By CATHY HORYN
Published: February 20, 2008
Milan
Nothing about Prada or Jil Sander is easy, though simplicity — and tradition — are at the core of both fall collections. Miuccia Prada turned lace into a holy and fetishistic enterprise, while Raf Simons of Jil Sander tested the structural foundations of minimalism.
Yet these are the two designers who, quite simply, matter in Milan.
In contrast to the firefly transparency for spring, Mr. Simons went heavier, warmer, the tweed and dark woolen collars spiraling against the face — and that may be a turn-off. But in virtually every outfit in his show on Monday night, Mr. Simons put purpose to his tailoring. And Milan has been awash in clothes without interest or real design.
Under Mr. Simons, Jil Sander has become a source for beautiful dresses and modern tailoring. This time, he said, he wanted the tailoring patternmakers to think more like the drapers, and vice versa. That exercise produced a slim navy wool sheath with a chevron of pressed pleats from neckline to hem, as well as a remarkable dress with a bow effect at the neck done with an inner structure of padding under speckled gray tweed.
Structure is the essence of fashion, and many designers have shied away from it — or do it cheaply with a gather. Mr. Simons sees only contemporary possibilities with the most traditional values, like a tweed jacket in a blend of navy and purple that breaks interestingly above the elbows and holds your attention with the way the fabric spills and drapes across the front. And this hard-core interest has put him in the vanguard of women’s fashion.
“You want to be more simple in fashion now, and more minimal,” Ms. Prada said after her fascinating show on Tuesday night. Of course, she is not talking about lovely dresses, like those that Tomas Maier showed earlier in the day at Bottega Veneta. Mr. Maier’s chic, liquidlike dresses — complemented this season with rounded blue-violet coats pasted with felt curls — have the ardent-heartedness of a man pressing his case with chocolates and roses. (O.K., O.K., you big slob, make me a lady!)
No, Ms. Prada’s black lace dresses are something else. Lace is the fabric of women’s lives, from christening robes to bridal gowns to widow’s weeds. (And let us harmonize: We are fashion nuns!) So, like Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and perhaps like Azzedine Alaïa, Ms. Prada took a single idea and stayed with it, working the black and beige lace (or orange and blue lace) into coats and slim dresses and tops with stiff satin peplums, all over bodysuits or white cotton shirts. As she said: “You have to go all the way. A little touch of lace becomes pretty.”
Structurally, proportionally, the clothes were very direct and simple — the ruffled edges of some of the 1940s dresses repeated in the suede and patent-leather pumps and nylon bags. The lace becomes the intellectual and emotional catalyst. You can’t not ask if the dresses are indecent — many of them are, after all, transparent. But Ms. Prada has made sure that it’s not the only question her collection raises against the female self.
To an outsider — woman or man, straight or gay — many of the clothes on the Milan runways would look peculiar. They have no precise fit, no clear design values; and, apart from Sander and Prada, only a superficial waxing of authority. A weird sensitivity has captivated designers, like too many readings of Virginia Woolf, and it has resulted in sagging shapes with carefully placed flounces, practical cloaks and a suicidal palette saved by a bright touch of peacock blue.
Collections like Alberta Ferretti and Pringle, designed by Clare Waight Keller, have the range of a conversation conducted over a backyard fence. Ms. Waight Keller has a flair for knits, but her Pringle is all discreet sensibility and no humor. Her press notes refer to a “clean, disciplined correctness,” and that meant capes and austere poncho dresses. But only to a fashion person disciplined in little details would these “correct” clothes have value. To someone else, a blank husband, they would read as “nag, nag, nag: take out the trash.”
Christopher Bailey has steadily moved away from the idiosyncratic groundwork he first laid at Burberry. Those clothes were always surprising and informative, a mix of British heritage, new influences and masculine uniform, and they made Mr. Bailey a contemporary pathfinder.
His show on Monday restored some of that freshness, particularly in the A-line wool coats worn with bric-a-brac jeweled necklaces (hung on chains like decanter labels), and smart, sculptural knit tops worn with sexy silk trousers. But he still gets lost in the couture effects, like frumpy Empire lines and pleated cloqué, the stiffness and fit making beetles out of supermodels.
It took giants to build the Milan fashion houses, and apparently it takes corporations to bury them. Gianfranco Ferré is the latest management fiasco; after Mr. Ferré’s death last June, the company hired the designer Lars Nilsson. That marriage was swiftly annulled — did somebody not ask enough questions at the start? — and the collection on Monday was a respectful team effort that stopped short of embarrassment.
