Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law, Science & Technology

Diversity Councils and Forums Are Trending in Fashion, But Could The Legacy of Slavery in Textiles Help Educating People to Diversity & Inclusiveness?

Advisory boards of external experts are becoming a trend at fashion houses: after last December some of the fantasy charms in the Pradamalia range were deemed offensive as they seemed to evoke blackface, Miuccia Prada created a diversity council, hoping to organise a group of enlightened minds ready to educate people to the art of inclusiveness. In a similar way, after Gucci was forced to pull from stores a balaclava jumper with a a cut-out mouth and red lips that summoned up blackface imagery, the brand stated it will hire new figures such as global and regional directors for diversity and inclusion and launch a series of multicultural programs focused on diversity and inclusivity awareness and global exchange.

Yet a good way for brands to avoid falling into certain faux pas could be to study a bit better history and explore collections preserved in museums that may show connections between fashion and slavery. 

Glasgow Museums have collected on a dedicated site articles about Scotland and slavery, some of them revolving around textiles and cotton.

One of the posts on its blog focuses on a piece that could be filed under the craft category - a colourful needlework panel depicting a lady walking among flowering plants, fruit trees and exotic birds with a page, an enslaved African boy in an elaborate yellow uniform (hinting at the fact that he worked for a wealthy family) carrying her trail.

The scene, vividly depicted in multi-coloured threads, actually refers to a painful page of history: young African and Asian boys and girls were indeed brought back to Britain by slave traders, merchants and high-ranking naval officers and were trained to become domestic servants. Young black enslaved pages appear as train-bearers in different portraits and illustrations, such as Nicholas Bonnart's "Dame de la Cour" print (about 1678–93; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

"It is as if a black page was merely the latest accessory a fashionable lady should have," Rebecca Quinton, Research Manager at the Art Department at the Glasgow Museums' collections states in one of her posts.

Quinton also focuses on some of the white cotton dresses from the early 19th century included in 2015 in the exhibition "A Century of Style: Costume and Colour 1800-1899", at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum. 

Their silhouettes point at neoclassical styles and evoke heroines hoplessly in love in romantic novels. Yet there's a terrible dichotomy behind these designs: their romantic and feminine details clash indeed with the history of the fabric used to make theses dresses - cotton - pointing at the exploitation of slaves.

Cotton became fashionable around the 1770s and cotton muslins were imported as woven cloth from Bengal; by the late 1700s raw cotton started being imported from the southern states of America and the West Indies. Cotton plantations in these areas were owned or managed by Scots, and cotton was sewn and harvested by enslaved men, women and children brought over from Africa as part of the transatlantic slave trade, or by their descendants.

Imported via Clyde ports, the raw cotton balls were spun and woven by cotton mills in Scotland (many of them were based in Glasgow and in the surrounding areas). Cotton was then embroidered, dyed or printed, and sold in Scotland or exported.

Among the Glasgow cotton merchants there was also James Finlay & Co. and when Kirkman Finlay took over his father's firm in 1790 he expanded the business, becoming the leading importer of raw cotton and exporter of cotton yarn. The cotton he imported from New Orleans was the product of slave labour in the plantations of Southern America and his profits were made from slavery.

Scottish cotton manufacturer David Dale, founder of the New Lanark cotton mills in 1785, worked as apprenticeship with a hand-loom weaver in Paisley and then became a linen merchant in Glasgow. In 1784 he met and went into partnership with Richard Arkwright, who had patented a spinning frame machine in 1769 and a cotton carding machine in 1775.  

Dale worked with cotton sown, cultivated and harvested by enslaved men, women and children on plantations in the West Indies and in North and South America, yet, while his fortune was based on the slave economy, he was interested in the rights of workers and in philanthropy. In 1791 Dale became the chair of the Glasgow Society instituted for the purpose of co-operating with the other Societies in Great Britain in their endeavours to effect the Abolition of the African Slave Trade.

Dale died in 1806, a year before the Slave Trade Act 1807 abolished the British transatlantic slave trade, but historians highlight how the cotton entrepreneur supported the improvement of conditions for workers, but we don't know if he would have agreed with the abolition of slavery for the workers on the plantations that supplied his business. 

Pieces preserved in museums may look like relics from ancient history to some of us, especially to younger generations, but they should make us ponder: if you read more about the history behind certain garments preserved in some collections, you realise that their terrible but invisible legacy of slavery lives on in what we wear and consume nowadays, products that are often the results of modern slavery (can we make sure the supply chain can become free from slavery?). In the same way certain images like the ones of Vogue Brazil editor Donata Meirelles celebrating her birthday on a throne-like seat with two black women in traditional dress standing either side of her (posted on Instagram in mid-February and deleted after it was criticised on social media for being racially insensitive and evoking slavery and colonialism; Meirelles resigned since then, while Vogue Brazil apologised and said it would form a panel of experts and academics to address concerns about inequality at the publication, yes as stated at the beginning of this piece, panel of experts are trending...) are directly linked to that needlework image of a lady with the page used as fashion accessory.   

The Extravagant Red Carpet Look that Paid Homage to an Xtravaganza Icon

There were quite a few notable moments at the 91st Annual Academy Awards on Sunday night: some awards were unexpected, others were entirely deserved (Best Costume Design to Ruth E Carter for "Black Panther"; Best Supporting Actor to Mahershala Ali for "Green Book", Best Adapted Screenplay to Spike Lee's "BlacKkKlansman"; Best Original Song to Lady Gaga's "Shallow" from "A Star Is Born" and Alfonso Cuarón's "Roma" walking away with three awards – Best Cinematography, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Director).

Then there were emotional moments such as Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's duet that had the audience swooning. And finally there was a fashion performance courtesy of Billy Porter: the "Pose" actor and recent ambassador of the New York Fashion Week Men's shows, arrived on the red carpet in a gender-bending neck-to-heel velvet tuxedo gown, that is a voluminous black gown matched with a tuxedo jacket. For the Vanity Fair after party, Porter removed his white ruffled tuxedo shirt and bow tie and opted for a shining necklace.

