While the Russian troops entered Kiev, the Tod’s fashion show started, the first of the third day of the fashion week in Milan, a city where the Ukrainian is the second largest migrant community. The luxury industry, which the pandemic has forced to rethink from its raison d’être to its future, is thus forced to continuously readjust its discourse if, as master Jean Paul Gaultier assures, “it aspires to reflect the changes social of his time”, in addition to making cash. What is its function or what is that of pop artifacts such as fashion shows are questions that the collections presented these days cannot answer, fundamentally because they were designed months ago. Although some clues could already be found in the Gucci proposal.
The creative director of the Italian firm, Alessandro Michele, returned to the Milanese event after two years in which, in addition to experimenting with different formats to communicate his work – from a festival to fashion films– came to deny the official calendars and traditional parades. Despite the catwalk, the models and the guests, Tuesday’s was not totally orthodox. If it were, it would not bear Michele’s signature. The designer decided to present a men’s collection within a women’s fashion week. “Men have opened a dialogue with the female universe and I want to promote a broad representation of masculinity, that’s why I think it made sense to do it that way,” he explained at a press conference after the parade. His garments -as they have always been since he took over the reins of the Italian house seven years ago- “are halfway between the two genres”: immaculate tailoring suits worn by men and women alike; masculine models with delicate capelinas embroidered in rhinestones and earrings for all. Despite this approach, Michele rejects the term gender fluid –”That thing that everyone says I invented seven years ago”-. He considers that it has been overexploited as a marketing tool and, therefore, emptied of meaning.
Now he is more comfortable in the semantic field of metamorphosis that encompasses concepts such as “multifaceted or polymorphous”. Through it he intends to transform the established codes, this time by incorporating the sports vocabulary that he shapes through a collaboration with Adidas. What is said to kill two birds with one stone: while he expands and evolves his particular aesthetic universe, he poses a joint venture which has as many signs of commercial success as the ones it has already developed with Balenciaga or North Face. “The catwalk is like the street, which is where my workshop is, because fashion has left workshops”, Michele sentences. From this new work space comes a collection where the three mythical Adidas stripes run through leather boots, capes, suit jackets or knitted sweaters and even become the structure of a quasi-medieval bodice; the logo of the sports brand is printed on the house’s bags and appears in bas-relief on pants and jackets. To top it off, Michele recovers an Adidas dress that Madonna wore in the early nineties and that served as inspiration for this project. “We think that collaborations are something new, but there are few things to invent.”
Gucci and Adidas was not the only moment full of energy and intention. It’s been a couple of seasons now that Sportmax’s proposals describe an upward trajectory. On Friday, the firm of the Max Mara group opted for that Cartesian tailoring that has made a fortune in recent years: oversized shoulder pads and a square and bevel drawing pattern to highlight volumes and obtuse angles. In principle, nothing new under the sun. But by passing these codes through its refined sewing and combining the sepulchral black of the garments with flashes of blood red in boots or ties, the result became appealing and electric, proving that being original is not the only way to be memorable.
With its accessories in clean and simple shapes, Tod’s returns to its essence in a sensible attempt to recover lost relevance. The gummy, the famous balls that make up the sole of their moccasins and that have become a hallmark of the house, ascend to the instep of their boots and decorate the elbow patches of their mountain-cut coats and parkas, weaving a coherent and pleasant collection. Etro also remains faithful to that exquisite work of fabrics that she has made her famous, this time through an ode to crochet with undisguised hippie airs.
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