Next! After the noughties-influenced club-kid cool of London Fashion Week comes the Italian take on autumn 2024 in Milan.
Expect luxury of the quiet and fairly loud varieties as some of the most bravura brands in the business stake their claim on next season’s trends by tweaking them to fit their own house style. Consider The Times and Sunday Times coverage your backstage pass.
In theory, luxury labels should differentiate themselves from each other. In practice, as evidenced by many of the shows at Milan Fashion Week, they often don’t. The Italian fashion community is a small one. The people all know each other and the industry’s musical chairs means if they don’t work together now they probably have before.
That can mean a commonality of language, this season made manifest by the preponderance of very big jackets and very short shorts, of lingerie-like dresses and wader-like boots. All of which serves to underline the uniqueness of the vision of the last two designers on the schedule.
Matthieu Blazy, the creative director at Bottega Veneta, is like no one else in fashion at the moment, although his cerebral aesthetic is closest to that of Phoebe Philo, with whom he worked at Celine, who now heads up her eponymous brand.
Advertisement
Blazy, 40, makes clothes for gallerists; for architects; for — I don’t know — nuclear physicists who dabble in sculpture at weekends. This is avant-garde garb for women and men who see themselves at odds with the mainstream and have the money to signal that stylishly.
Before a front row that included Kate Moss and Julianne Moore, Blazy showed his origami skills, folding and draping fabrics and leathers, fixing contrasting sections with pins topped with what looked to be marbles.
He also revisited his obsession with texture, as befits a designer working for a brand that was built on intrecciato, woven leather. A skirt was built out of leather feathers, a coat bristled with smaller fronds.
Giorgio Armani, 89, has spoken of the fashion “ghetto” and how important it is to be “individual and identifiable”. Sure enough, he delivered the softened jacket and trouser combination on which the Armani phenomenon was built. Cate Blanchett was on the front row. Intricate decoration lifted pared-back lines while splashes of pink and blue animated his signature grey and navy.
After all these years, he is still his own man.
Advertisement
What happens when you combine a spirited and visionary British designer with the pinnacle of Italian luxury and craftsmanship? Manchester’s Maximilian Davis delivered a masterclass in Milan with a collection that perfectly articulated why his appointment at Ferragamo is considered among the most inspired in fashion in recent years — or at least, the most refreshing.
Davis, now in his second year at the house, is unrivalled in his ambassadorial role as poster boy for British fashion. His strategy to lead Ferragamo customers towards a world populated with more than just artisanal handbags and quality boots seems to be working; it undoubtedly appeals on an aesthetic level, with the young Briton gifting Milan’s fashion festivities with one of the most creatively accomplished shows of the week.
Exquisitely crafted woollen coats, safari-style tailoring and silky-soft cashmere asymmetric skirts were among the wardrobe options presented to the enlightened Milanese fashion consumer seeking an alternative to “quiet luxury”.
Davis had set out to explore liberated identities with his latest work, citing a particular interest in the clothing used as “a way to celebrate freedom”. A sense of movement prevailed accordingly throughout on Saturday, be that through the inclusion of fluid fabric or a cut that allowed the wearer to feel (or seem) free and at ease in the silhouette as models walked.
Since Davis has roots in Trinidad, this had been a pertinent area of research, with the designer noting, “the expression of freedom is something that has always resonated with me and with my heritage”.
Advertisement
Having studied at London College of Fashion and come of age as a designer under the emerging incubator Fashion East, Davis is something of an anomaly in Italian luxury’s insular ranks. The hope is that Ferragamo bosses fully appreciate the value of its visionary frontman.
The Ferragamo show preceded the latest showcase from establishment designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana who, in terms typical of traditional Italian luxury, presented a showcase which revolved around the classic tuxedo.
With the tailored evening jacket recast in a plethora of iterations, the house went long on its signature piece. Cropped versions were worn layered over French knickers and flowing négligé-inspired dresses while other styles, cinched at the waist and cut to thigh height, were on display along with spike-heeled stilettos and satin flat caps.
The conspicuous theme continued when it came to eveningwear with cummerbunds serving as a detail on mesh dresses and satin piping — a crucial addition to any tuxedo — a recurring addition.
As is the religion at the house of Dolce & Gabbana, black reigned supreme with texture and fabrication, a means with which the designers brought the drama. Feathered collars and cuffs made sheer black robes into headliners.
Advertisement
Also appeasing customers who routinely come to the designers expecting a very specific reed of southern Italian glamour was Naomi Campbell, who closed the show in sheer slip and veil.
It’s just over a year since Gucci announced Sabato De Sarno as its creative director, at once one of the most desirable gigs in fashion and — given the huge commercial success of his immediate predecessor, Alessandro Michele — one of the most challenging.
De Sarno’s second collection was proof that he is the right man for the job, a continuation of the sleek, sexy and definitively modern manifesto he set out in September. It couldn’t be more of a move on from Michele’s maximalist pseudo-historical approach which, at the point of his sudden departure, was starting to feel less like time travel and more like a stopped clock, with the falling revenues to match.
It’s too early to talk about the numbers, given that De Sarno’s first creations are only just available to purchase, but there were plenty on the front row who had already bought into the aesthetic, not least the actresses Kirsten Dunst, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Salma Hayek. The latter just happens to be married to François-Henri Pinault, chief executive of Kering, the luxury fashion group that owns Gucci.