The design was courtesy of Christian Siriano and Porter used it to play with masculinity and femininity, provoke people and engage audiences in a sort of fashion moment of political art (the actor has been enjoying these fashion provocations in pushing boundaries also at other events and ceremonies such as the Golden Globes awards where he wore a dramatic cape with a pink lining).

Siriano may not be a desperately original designer (but he embraces diversity and accepts to dress people with all sorts of shapes and silhouettes and that's refreshing in an industry in which zero sizes are favoured despite all the talks about models' health...) and the ensembles he created for Porter had its origins - as it was revealed on the official House of Xtravaganza Instagram page - in a look donned by ballroom icon Hector Xtravaganza, Grandfather of the House of Xtravaganza. 

In the original version the gown featured a tulle-skirt (this is the sort of ensemble you may have seen on a Jean Paul Gaultier or a Moschino runway in the mid-'80s, and maybe it could also be the inspiration behind Jeremy Scott's Moschino Men's A/W 19 tuxedo-cum-tutus) and while you may argue that this is just an updated version of Hector's dress, at the moment copyright is not the issue (even though it must be stated that inspiration today is definitely too close to the idea of imitation...), as the meaning and the reference behind the gown are definitely more important.

 

The House of Extravaganza, the first Latino ballroom house (the houses were tight groups of people, safe havens for queer black or Latino kids rejected by their own families) in New York City, was founded in 1982 by its father, Hector Valle (1960-1985), known for his elegant and athletic style of voguing. The house first walked in a house in 1983, then, after its founder died, Angie Xtravaganza became the mother.

In the fall of 1989 the House changed its name to House of Xtravaganza and in the same year it started a sort of collaboration with the fashion world: the house took part in the Love Ball, a celebrity fundraiser organized by the Design Industry Foundation for AIDS, that boasted among its participants also designers Carolina Herrera and Thierry Mugler, supermodel Iman and performance artist Leigh Bowery. In that occasion several Xtravaganza members along with fashion retailer Barneys formed the one-night-only "House of Barneys". The collaboration was renewed in 2014 when retailer Barneys released a catalogue and supporting campaign featuring 17 transgender men and women, including Gisele Xtravaganza photographed along with other House of Xtravaganza members.

As the years passed the house continued to be active and, while remaining loyal to its Latino ball house roots, it also opened up to African American, Asian, and Caucasian members who became cultural forces in different fields, including dance, music, visual arts and fashion.

Hector Crespo, a member of the ballroom community since 1979, became the father of the House of Xtravaganza in 1993; he was Father of the house until 1997 and then again from 1999 to 2003, when he became "Grandfather" of the house.

Television producer Ryan Murphy enlisted Hector as consultant for his series "Pose" premiered on the FX network in June 2018, that also featured several members of the House of Xtravaganza in its episodes.

A creative mind (he created outfits for stars like Lil' Kim) and an activist for HIV awareness, Hector Xtravaganza sadly died last December.

While on March 9, an event will be held in memory of Hector Xtravaganza at New York's El Museo Del Barrio, Porter's gown was a way to anticipate the celebrations and pay homage to him, challenging the Hollywood dress code and making a statement through fashion, something that even the fashion industry itself, centred on people who are famous for being famous and influencers ready to advertise all sorts of brands throwing money at them, has forgotten how to do.  

From the Pasolinean Palette to The Leopard's Grandeur: Moncler 1 Pierpaolo Piccioli (+ Lemlem) A/W 19

The fashion industry is a complicated machine, but it functions on very simple truisms such as "there's safety in numbers," "people like new things" and "always consider the rise and power of social media and online shopping".

Moving from these principles, Italian billionaire Remo Ruffini, CEO and part-owner of luxury brand Moncler, came up last year with a plan to re-organise the house in an innovative way and launched the Moncler Genius Group initiative.

The project, set to replace the expensive and rather boring Gamme Rouge and Gamme Bleu lines designed by Giambattista Valli and Thom Browne respectively (characterised by entertaining shows, but coldly received by consumers, especially by younger generations), consists in offering not just one collection designed by one creative director, but a series of individual collections created by some of the most Instagram-friendly, high-profile designers out there, such as Valentino's Pierpaolo Piccioli, Simone Rocha, Craig Green, Palm Angels' Francesco Ragazzi, Noir Kei Ninomiya and Fragment by Hiroshi Fujiwara.

The other key element for this project is that each collection is released one at a time on a monthly basis, to imitate the successful drop phenomenon launched by streetwear brands à la Supreme.

The project has been an ambitious one from the start especially considering the fact that the company had to upgrade production facilities, logistics and supply chain.

For the A/W 19 season the project expanded to include also Richard Quinn and Matthew Williams of 1017 Alyx 9SM, plus a collection of dog couture.

So far the most visually striking collections were produced by Valentino's Pierpaolo Piccioli: the previous one had a hieratic quality about it, with classic padded jackets transformed into monastic quilted capes and mantles that evoked portraits of Medieval Madonnas and the moods of Francisco de Zurbarán's paintings (that Piccioli had already filtered in his A/W 17 collection for Valentino) and featured some vague references to Pier Paolo Pasolini (certainly not a new inspiration for Piccioli).

Piccioli seemed indeed to be inspired by the concept of the "effetto dipinto" and the Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino's pinks, reds and greens that characterised the tableaux vivants the Italian writer and director recreated in "La Ricotta" (View this photo).

Knowing that collaborations are all the rage in modern fashion (see the one between Valentino and Undercover), for his latest collection for Moncler Piccioli decided to team up with Ethiopian model, designer and actress Liya Kebede from sustainable and socially responsible label Lemlem. The latter produces pieces characterised by traditional patterns and made by local artisans in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa. 

