A strange feeling seemed to permeate the last days of Milan fashion week, a sense that we were wallowing a bit, as if at the end of the affair – that time when things are changing, or need to, yet we are trapped in an endless spiral replaying what has gone before.
That is certainly how if felt at Belstaff where 1980s classics – from BIG shoulders to plaids and high-waisted leather leggings – seemed revisited just a little too devotedly.
Of course it is tough to move forward, figure out the next move – and not just for women in fashion. See, for instance, the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Centre for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Art Museum next month and its inaugural exhibition, Global Feminisms.
“We’re looking to the present and the future instead of the past. Feminism needs to expand,” Maura Reilly, the curator, told WWD last week.
They were, she said, “trying to call attention to the fact that feminism is totally a global issue, so we need to think of it in the plural. There is no single definition.”
For feminism – and femininity – in clothes there is much the same dilemma: there is no one answer. But there are, thankfully, some bold statements. Cue Donatella Versace. “The body should be reconfigured by the clothes, never again the other way round,” read the designer’s mission statement.
This was an “abstract and ultra-minimal approach to femininity”. That translated into simple, precision-cut shift dresses and pencil skirt suits with obvious waists and slight padding at the hips to give a hint of a New Look silhouette and a shape that stood slightly apart from the body.
Everything was pared down but detailing, when it occurred, was far from timid – giant belt loops on coats, slim-cut trousers and skirts. Fur on cuffs or tiered hemlines lent volume and luxuriousness.
Surface details were also subtle. There were no patterns but panels of the same colour used in a different fabric gave optical effect – a black satin central front panel and hem on a wool coat, say – or contrasting – fur sleeves to a gun-metal crocodile coat. Even colours were “take me or leave me” singular statements of black, white, electric blue or raspberry red. These were clothes for real women – women, please note, not girls.
Versace also touched another key fashion nerve – innovative fabric. This included Japanese techno fabric that “appears to be made from flattened feathers” and furs that, although real, looked fake.
This, in itself, is an interesting turn because some future-trend pundits believe it will be only when technological fabrics are fully integrated into fashion design that “newness” will come again.
These two factors – feminism and fabric – were addressed at Sportmax with 1970s-reminiscent three-piece suits (no boundary pushing but still purchase-worthy) and full skirts that looked printed with a check but were, in fact, embroidered.
Gianfranco Ferre was also interested in suiting and the androgyny it can offer. Impeccably tailored, narrow-legged pinstripe suits gradually morphed into dress shirt-based tops feminised and modernised by wide, kimono-like sleeves and teamed with simple skirts. Dresses and jackets became works of engineering wonder – Ferre did train as an architect, after all – with minimal seaming resulting in rounded, sculptural shapes.
Dresses were serenadable with to-the-floor plissé silk gowns in blocks of colour – black then a wide hem of gold – cut to gather inwards at the ankle but giving volume to the skirt or large swathes that were gathered up to the bustline at points around the body to create huge loops of fabric and emphasised a soft edge to construction.
Fendi was also readdressing things but here it included the house’s history with fur and a return “to workmanship” and “using fur as if it’s just a fabric” said Silvia Fendi, creative director of accessories.
So it became about the obvious and the discrete working together, which included introducing shearlings and wools in such a way as you could not be sure which was which. Jackets were made up in patchworks of coloured fur but were the bright harlequin puff sleeves to a fur jacket wool or shearling? Dresses and skirts of tiered strips of leather, shearling coats that looked like wool latticed with leather trim all compounded the theme.
Creativity continued into silhouettes that, although largely kept simple, had clever detailing such as cut-away side seams and ruching above the back hem of a pencil skirt while sleeves on studded, slim-fitting dresses took on a voluminous bell shape, which continued into a cape back at the rear that seemed only forward thinking.
Handbags too were included in Fendi’s vision “to find a new accord” and spanned small lacquered clutches in vibrant colours to large woollen pochettes covered in the Fendi “F” logo.
Those bell sleeves were also evident at a charming although restrained Moschino where a more traditionally feminine show covered all the trend bases. Bead-encrusted sleeves and capes, wide-pleated smock dresses, tiered gold lame shifts with scalloped edging, fiftiesesque swing-back jackets and neat little skirt suits with cropped jackets and bubble skirts were not pushing any fashion envelopes but offered easy chic.
Dsquared² has its own traditional woman in mind – one who is sassy and a little cheeky. Tight satin trousers, swinging-skirted mini dresses with wide patent belts and zip-fronted electric blue leather dresses with combat-like pockets all featured. It was upbeat, tongue-in-chic style with the occasional perfect little black skirt suit hidden in so you would barely notice.
At Missoni things were more confusing. Although the signature Missoni knits were there in snap-them-up full-sleeved tops and simple coats, the focus on Pop-like prints just did not feel fresh or even very Missoni.
The idea tweaked into block chunks of colour on leather and fur coats worked better as a new slant on the Missoni stripe. Similarly, baggy knitted jackets with leather trim were smart but too voluminous when teamed with full swinging mini skirts.
You could tell the basics were there but the message got confused in the delivery. Modern femininity just is not that easy to define.
