palazzo dei Giureconsulti and three other venues.
A timid attempt at democratisation has been tried by installing big screens that will allow passers-by to watch the shows (and maybe one day we will see again fashion shows at the local railway station in Nicola Trussardi style...).
Even Dolce & Gabbana found themselves almost admitting that we must give space to young designers by opening a new store, Spiga 2, where people will be able to buy also the creations of young designers, including among the others Erkan Çoruh, Yigal Azrouel, Cooperative Designs and Sophie Theallet.
The biggest surprise on the opening day of Milan Fashion Week came from Gucci, though.
Ready to see the umpteenth collection inspired by sex and rock’n’roll, fashion critics were instead confronted by a new elegance, well balanced, carefully styled and based on one of the main principles of Italian fashion, high quality.
Fashionistas who registered a few days ago on the Gucci site were also allowed to watch live the catwalk show and browse through the videos shot in the backstage and outside the venue, while their pictures taken with their own web-cams were used as props in and around the venue.
Giannini seemed to hit all the right notes, from the beginning of her very coherent show. The designer must have been leafing through 70s-80s fashion magazines, paying particular attentions to the colours, moods and atmospheres in Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton and David Bailey’s images.
As if they had stepped off a fashion magazine page with a Bourdin shot, the first few models - in perfectly slicked back hairstyle and glossy red lipstick - walked down the runway in looks mainly based on the orange-violet-jade green-turquoise palette accessorised with gold python belts and clutches decorated with tassels.
Then the mood moved to the desert and Marrakech with nude shades and obvious references to Yves Saint Laurent.
The iconic Saharienne or safari jacket was transformed: what we saw on the runway was a slightly cropped and fitted version of the original jacket, decorated with multiple layers of fringes, whipstitched or enriched by woven and intrecciato motifs, employed also in some of the tops and in most of the boots, shoes and oversized bags.
The jackets and tops were mainly matched with fluid silk or soft leather drop-crotch trousers and there was something tribal à la Lanvin in quite a few looks, especially in the over-embroidered knits, the chunky-breastplates and jewellery.
Then the mood changed again and the vertical fringes became thin horizontal leather strips held together by tiny eyelets and covering tops, jackets and skirts.
The show wrapped up beautifully with luxurious and densely elaborate (check out the fringes of feathers, beads and tassels in the last image of this post) and exotic evening dresses in the same palette that had opened the show, orange, jade green, violet and gold.
The most striking thing about this collection was that each design and each material employed - from leather to snakeskin, satin and silk - screamed luxurious high quality and sophistication.
Giannini may have seen the Yves Saint Laurent retrospective in Paris while working on this collection, may have heard about the YSL retrospective exhibition that will take place at the Jardin Majorelle in a couple of months' time or about the Biennale d’Art Contemporain starting in December in Marrakech. Yet, in many ways, it doesn't matter, as Giannini delivered a more or less flawless and highly saleable collection.
It would be naïve to see a rebirth of Italian fashion after just one successful show and quite a few days before seeing what designers have up their sleeves for Paris Fashion Week.
Yet it is time to sit down and start considering what is going on in the various fashion capitals. So far New York has proved it is has quite a few overrated designers, unconditionally supported by the American media.
London has so far encouraged anarchic creativity, while bizarrely repressing it at the same time through the sponsorship programmes that have reabsorbed many young designers (but try to take the sponsor out of the young designer’s catwalk show and the whole sand castle collapses...).
No matter what your young and hip British publications and bloggers say about London fashion, there is a huge problem in the English capital: most of the fashion designers 1) are just given the impression they are free to create; 2) do not have a clue about building their own business and often struggle to understand what really means to break the boundaries.
We have seen commercial collections during New York Fashion Week and a pile of bright and fun colours in London, yet we haven’t seen any astonishing presentations (in fact there was probably more pomp, fun and extravagance at Alexander McQueen’s remembrance service…), quality and tailoring.
Many established Italian designers know the cracks and faults of the other fashion capitals and, hopefully, rather than sabotaging each other, they will be so clever to use their knowledge for their own advantage.
Giannini already did so and while one successful Italian catwalk show and collection is definitely not enough to scream about an Italian Renaissance, maybe not all is lost and Milan can still regain the attention and importance it once had. For the time being, Anna Wintour’s ghost should maybe go and rattle her chains somewhere else.
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