Piccioli worked on ample volumes coming up with gargantuan ball gowns made of down-filled nylon in a palette of powder pink, pistachio and tangerine. One design looked like a giant octopus; another integrated a cape evoking visions of Veruschka portrayed in 1967 in a Balenciaga creation.

Yet there seemed to be also another inspiration: a white ball gown and the mood of the lookbook shot in an empty palazzo seemed to point at Claudia Cardinale's iconic white dress in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard.

Sumptuous and elaborate, some of the other designs also seemed to reference in their pastel shades the dresses from the ball scene in the film, albeit with a graphic twist added courtesy of Lemlem.

Showcased during Milan Fashion Week in series of disused railway arches under the local central station, this new offering by Moncler - that also includes Richard Quinn's floral motifs replicated on Moncler fabrics, Simone Rocha's romantic moods inspired by girl guides and Craig Green's pieces evoking the shapes and functionality of inflatable vessels - will drop every month.

At the moment the designs created by the Genius Group remain extremely Instagrammable and the marketing strategy surrounding the project has resulted very successful, attracting a younger audience, increasing online traffic and improving the visibility of the brand.

There's something to highlight, though, about the Genius line - it is not for the masses. In the '80s Moncler was still expensive, but its jackets, adopted by the "paninari" as their uniforms, were coveted by a lot of young people who would go to great lengths (saving money or begging parents...) to buy one. In the mid-to-late '80s prices for classic Moncler jackets were equivalent to €300,00 in 2015, if we consider inflation maybe you could say they were equivalent to €600,00 in 2018, yet they were usually an investment as the quality was high and would last for years (and would not be trendy for just 6 months...).

While some of these Genius collections are thought with the concept of timelessness in mind, most of them fall under the luxury/design category, even though they are produced with the rhythms of the fast fashion industry in mind (bear in mind the "drop" model). In a nutshell, while Moncler Genius is a highly entertaining "Insta" success, prices are rather discouraging (a jacket by Piccioli will set you back €1,500; a coat/cape almost €3,000) and remind us that these pieces are for the very few out there. The rest of us can instead look at the pictures, share them on social media and only dream about a Leopard-inspired padded down ball gown.

Rainbow Machine: Jean-Charles de Castelbajac X United Colors of Benetton

Fans of the fashion and religion connection may remember that Jean-Charles de Castelbajac designed the ecclesiastical robes for Pope John Paul II as well as rainbow-striped vestments for 500 bishops and 5,000 priests for the 1997 Paris World Youth Day. JCDC brought back the rainbow theme last week during Milan Fashion Week on the Benetton runway.

The new Benetton artistic director in charge of both the men's and women's collections for the brand, paid tribute to the late Karl Lagerfeld before kicking off the show, his first runway for United Colors of Benetton.

Entitled "Rainbow Machine" the show tried to bring back the colourful and joyous world Benetton created during the '80s: the co-ed runway featured indeed a selection of layered looks and designs in JCDC's beloved primary colours - yellow, red and blue combined with the brand's trademark green and with an Autumnal palette of brown, camel and beige broken by vivid splashes of fluorescent orange. 

Benetton's trademark knitwear designs prevailed with intarsia motifs of graphic letterings, square icon-like kawaii infograhics, and long branded scarves. Denim was employed for functional workwear-inspired pieces and for cute mini-dresses that evoked the freedom and joy of childhood, something hinted at also by the colourful tights à la Pippi Longstocking and by the padded boots reminiscent of Rainbow Brite's style.  

JCDC didn't forget to add his passion for cartoons and comic strips, taking motifs deconstructed from Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse's gloved hands to create details like side pockets. The Peanuts were instead turned into prints for T-shirts and supersized tote bags with slogans about sustainability, planet Earth and recycling (is Benetton actually cleaning its act?).  

The French designer also added personal references to his own archive: his infamous teddy bear coat was indeed transformed for the occasion into a coat made with a giant cluster of three-dimensional sheep in rainbow colours (there was also a scarf made with the same technique), a way to pay homage to the company's knitwear tradition. 

The "rainbow" in the title referred to the heritage of the company, but so did that "machine": the set for the runway show featured indeed knitting machines and was supposed to look like a factory where Benetton workers took measurements and sewed the designs. The message throughout the show was clear - looking back at the heydays of the company and in particular at the '80s, to bring back the optmism and popularity (and positive financial results...) the company had at the time. 

One of the T-shirts read "Time To Be Brave", a message that could be interpreted as the slogan for the company's revamping. Executive president Luciano Benetton retired indeed in  2012, but his son Alessandro who was supposed to take the company into the future exited it after two years, so, after years of constant decline, Luciano Benetton decided to "be brave" and come back to try and restore the brand. 

Yet making United Colours of Benetton relevant again is no mean feat: since 1999 the Benetton family controls Autostrade, Europe's largest toll road operator (the company was at the centre of a diatribe about road safety in Italy after the Morandi bridge collapsed in Genoa last summer). In the last few years the family has therefore been making more money from ventures that do not have anything to do with fashion (from Autostrade to Autogrill, the highway rest stops and airport restaurants chains) or clothes. Year after year competition from other high street retailers and Benetton's emphasis on low-cost production eroded the sales and reputation of the company, that was also among the brands producing clothes at the Rana Plaza factory complex that collapsed in Dhaka in 2013, killing over 1,100 people. 

Yet something may be changing at the company: as announced by Luciano Benetton, who also brought back Oliviero Toscani as collaborator, the brand is planning to take back the production closer to Europe.   

In the meantime JCDC delivered a collection with selling potential that may genuinely mean there is a will for the company to go back to its identity and take a new (and more sustainable? more ethical?) direction.

Another sign that the company may be changing was choosing JCDC as artistic director, rather than a trendy yet inexperienced influencer who may have brought instant attention and media revenue to the company, but may have turned into a financial disaster in the long run.

