The story appears on

Page A6

September 22, 2019

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Sunday » Style

Fashions are breath of fresh air

CREATIVE director Daniel Lee is bringing new proportions to the Bottega Veneta fashion house, evident in the co-ed collection for next spring and summer.

For her, the interplays ranged from a form-fitting silhouette in off-shoulder dresses and clingy crisscrossing knits, to looser constructions of denim tops and trouser or a leather anorak dress.

Some of the looks were referenced for men, including a baggier version of the crisscross knits, worn with loose leather shorts, and a big, baggy anorak. The season’s new handbags included big over-the-shoulder paperboy bags in the brand’s trademark intreccio weave. And the shoe of the season featured oversized chunky weaves on slip-on sandals.

The collection “evolves the codes we are building at Bottega Veneta,” Lee said in show notes. “Our focus is on process and clarity, immediate and direct.”

Giorgio Armani says he wanted to dress his Emporio Armani woman in air — a seemingly impossible task. He just about succeeds.

The spring/summer 2020 collection was a study of lightness and movement, softness in materials, silhouette and color palette.

Opening the show and setting the tone, an airy trench floated over a transparent pink top and gray crushed velvet trousers, anchored by an urban pill-box crossbody bag.

The youthful-dressing Emporio Armani woman can show some skin in a velvet bra-top and matching trousers, unified with a double-breasted pink blazer. A wide-trouser jumpsuit in denim blue had a hippie feel. Tulle tops danced over silky trousers, accented by a tangle of beads.

By nightfall, a silvery mood descended with a metallic sheen on organza trousers and gathered zipper jackets, accented by chain-mail earrings and breast-plates recalling the 1970s disco era. Footwear included pointy flat mules, high-top sneakers and knee-high military boots.

Fendi seemed to have an atavistic, perhaps artistic, need to return to the brand’s ready-to-wear roots in the mid-1960s to confront the first collection since the loss of Karl Lagerfeld.

The new collection by Silvia Venturini Fendi drew on easy 1960s mom styles, like quilted jackets and matching mini-skirts, garden floral cropped raincoat and skirt and easy-to-wear terry-cloth skirts and canvas jackets. Woven bags and matching woven sweaters had a nostalgic, almost naïve feel, countered by a plunging V-line and translucent print mini or matching macrame weave skirts.

Florals and gardening references tied in neatly with the menswear spring/summer 2020 collection previewed last June in Milan. A series in golden honey yellow and brown gave a down-to-earth buzz to a checked fur coat, or gingham dress with short-sleeved fur in matching trim.

The 1969 hit “The Age of Aquarius” played throughout the show, setting an optimistic tone for Fendi’s debut collection flying as the solo headliner.

Already essential, Muccia Prada is trying a less-is-more aesthetic, also in support of a sustainable agenda.

The Prada collection featured a mix of basics with staying power — simple suits, knit skirts and top combos — alongside more adorned pieces like beaded overcoats that can become heirlooms.

Prada said the idea she was trying to convey was that the person wearing the garments “is more important than the fashion.”

Textiles formed the leitmotiv of the collection: heavy male wools, rough silk and muslin.

The collection opened with a fine-knit gray sweater and straight light rose muslin skirt, introducing muslin as a mainstay. Other pieces included simple, sweet summer dresses fastened at the shoulders with bows and tiered looks, perhaps contrasting velvet panels at the neck, like a soft judicial frill. The only adornments were sequin leaf patterns on skirts and overcoats.

The work about subtraction, Prada said, is to counter a prevailing sense “that there is too much of everything.”

Moschino’s models walked through an enormous gilded picture frame, ironically bringing back to life artists’ muses from the canvas on which they had been captured.

The collection by Jeremy Scott took inspiration from museum art, from Picasso to Pierrot clowns.

Model Kaia Gerber got cubist treatment with the artist’s sure strokes evident on the oversized sleeves and a puffy skirt, while Bella Hadid wore a blue and pink harlequin outfit. The looks incorporated out-of-proportion impressionist references, such as geometric, off-skew sleeves and swirling breasts.

There were fiery Spanish women in polka-dotted dresses, straight from a bull fight, carrying a handbag featuring golden bull horns and a nose ring as a clasp.

And the ultimate irony, garments depicting nudes: an artsy shaded line drawing on a white dress, a sequined impressionist number and a model framed in a nude sketch.

Artisanal Zen was on display in the new Jil Sander collection shown in the courtyard of the Brera Academy, around a stone garden with tiny pyramids.

The collection was a play of volumes.

Black tailored jackets over-flowing dresses in matching black or psychedelic prints suggested structure, which balanced with a gathered white pleated dress. A pleated white tunic harmonized with a light-yellow quilted skirt. Black and blue silken panels appeared woven together like a basket on a structured skirt with belted tunic; an ivory and white counterpart was long and flowing.

Tassles and raffia embroidery on garments lent an air of the exotic and reflect the handcraft that designers Luke and Lucie Meier are bringing to the brand, nudging it gently beyond its minimalist roots. The looks were finished with flat sandal-boots and a classic clutch.




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend