Nanother 15 minutes. The last models are blow-dried, their eyelashes are mascaraed, and the dress is checked to make sure it fits. Just before the Etro show on Via Fantoli, you can feel the tension that prevails in a football cabin before the team goes onto the pitch. But one remains calm. Marco de Vincenzo stands smiling in the midst of the chaos, greeting Italian journalists (“Ciao Sandra, va bene?”) and patiently answering questions. Is he nervous? A short: “No!” And then he adds: “I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare the collection.” That doesn’t sound like an apology, more like pride that the fashion world will soon see what he’s been doing since June, when he was appointed as the new creative director of Etro, made it all happen.
After the lull caused by the pandemic, men like Marco de Vincenzo are hopeful that Italian fashion will regain momentum with the fresh wind. Four brands alone started with new designers at the Milan Fashion Week, which showed the collections for spring and summer 2023 from Wednesday to Sunday. Marco de Vincenzo for Etro, Maximilian Davis for Ferragamo, Filippo Grazioli for Missoni and Rhuigi Villaseñor for Bally. The same question arose for all: what to do with the legacy of these long-established brands?
A time of upheaval
For Villaseñor, the top priority seems to be: don’t be intimidated. Shortly before the show, he stands backstage in a suit, shirt and tie and explains: “I see Bally like a reptile that is shedding its skin.” For the collection, he disappeared for weeks into the archives on Lake Lugano. It was important to stay focused. “It’s easy to get lost in the candy store and end up walking out without candies,” he adds, laughing. As a child of Filipino expats, he grew up in Los Angeles, where he founded his streetwear brand Rhude. Elements of this can also be seen in the Bally collection, which is characterized by lightness, such as the uncomplicated summer dresses or the men’s surf shorts, which he combines with linen jackets. In the end, however, Villaseñor breathes life into the Swiss brand with the staid image in a different way, storming onto the catwalk, hugging his family in the front row, raising his arms as if he had won a tennis match.
Kim as Art: Dolce&Gabbana
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Image: Helmut Fricke
It’s a time of upheaval in Italian fashion. Brands like Etro were until recently purely family businesses that not only kept the business part but also the creative part in the family. They now belong to large luxury groups or holdings that pump money into the brand, but also want to see success quickly. It’s always about the balancing act of preserving the core of the brand, but also giving the fashion a new coat of paint. Walter Chiapponi, who presented his second collection for Tod’s on Friday, has already shown how it’s done. Between the concrete towers “The Seven Heavenly Palaces” by Anselm Kiefer, which are on display as a permanent installation in the Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in an industrial area on the outskirts of Milan, Carla Bruni is the first to float in in a nude-colored cashmere coat, the beginning of an extremely coherent collection. His inspiration was the minimalism of the 90s, says Chiapponi after the parade, but also the more feminine side of Mediterranean women. “But the most important thing is to make casual and sportswear look chic.” What he achieved with softly falling fabrics that lend softness even to a masculine pantsuit.