And while a rainbow sheep coat may be too much to wear on an everyday basis considering that even Lady Gaga left behind her extravagant "Kermit the Frog" coat (View this photo) from JCDC's S/S 09 collection (fans will remember how JCDC also designed for her the black and white striped dress for her "Telephone" video...) and opted for a less extravagant strapless black Alexander McQueen gown with padded hips (accessorised with long black gloves and a128-carat Tiffany yellow diamond necklace worn by Audrey Hepburn) for the red carpet at the Oscars last night, you feel that colours and irony will not hurt consumers, especially if we consider the complicated and often dark and depressing times we're living in.  

Requiem for a Swan: Marella Caracciolo Agnelli (1927 - 2019)

Between the end of the '40s and the early '50s when the modern history of Italian fashion was just starting, there were no professional models, but aristocratic women would often pose for photographers such as Pasquale De Antonis in sumptuous gowns created by the new Italian ateliers. Among these elegant women there was also Princess Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto, who died yesterday at 91 at her family home in Turin.

Born in 1927 in Florence from a noble family (her father was a Neapolitan aristocrat, Don Filippo Caracciolo, 8th Prince di Castagneto, and her mother was the former Margaret Clarke of Peoria, Illinois), she was educated in Paris at the Académie des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian.

An assistant to Erwin Blumenfeld in New York City, occasional editor and photographic contributor to Vogue, as a model she was portrayed in dresses by designers such as Gabriella di Robilant or the Fontana Sisters in the late '40s, and also became a muse for designer Federico Forquet.

In 1953 she was propelled to fashion fame when Richard Avedon took her picture: the photographer chose for her a pose that highlighted her long, graceful and sinuous neck that called to mind a Modigliani portrait and that earned her a peculiar nickname -  "The Swan".

In the same year she married Fiat tycoon and jet-setter Giovanni "Gianni" Agnelli and they would remain married until his death in 2003. They had two children Edoardo, who died in 2000, and Margherita, mother of current Fiat Chrysler Chairman John Elkann (and of Ginevra and Lapo Elkann, from the marriage with Alan Elkann, and of Pietro, Sofia, Maria, Anna and Tatiana, the children of Margherita and Serge de Pahlen).

Marella also designed textiles: in 1973, she created a textile line for Abraham-Zumsteg, for which she was awarded the "Product Design Award of the Resources Council Inc." (the design trade's equivalent of the Oscar) in 1977. She collaborated with Ratti in Como, Steiner in Paris, as well as Martex and Marshall Field's in the United States.

Passionate about gardening, she authored a number of books on the subject, such as the 1987 bestseller "Giardini Italiani", but essentially remained a 20th-century symbol of elegance and culture in Italy and was portrayed in Douglas McGrath's "Infamous" (2006) by Isabella Rossellini.

Marella was one of Truman Capote's circle of "swans", wealthy, stylish, and well-married women friends that also included Lee Radziwill and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

As her pictures with Jackie in Amalfi in 1962 prove, Marella was an ideal meeting point between Italy's aristocratic past and the new glamourous jet set, she loved indeed evening wear, but also appreciated modern functional clothes and practical designers such as André Courrèges (she was portrayed in his designs in a 1967 photoshoot by Henry Clarke for Vogue). She considered fashion as a form of expression, but also as a sort of screen, a shield that could protect and transform the wearer into somebody else.

Marella was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1963 and in 1966 at Truman Capote's Black and White Ball she opted for a Mila Schön kaftan made by 30 dressmakers and embroiderers (according to the legend it took the team over 1500 hours to make the outfit).

She was proclaimed the most elegant lady of the evening, followed by Lee Radziwill, Jacqueline Kennedy’s sister, also wearing a Schön creation.

Marella was an avid art collector (Andy Warhol also did a portrait of her), was honorary president of the Pinacoteca Giovanni and Marella Agnelli in Turin, and sat on the board of art institutions, including the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

She had a strong connection with Niki de Saint Phalle via her two brothers, Carlo Caracciolo, co-founder of the newspaper La Repubblica, and Nicola Caracciolo, who offered Niki a part of their property in Garavicchio, Tuscany, for her Giardino dei Tarocchi.

As the years passed, Marella continued to be an inspiration for fashion designers: Valentino considered her a style icon like Jackie Kennedy; Giambattista Valli's Pre-Fall 2009 collection moved from her style and her autobiographical "The Last Swan" published in 2014 by Rizzoli and penned with her niece, inspired Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof's S/S 16 collection. 

From Intrecciato Patterns to High-Tech Concatenations of Consecutive Squares: Bottega Veneta A/W 19

Becoming the creative director of a well-known and established brand has its rewards, but it can also be extremely challenging, especially if you're young and have to try and combine your own inspirations with the heritage of the brand you're heading. In the case of Daniel Lee things were even more difficult: the 32-year-old designer worked at Céline (and at Maison Margiela, Balenciaga and Donna Karan) and, when he was appointed Bottega Veneta's new creative director last June, Phoebe Philo's orphaned fans thought they had found an ally.

There were actually elements of Céline's lexicon in Bottega Veneta's collection, showcased yesterday morning in a pavilion on Piazza Sempione during Milan Fashion Week, yet the brand's DNA prevailed.

The designer opened the coed show with a simple yet well structured slip leather dress and motorcycle jackets and trousers matched with thick sturdy boots with joints around the knee area similar to those of Medieval armours, ensembles dedicated to sci-fi fans or to all the girls on a motorcycle à la Lisbeth Salander out of the Millennium saga.

Then Lee tried to move from the brand's trademark intrecciato weave and zoomed on the woven elements reducing the pattern to squares. The basic geometries were then turned into three-dimensional motifs for padded leather totes, quilted skirts, square-toe pumps and brogues.

