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Milan Fashion Week
And in a flash, it was over. The Milan Fashion Week devoted to fall and winter menswear for 2018-19 was abbreviated this year into a superslim long weekend that ended Monday. Many fashion houses opted to fold their previews for men into their womenswear shows scheduled for next month. Others decided to go with more hands-on presentations instead of all-out runway productions. Some of the fashion houses that participated in the condensed men’s week mixed women’s clothes in with their predominantly male displays. But the final day stuck strictly to menswear, with Armani, Fendi, No. 21 and Yoshio Kubo closing out the previews. Here are some highlights:
Fendi take-off
Silvia Venturini Fendi took a journey to the family fashion house’s past for next winter’s menswear and found herself at a fantastical airport carousel. Bags of every sort and even a fur-covered baby bassinet sped by on a conveyor belt as models strode by. Fanciful accessories had a strong role to play in the collection, from fur-covered safari hats to plasticized rain hats and Fendibranded umbrella-shaped caps.
The collection had a feel both contemporary and nostalgic. Brown and gold were the main colors, and the silhouettes veered toward relaxed, roomy cuts. Diagonal detailing characterized the season, appearing on fur coats, down jackets, and matching silken shirt-and-tie sets. The print of the season, a collaboration with the artist-designer known on Instagram as @hey-reilly, was a collage of plaids, architectural detailing and the double-F Fendi logo applied to some of the catchwords of the season, including “Freedom.”
Everest landing by Yoshio Kubo Japanese designer Yoshio Kubo imagines a plane crash on Mount Everest as the backstory to his latest collection. “It is not scary,” the 43-year-old designer explained backstage. “I survive, right?” The scenario starts to explain the diaphanous red parachute that bellowed behind a bright striped pant paired with a boldly printed top. And it gives deeper meaning to a sheer organza anorak, its edges left frayed, that suggests an airplane’s fiberglass shell.
The colors of the collection are the bright reds and purples of Nepal that would come into focus outside the plane. They appear alongside more classic blacks, grays, tans and olive green. A fringed jacquard jacket in red, black and white shown with loose-fitting striped trousers for a meditative touch had a ceremonial feel. Everest itself appeared as a motif, both graphic depictions of the mountain and the word repeated as a pattern. Kubo gave survivors of the pretend crash hoods and improvised turbans, and a few got quilted moon boots.