There was lots of attention-grabbing — for which read flesh-flashing — from the shorts suits to the lingerie-like dresses. Some jacketed models appeared to have forgotten to put anything on their bottom half.
Advertisement
Take a closer look, however, and what De Sarno is adept at is creating clothes that exude wearability as well as specialness, this one of the most important circles to square in contemporary luxury. Oversized outerwear appeared to have been dipped in sequins, knits came with collars of diamanté, and 1960s geometrics had been given a Midas touch. The small and squishy double-G bags looked like bestsellers in the making. The palette was gorgeous, but there were plenty of neutrals for all the colour eschewers too.
Donatella Versace spoke before her show of designing clothes “to give you courage. That’s what we need in the world we live in today.” This parlayed into strong-lined military jackets and tweeds plus Rosa Klebb heels, yet also into a chainmail mini-dress, its top more of a breastplate than a mere bustier. Could there be a more quintessentially Versace suit of armour than this one?
Of all the trends emerging from the Milan catwalks this week, perhaps the most unexpected is the return of the Edwardian bustle. The autumn 2024 take isn’t quite of Downton Abbey proportions: instead, at Prada and MaxMara, they appeared as frills, bows and floral-shape scrunches of fabric attached to the back of skirts and dresses.
“This is a collection shaped by history,” Miuccia Prada said after the show, in which models in jewel-coloured velvet riding hats and equestrian boots were dressed in the tweedy high-necklines and hobble skirts of a century or so ago.
These — and couture-age swing coats, circle skirts and shift dresses borrowed from the Fifties — had been updated in the label’s famous haute nylon, juxtaposing vintage elegance with modern technical wear. One cocktail frock came with an outdoorsy toggle on its soignee scooped back; another had a large statement zipped pocket. Both will go down well with Prada’s arty and avant-garde clientele, just as those bustles — stitched to back of jackets and dresses that were spliced half wool, half satin — are sure to become something of a viral hit.
Varsity bombers and biker jackets came in deliberately distressed battered leather. There was even a worker’s donkey jacket whose price tag will no doubt belie its humble origins when it hits the shops. Twee twinsets were given the full Prada treatment in acidic and slightly off-kilter tones of chartreuse, imperial purple and Pepto Bismol pink that rendered them anything but Sloaney.
“One of the challenges was taking fragments from history but not creating a historical silhouette,” Miuccia Prada’s design partner, Raf Simons, said.
At MaxMara too, the British designer Ian Griffiths was inspired by the Belle Époque era, and the Parisian literary It-girl Colette in particular. Her 1910s wardrobe met the latterday uniform of the 1 per cent intelligentsia in the house’s signature cashmere coats that for autumn were cut with kimono sleeves and a sculptural boule back. Rather than the usual camel, the collection was mainly navy and grey for autumn.
“Working in those shades meant we could focus on the cut,” Griffiths said backstage. “Modern fashion has forgotten about silhouette a bit — it used to be something we talked much more.” Those bustles look set to be a talking point too.
Opportunities for Britain’s young creatives have been “destroyed by Brexit”, according to one of the fashion industry’s most successful homegrown names.
Speaking backstage in Milan, Kim Jones, the Fendi designer, called for more support back home for young people at the start of their careers.
He said: “There’s a huge amount of talent, but starting out now is so tough. We need to do whatever we can.”
For his latest collection, Jones took inspiration from the flourishing of style around London’s New Romantics club scene in the early Eighties, as well as a 40-year-old archive sketch by Karl Lagerfeld, Fendi’s previous design chief.
“London was really influential in the world then,” he said. “It was a point when British style became global. Something needs to be done to help young designers there now.”
The British Fashion Council last year warned of the “severe challenges” facing UK businesses. The trade magazine Drapers reported in May that some were facing a 30 per cent drop in sales from Europe since Brexit. As London Fashion Week opened its catwalks last week, the government confirmed the UK had entered a recession.
Jones, who studied at Central Saint Martins and is also the creative director of Dior Homme in Paris, has built a career on bringing streetwise British irreverence to some of Europe’s loftiest labels. For autumn 2024, he blended the buccaneer swag of Steve Strange’s Blitz Club in Soho with Fendi’s trademark Roman elegance.
A one-shouldered batwing top in loud Eighties cobalt was balanced with a caramel leather circle skirt that whispered of what the internet has dubbed quiet luxury — in the wake of the TV show Succession.
High-necked cotton dresses riffed on the late Vivienne Westwood’s 1981 “pirates” collection, but Jones’s version was more suited to a desk than the dancefloor. He referenced Leigh Bowery, the drag performance artist, in swirled, beaded polka dots scattered across some chiffon skirts, then printed and embroidered the likeness of classical statues near Fendi’s Rome HQ on to dresses and matching shoulder totes.
Jones is also fluent in the international language of It-bags, which are a key plank of Fendi’s business. For the new season, he made them soft, squashy and “fun”. Some were decorated with fluffy trim and others dangled Chupa Chups lollipop cases made from leather that are certain to be a hit with the social media selfie set. You don’t need a visa to go viral, at least.