After blowing up the maxi intreccio pattern, the designer provided a more personal interpretation by breaking it into small squares and linking them one after the other to form concatenations of consecutive squares employed to create wearable architectural constructions, such as coats, bags and skirts in white, plum and petrol green.

This technique produced a tiled effect introducing an innovative element in the house code (mind you, this is not a new technique as there have been young designers who have been experimenting along the same lines to find new ways to create seamless garments, remember the modular designs by Post Couture?).

The knitwear offer included a scoop-neck cream sweater with a thick gold chain integrated in it, chic but complicated double layer fluid dresses that seemed to twist on the models' body and men's clingy tops with cutaway necklines.

As a whole the collection was a hit and miss, with moments in which the designer didn't seem too sure about his silhouettes, or played it safe (especially for what regards the men's designs). Some designs (the ones with the leopard prints), may have also been edited out of the collection as they didn't add anything to the new Bottega Veneta semantics, but at least Lee attempted to play with dichotomies, offering lady-like elegant dresses and black leather pieces for tough girls.

Will this be the wardrobe for heartbroken art fair goers left orphaned by Philo or will we see some of these garments reappearing on the set of a dystopian sci-fi film (after all the white coat made with interlocked squares conjures up visions of a movie set somewhere in a distant future where AI has defeated humanity)?

We will discover the answer in a few months' time, since now it is too early to say if Lee's experience at Bottega Veneta is a success story, but the collection showed a new direction. In the meantime, Lee will hopefully get the chance to stay at the Italian fashion house for more than three seasons (something very common nowadays for young designers working for a big maison...), get to know the brand better and hone his design skills.

The Anatomy of Romance in a Climate of Fear: Prada A/W 19

Prada's A/W 19 menswear and Pre-Fall 19 collections, showcased in January, moved from one inspiring icon – Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and featured images of a cartoonish monster replicated on some of the key designs in the collection.

Gentle and looking for love, yet rejected, the monster seemed to be such a good inspiration that, for her A/W 19 womenswear collections, Prada turned once again to him, but this time had him reunited with his bride as portrayed by Vera West in James Whale’s "The Bride of Frankenstein" (1935).

Cartoonish images of West appeared on tops and dresses for emo teens and queens and anti-social girls, at times accompanied by coloured striped motifs on a black background and matched with hairstyles that evoked Wednesday Addams'.

The set for the catwalk show, held at the Fondazione Prada, was also the same of the January collections, evoking a laboratory where mysterious experiments may be carried out, with its metal floors lined with sinister exposed-filament bulbs.

Yet the rest of the collection wasn't about Frankenstein, but about a romance with a dark twist: the show opened with plain, sober and slightly apocalyptic dresses in thick wool cinched at the waist with thick metal clasps. They went well with the black coats that followed, characterised by huge pockets reminiscent of the functional garments in Schiaparelli's "Cash and Carry" collection.

The romantic theme emerged more clearly in the glamorously decadent cocktail dresses with floral prints on black or white backgrounds: one dress with such prints seemed to evoke the beauty of the still life images painted by Dutch masters, but art was vaguely mixed with death in the designs that incorporated appliqued fabric motifs.

At times the heads of the three-dimensional satin flowers that broke the fourth wall and erupted from the fabric, seeemed to be drooping and bending as if they were dying rather than blooming (or maybe they had just been stolen from a grave...).

Maybe the reason was an impending and depressing war, evoked by the military looks comprising oversized boxy olive green jackets matched with pale blue shirts and pencil skirts and field jackets transformed into capes. Menswear fabrics such as tweed and herringbone were also employed for evening gowns with gigantic pockets.

Sturdy multi-functional boots that incorporated little bags also pointed at a utilitarian inspiration, even though their colourful versions in vividly bright colours such as fuchsia and red, re-shifted the discourse towards a lighter mood, as if Miuccia tried to tell us not to worry, after all this was still a (dystopian?) fashion fantasy.

Military inspirations were reshifted towards elegance via macrame jackets, but a lingering feeling of fear remained, especially when you looked at the sparkling crystal shoes at the feet of some of the models and wondered if this was a reference to Dorothy out of "The Wizard of Oz", to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's "The Red Shoes" or maybe to shoes splattered in blood (we'd rather not know in this case...).

The collection seemed balanced and controlled, but it also revealed the designer's fears: in the last seasons Miuccia Prada willingly shared with journalists her worries and fears about Europe breaking and the outcome of the European elections in May; she spoke about extremism, racism, violence and the ominous ghost of wars. And while she didn't directly mention the Italian situation with a far right government causing tensions about key issues, including migration and international relations, it was probably on her mind. 

As a whole the world didn't shake at thsi show, there was nothing incredibly new nor unexpected, but it was all very Prada, but this "Anatomy of Romance" (the title of the show) was meant to be an antidote to fears, and maybe a way for Miuccia to ponder about the dichotomy between producing luxury clothes and actually trying to reach out to a wider number of people via exhibitions at the Fondazione Prada, and wonder if it is possible for a designer to produce popular and commercial products and maybe tackle at the same time relevant political and social issues.

At the moment Miuccia is trying to do so: after last December some of the fantasy charms in the brand's Pradamalia range were deemed offensive as they seemed to evoke blackface, she created a diversity council and included in it artist Theaster Gates and filmmaker Ava DuVernay, hoping to organise a group of enlightened minds ready to educate people to diversity and the art of inclusiveness.

Will Miuccia ever get into politics and get fashionistas shouting "Prada for President"? Who knows maybe Miuccia is not ready to renounce fashion, leave ugly chic behind and deal with the ugly sh*t in real life. But you know what they say, never say never. 

Speaking Through the Mask: Gucci A/W 19

The theme of the double and the power of duplicity have always been very fashionable inspirations for designers. After all, juxtapositions of dichotomies such as male/female or elegant/casual and tailored/streetwear have been the focus of many collections in the last few years.

