New Gucci designer debuts as Milan celebrates youth
Fashion is always about renewal, but in this round of Milan Fashion Week it’s not just the collections that are getting a fresher-upper, it seems much of the Italian fashion system is.
Gucci’s new designer Alessandro Michele, a brand insider little known until now in the wider fashion world, made his runway debut on the first day of womenswear previews on Wednesday, giving the historic brand a clean break from the past.
Michele’s launch is a fitting banner over a push to embed new talent in Milan, where the density of the firmly established Italian system, with brands from Armani to Prada to Versace creating a de-facto Italian colony along New York’s Fifth Avenue, has made it difficult for young designers to make inroads.
In a bid to help foster new talent, the Italian Fashion Chamber sponsored a live runway competition this round among five young designers. At the same time, recently discovered young designers, like Stella Jean and Fausto Puglisi, have quickly established themselves as an integral part of the fashion calendar, which comprises 68 shows and 76 presentations this season.
“I am hoping this is the beginning of a new phase, accelerating the growth of the new designers,” Italian Fashion Chamber CEO Jane Reeve said in a recent interview.
Reeve says her mission is to bring the young established designers and the even younger promising designers into the Italian system, and secure their loyalty. The Next Generation fashion contest, won by 22-year-old Claudio Cutugno on Tuesday evening, was a first step.
Here’s are some of Wednesday’s highlights:
Gucci discontinuity
Michele strove for discontinuity in his Gucci debut, relaunching the brand with romantic flourishes against a hardened, urban background.
His debut collection displayed a confident break from the past, reasserting the double-G brand logo with prominent belt-buckle placings in the opening and closing looks but also introducing a new motif: birds in flight.
The collection snatched elements from the hastily assembled menswear collection, a team effort, shown in January after his predecessor Frida Giannini’s earlier-than-expected departure. There were the same elaborate poet bows on silken shirts and loose-fitting suits with contrast piping, nods to androgyny for both men and women.
Michele put his signature on the new collection with a pleated floral dress with a built-in cape; a crinkled leather dress in peacock blue and military-style coats with fur trim that had an antique feel. A red dress with pleated tiers was paired with flats for the perfect day-into-evening look.
Passage to India
Haitian-Italian designer Stella Jean’s looks zigzag the globe from the United King- dom to Haiti, Italy to India, yet always respecting the borders.
For next winter, the designer has the Himalayas for inspiration, giving rise to richly woven cropped sweaters paired with big, feminine 1950s style skirts, coats decorated with colorful tassels of yarn and high-waist men’s plaid trousers worn with an elaborate embroidered belt with two pockets.
The designer’s adherence to Italian tailoring ground the looks, keeping them from veering to the purely ethnic.
“All this color hits you hard, but if you pay attention in every single piece there is the Italian tailoring, the Italian tradition. It is the element that helps me balance the strong impact of the color. It is also the key for the multicultural crossover,” she says.
She finishes the looks with bangles made in Haiti, including broad bracelets worn over the sweater above the elbow.
Sicilian punk
Fausto Puglisi combined a punk aesthetic with elements taken from his native Sicily, both baroque and sublime.
On the sublime end, Puglisi used coral-like beadwork, giving spectacular accent to his gladiator skirt, worn with a bold-accented bra top and a plaid-paneled overcoat, and a double front-slit floor-trailing gown. And toward the baroque, he topped his creations with oversized jeweled necklaces and belts.
The silhouette included pleated skirts in layered panels, mini-dresses with midriffbaring cutouts and long, floortrailing overcoats. He maintained a punk edge by combining the normally preppy pink-and-green combination in electric shades, and pairing it with fantastical animal prints.
Medieval fairytale
Like the fairytale princesses who have danced all night till there were holes in their shoes, Alberta Ferretti’s woman for next summer strides confidently through the forest as the sun rises. She is tussled from a night of merrymaking but without a second thought.
The looks are unapologetically romantic, from the deep red sheer dress with floral overlays and knit arms and hemline to the crocheted mini-dress over a white lace collar. There’s a medieval princess in a royal red and purple ankle-length skirt and red-riding hood in fur trim and a quilted coat. The looks were finished mostly with soft thigh-high boots or slippers.