The theme of the double immediately conjures up also the possibility of transforming, changing, mutating and morphing into somebody or someone else, a process that can happen internally when we change our mind or our behaviour, and externally.

Plastic surgery is a definite way to physically change, but the quickest way to mutate one's appearance is via fashion: a particular garment, its colour, shape and silhouette or a carefully assembled ensemble enriched by special accessories, can indeed radically change a person.

But there is another simple way to hide and reveal oneself, and that's through a mask, be it made of leather, plastic, wood, papier-mâché, representing a human being, an animal or an imaginary character. 

Masks have a central role in fashion as a runway show can be a veritable masquerade, a spectacle in which models play at being different characters and lure us into their world and into the universe of the designer.

Gucci's masquerade started with its invitation: a box with a Greek message on top indicating to those who could read and translate Greek "The head of Hermaphroditus". Inside there was indeed a mask of Hermaphroditus, in Greek mythology son of Aphrodite and Hermes, the gods of male and female sexuality, and a symbol of androgyny.

The theme developed on the runway that took place yesterday at Gucci Hub during Milan Fashion Week. The show could have been interpreted as a fashionable study of the "persona", conceived as a social role or a character played by an actor, but also as a reference to its Latin etymology, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask.

Quite a few models walking in the mirrored venue bathed in 120,000 bliding LED lights donned masks, at times they evoked a sense of horror calling to mind Jason Voorhees, in other cases, especially when they were covered in long spikes, they pointed at fetish and punk, protection and aggression.

But there were also other types of masks, such as a brass helmet-like headpiece representing an eagle, its talons strategically bending around the jawline.

The characters on the runway were once again Michele's own interpretation of a hybrid future, populated by genderless beings with a penchant for retro references, wearing ruffled tops, pleated disco blouses, lace mini-dresses in garish colours matched with lace tights and branded knee pads, ill fitting pants cinched at the ankle, colourful faux fur stoles, librarian dresses covered under mismatched layers and clashing prints.

This time, though, between a Commedia dell'Arte reference via a Harlequin dress (well, it's Carnival season in Italy, so that was an apt reference), and a mullet à la David Bowie, there was an emphasis on tailoring and in particular a hint at the '40s in the jackets with sharp shoulders and nipped waists that in some cases were still covered in basting stitches for that frisson of "non finito".

There were also the usual antiquarian touches included, such as an antique silver brush carried by a model together with a pair of sneakers hanging by the shoestrings (inspired by girls who carry their trainers in their bags and change into their heels when they arrive somewhere).

There were also strong links with religion: Michele claims he has been liberated by the gods, but he keeps on referencing them. Models occasionally donned jewel-encrusted crucifixes around their necks, while a lace cape and blouse pointed at laces used to decorate altars and at liturgial vestments such as surplices.

The prosthetic teardrops trickling down the cheeks of some of the models, a symbol of emotional turmoil, called to mind crying statues of the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows (there are some splendid examples of such statues in Spain, especially the ones by artist Francisco Romero Zafra).

The gold ears coverings were supposed to be a reference to a picture taken by Richard Avedon for a 1968 issue of Vogue portraying Marisa Berenson wearing Argentinian artist Eduardo Costa's "Fashion Fiction I" sculpture.

Yet they may have also been references to Egyptian votive ears, relics you may find in museums such as The Met, or maybe of ex votos representing ears.

The power of concealing may have been an artifice to distract the audience and maybe hide some of the weaknesses in the clothes with their constant retro references (on Michele's runways for Gucci you always get the lingering feeling that some of these clothes are really vintage and that you may find some of them in the secret and forbidden closet of your own Auntie Mame-like aunt...).

Maybe the masks were also a way to divert the attention from a recent major faux pas that saw the brand releasing a Gucci balaclava jumper with a cut-out mouth and red lips that summoned up blackface imagery (and that was pulled immediately from stores).

Or maybe there was something else behind the mask: the shownotes mentioned German political philosopher Hannah Arendt who stated "We always appear in a world which is a stage and are recognized according to the roles which our professions assign us, as physicians or lawyers, as authors or publishers, as teachers or students, and so on (...) the advantage of adopting the notion of persona for my considerations lies in the fact that the masks or roles which the world assigns us, and which we must accept and even acquire if we wish to take part in the world's play at all, are exchangeable" (check out her Sonning Prize acceptance speech from 1975 to know more about Arendt's interpretation of the term "mask" Download Hannah Arendt_SonningPrizeAcceptanceSpeech ). 

Who knows, maybe Alessandro Michele was quietly and unconsciously using the mask to criticise the current (racist and homophobic) Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini intent on wearing uniforms representing different Italian armed forces, constantly using them as masks to change roles.

So Gucci's masks and spikes may have been not just decorative items, but references to contemporary politics and to Italy in particular. The dilemma remains.

In the meantime since the masks with spikes will not go on sale as they are too dangerous, you can jump on the metal ear bandwagon in a cheaper way by repurposing an ex-voto: always in fashion they constantly keep on appearing at runway shows, so, if you're an impenitent fashionista, you'd better stock them up.

Fashion Obituary: Karl Lagerfeld, Sixty Years in Fashion (and One Lesson To Learn)

Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died yesterday at 85 in Paris, didn't believe in "lifetime achievements", he often stated so whenever he received a major award. Yet the "Kaiser", as he was also known (a nickname that he didn't like that much and that was inspired by his opinionated character and his German origins), accomplished something unprecedented since his career in fashion spanned over 60 years and for 4 decades he worked for the same fashion house, Chanel.

The news of his death cast a shadow on the A/W 19 shows and shook the fashion crowd decamping from London to Milan to follow the runways, while tributes from colleagues, critics, influencers and fashion fans appeared on the social media.

Born in Hamburg in the mid-'30s (in 1933; some sources claim in 1938) to a wealthy family, Lagerfeld studied in Paris at Lycée Montaigne.

Lagerfeld won the coat award in the 1954 International Wool Secretariat competition (Woolmark Prize) at 21 (Yves Saint Laurent won the cocktail dress category in the same competition). He became junior assistant and apprentice at Balmain, and then worked at Jean Patou. He left it in 1962 and moved with Chloé in 1964, while the following year started a prolific collaboration with Rome-based house Fendi.

Lagerfeld founded his eponymous ready-to-wear label in 1984 (it was sold to the Tommy Hilfiger Group, and now it is owned by investment fund Apax Partners), but before that he started his biggest adventure in fashion. In 1982, the chairman of Chanel, Alain Wertheimer had indeed asked him to design for the famous French maison that at the time was more or less defunct.

Despite early criticism, the choice was a successful one: Lagerfeld revamped the house updating it, taking elements forming the basic code and semantics of Chanel and creating his own language, focusing on modernity and on the needs of his clients.

He designed 10 collections a year for Chanel, relentlessly reinventing the tweed suit and the little black dress, but also adding a series of accessories such as iconic handbags coveted by younger wealthy consumers.  

As the years passed he became an icon with a signature style: he discarded his fan, an accessory he used to hide a double chin, and shed around 90 pounds to be able to wear Hedi Slimane's super thin suits for Dior Homme; he let his hair go white and grow long, then gathered it in a ponytail, opted for dark sunglasses, added heavy rings on his fingers and used fingerless leather gloves to hide age spots.

While working for Chanel Lagerfeld developed other interests: a passionate book lover (his personal library boasts 300,000 volumes and hopefully we will not see it being dismembered), he opened the 7L bookshop on the Rue de Lille in Paris, followed by his publishing house Editions 7L, which released fashion and photography books and re-edited rare and out-of-print books with German art publisher Steidl.

In the last 20 years Chanel went through further changes: a passionate supporter of craftsmanship, Lagerfeld was instrumental in Chanel's acquisition (through its Paraffection subsidiary) of 26 specialist maisons, among them Causse (gloves), Maison Michel (millinery), Goossens (goldsmiths), Barrie (cashmere), Lognon (pleating), Lemarie (feather and flower adornments), Lesage (embroidery), Desrues (costume jewelry) and Massaro (shoes).

Besides, runway shows became extravagantly memorable affairs: Lagerfeld reinvented the art of the catwalk show as spectacle, creating sets that featured an iceberg from Scandinavia, a gigantic Chanel jacket, a data centre, an airport, a casino (used as the background to showcase advanced techniques such as 3D laser sintering employed to create computer-manipulated seamless classic Chanel jackets), a reproduction of the Eiffel Tower, an idealised version of the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, a rocket, a ship, streets with feminist protests, a supermarket, a huge Japanese-style wooden structure and a serene beach.

In the meantime Coco went loco, and the Resort/Métiers d'Art collections became moveable feasts with shows that travelled across the globe, from Paris to Venice, New York, Linlithgow, Dallas, Seoul, Havana and Hamburg.

Yet Lagerfeld wasn't just about high fashion: in 2004, he teamed with Swedish fast-fashion giant H&M for a one-off collection that was immediately sold out and that sparked more collaborations with other fashion designers for the high street retailer.

Infatigable Lagerfeld was also a gifted sketcher and illustrator and a fashion photographer and produced campaigns for the Chanel, Fendi and Lagerfeld brands, plus other clients including Dom Perignon, Adidas, Coca-Cola and Pirelli. He also created costumes: in 2016 he designed the set and costumes for George Balanchine's "Brahms-Schönberg Quartet" at Paris' Opéra Bastille. 

In May 2010, the designer was bestowed with the French Legion of Honor medal, while in 2017 Women Wear's Daily handed Lagerfeld the John B. Fairchild Honor, dedicated to its founder and granted for lifetime achievement. In the same year Chanel registered sales of $9.6 billion.

Lagerfeld appeared in documentaries about him and about the house of Chanel including the acclaimed five-part miniseries "Signe Chanel" by Loïc Prigent, "Lagerfeld Confidential" by Rodolphe Marconi and "Mode Als Religion" by Martina Neue. More recently the house of Chanel was the subject of one of the episodes of Netflix's series "7 Days Out". 

Being an easily reconisable icon Lagerfeld appeared in 2008 in ads for road safety in France, wearing a fluorescent vest and the slogan "It's yellow, it's ugly, it doesn't go with anything, but it might save your life." He was also turned into a character in video game "Grand Theft Auto IV" and vaguely inspired the fashion designer/baddie Papillon in animated series "Miraculous Ladybug". 

Being outspoken he was often at the centre of controversies: he called singer Adele "a little too fat"; in 2017 he evoked the Holocaust to attack Chancellor Angela Merkel's immigration policy, and last year he stated that models who don't want someone pulling down their panties during a fashion shoot to quit and "join a nunnery".

Fashion never stops, so after the tributes came the inevitable question - who's on next? The reply was almost immediate: at the end of the S/S 19 show and of the Métiers d'Art show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Karl Lagerfeld was accompanied by his closest collaborator for more than 30 years, Virginie Viard. In January he missed the Chanel Haute Couture show, and Viard took the bow accompanied by the last model in the show.

So it was only natural that, after Lagerfeld's death, Chanel accounced that Viard had been entrusted by Alain Wertheimer with the creative work for the collections. The appointment puts a final end to rumours about Phoebe Philo (or Hedi Slimane, or Alber Elbaz, mind you there's also Raf Simons out there...) going to Chanel.

Viard comes from a family of silk manufacturers, studied textiles and she started her career creating costumes for theatre and film. In 1987 she began her collaboration with Chanel working on embroideries; she then became the coordinator of haute couture and of the ready-to-wear collections. 

Viard doesn't like the spotlight even though at the moment all eyes are on her and many wonder what will be the new direction of Chanel in future (yet these seems to be exciting times for French fashion with three women directing three historical houses if you consider Viard at Chanel, Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior and Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy). In the meantime Fendi's A/W 19 ready-to-wear collection will take place in Milan tomorrow.

Lagerfeld leaves behind Choupette, his terribly spoiled cat, a huge legacy and a key lesson for the fashion industry: he became an icon because he was allowed to develop his style at Chanel and build a solid vocabulary throughout the decades. Most young designers nowadays aren't allowed to do so, as they are prompted to immediately deliver commercially successful collections. And, while leaving a designer to run a house for more than 30 years and well into his eighties may be a long and tiring affair, changing a designer every few years (or even every few months) isn't always the best way to revamp a maison and guarantee it a stable future.  

As for Lagerfeld you can bet he will be somewhere on the Olympus of fashion icons, maybe with his muse, the late Vogue Italia editor Anna Piaggi, finally having a rest and possibly laughing at fashionistas, poseurs and influencers taking selfies (Lagerfeld hated selfies...) at the current shows.  

The Designer as Alchemist: Alessandro Mendini (1931-2019)

"One day I saw on a publication the 'living room of the century' by Alessandro Mendini's Studio Alchimia with the 'Proust' armchair and the 'Kandissi' sofa. I wanted to buy the pieces for my studio, but the designers didn't know where they had ended up. I eventually recovered them and, in a way, that was the reason why they became famous. The Proust armchair that was in my possession travelled so much for photo shoots for interior design magazines that, in the end, because of the requests they kept on getting, they put it into production," Italian fashion designer Cinzia Ruggeri told us a few years ago in an interview.

Mendini's Proust chair and sideboard from the '40s with decoratiosn inspired by Kandinsky were the pulsating heart of Ruggeri's atelier for many years as proved by a rare footage from 1988 showing a model walking around the showroom. They went well with her fashion creations, complementing them (when Mendini needed a dress for an installation he would often turn to Ruggeri).

You can bet Ruggeri, and many other genuine architecture and design fans, will miss Mendini, the architect, artist, designer, writer and theoretician who died yesterday at 87.

Born in Milan in 1931, Mendini dreamt as a young boy of becoming a cartoonist or a painter, but then switched his interests onto architecture. He graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1959 with a degree in architecture, then worked from 1956 to 1970 at the industrial design studio Nizzoli Associati.

In the early '70s Mendini co-founded the counter-design group and free school for individual creativity Global Tools and in the following years he directed different architecture and design magazines, including Casabella, Modo (founded by him) and Domus.

In 1979 Mendini joined the legendary Studio Alchimia, founded by Alessandro Guerriero. He developed experimental works and reinterpreted design classics, dubbed "banal design" to emphasise the way ordinary objects were revamped and radically transformed (the concept of "banal design" was presented through an installation by Mendini, Paola Navone, Daniela Puppa and Franco Raggi at the Venice Art Biennale in 1980).

In 1985 Mendini wrote The Alchimia Manifesto that remains a valid compendium of teachings for interior designers and for everybody else interested in the creative arts ("Alchimia believes in despecialisation," he wrote, anticipating the hybridisation trends of our modern times, "'confused' methods of creation and production can live side by side; crafts, industry, informatics, new and obsolete techniques and materials"), like his "Telegrams to the Designer" in one of them he stated: "There is no such thing as development but circularity between past present and future - they endlessly redesign themselves - the acceleration of information produces the phenomenon of instant antiques - the object of future is timeless").

Mendini then opened with his brother the Milan-based Atelier Mendini, a studio focused on creating objects, furniture, paintings, installations and architecture. He also created set designs and started collaborating with a wide range of design companies, including Alessi, Philips, Cartier, Swatch, Hermès, Venini, Zanotta and Bisazza (where he was appointed Art Director in 1996).

All his designs and projects were suspended between art, architecture and interior design: the 1978 Proust armchair combined a Baroque form with a hand-painted brightly vivid multi-coloured pattern that extended from the fabric to the carved wooden frame and that was inspired by pointillist artist Paul Signac.

As an architect, Mendini’s buildings include the Alessi residence in Omegna, Italy; the Teatrino della Bicchieraia in Arezzo; a memorial tower in Hiroshima, Japan; the Bruno Bianchi Swimming Centre in Trieste; the Milan Triennale foreign branch in Incheon, South Korea, the iconic Puppet Theatre in the Gardens of Milan's Triennale and the Groninger Museum in The Netherlands, a building characterised by a vibrant yellow tower. All of these buildings are characterised by bright colours that contribute to introduce a great degree of dynamism to the structures. 

In 2011 the exhibition "Postmodernism" at London's V&A opened with the death of modernism and with footage of Alessandro Mendini's "Monumentino da Casa" (Household Monument, 1974), a chair on top of a flight of steps forming a ziggurat structure burning down in a deserted quarry near Genoa.

The event also featured his "Proust" chair and Mendini and Etro's designer suit (2001) covered in brand logos.

Last year Milan's Triennale celebrated Alessandro and his brother Francesco in the retrospective “Atelier Mendini. Le Architetture" (Atelier Mendini. The Architectures”), while the Groninger Museum had been working recently with him on an exhibition called "Mondo Mendini", due to open in October this year.

Mendini never loved long answers in his interviews, but always replied in a witty and brief way, his answers often sounding like gentle orders (when I asked him what kind of advice he would have liked to give to young people who wished to become architects/interior designers one day for an inerview for Dazed Digital, he just replied "Be Kind").

Mendini's essays and notes are still incredibly inspiring: in 1985 he wrote in "The Alchimia Manifesto" that the process of drawing has got to be conceived like a cycle, "everything that will be has already been," he stated, "and individual imagination, the basis for the world's survival, can travel in every way through all cultures and places so long as it works like one in love." Mendini did travel with his imagination, fantasy and love through cultures and colours, may he now rest in peace.