Mr. Ferré’s fashion was modernist architecture with the blood thirst of a diva. It always said: Go for it. Designers are fumbling all over Milan, doing delightful things with seams. This would be a lucrative moment for someone at Ferré to get it right.
No words could properly describe Cristina Ortiz’s first effort for Salvatore Ferragamo, another house in perpetual transition, until I looked out the car window on my way to Prada and saw a billboard of the tawny mane and cleavage of Celine Dion. But exactly!
Like a lot of designers, Angela Missoni finds inspiration in “The Women,” the George Cukor film now in remake, and as she observed on Sunday, “135 actresses and not even the shadow of a man.”
Well, not quite. There is the incredible influence of Adrian, the MGM costume designer of the film. Ms. Missoni didn’t attempt to channel Adrian — that would be pointless — but she did appreciate his feeling for asymmetry and unusual prints, among other bygone qualities.
Who doesn’t admire self-expressive fashion and wish there were more choices for women? Ms. Missoni’s trouble is that while she understands the principle of having an independent style, she doesn’t have the imaginative powers to realize it in a contemporary way.
She may believe that women would feel happier in a poncho lined in a Missoni print, more sophisticated in a turquoise print silk dress over a turtleneck, and more mysterious in a pair of gray flannels with a stiff floral stole, but the results, on this outing, looked self-conscious.
Published: February 20, 2008
Milan
Nothing about Prada or Jil Sander is easy, though simplicity — and tradition — are at the core of both fall collections. Miuccia Prada turned lace into a holy and fetishistic enterprise, while Raf Simons of Jil Sander tested the structural foundations of minimalism.
Yet these are the two designers who, quite simply, matter in Milan.
In contrast to the firefly transparency for spring, Mr. Simons went heavier, warmer, the tweed and dark woolen collars spiraling against the face — and that may be a turn-off. But in virtually every outfit in his show on Monday night, Mr. Simons put purpose to his tailoring. And Milan has been awash in clothes without interest or real design.
Under Mr. Simons, Jil Sander has become a source for beautiful dresses and modern tailoring. This time, he said, he wanted the tailoring patternmakers to think more like the drapers, and vice versa. That exercise produced a slim navy wool sheath with a chevron of pressed pleats from neckline to hem, as well as a remarkable dress with a bow effect at the neck done with an inner structure of padding under speckled gray tweed.
Structure is the essence of fashion, and many designers have shied away from it — or do it cheaply with a gather. Mr. Simons sees only contemporary possibilities with the most traditional values, like a tweed jacket in a blend of navy and purple that breaks interestingly above the elbows and holds your attention with the way the fabric spills and drapes across the front. And this hard-core interest has put him in the vanguard of women’s fashion.
“You want to be more simple in fashion now, and more minimal,” Ms. Prada said after her fascinating show on Tuesday night. Of course, she is not talking about lovely dresses, like those that Tomas Maier showed earlier in the day at Bottega Veneta. Mr. Maier’s chic, liquidlike dresses — complemented this season with rounded blue-violet coats pasted with felt curls — have the ardent-heartedness of a man pressing his case with chocolates and roses. (O.K., O.K., you big slob, make me a lady!)
No, Ms. Prada’s black lace dresses are something else. Lace is the fabric of women’s lives, from christening robes to bridal gowns to widow’s weeds. (And let us harmonize: We are fashion nuns!) So, like Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and perhaps like Azzedine Alaïa, Ms. Prada took a single idea and stayed with it, working the black and beige lace (or orange and blue lace) into coats and slim dresses and tops with stiff satin peplums, all over bodysuits or white cotton shirts. As she said: “You have to go all the way. A little touch of lace becomes pretty.”
Structurally, proportionally, the clothes were very direct and simple — the ruffled edges of some of the 1940s dresses repeated in the suede and patent-leather pumps and nylon bags. The lace becomes the intellectual and emotional catalyst. You can’t not ask if the dresses are indecent — many of them are, after all, transparent. But Ms. Prada has made sure that it’s not the only question her collection raises against the female self.
To an outsider — woman or man, straight or gay — many of the clothes on the Milan runways would look peculiar. They have no precise fit, no clear design values; and, apart from Sander and Prada, only a superficial waxing of authority. A weird sensitivity has captivated designers, like too many readings of Virginia Woolf, and it has resulted in sagging shapes with carefully placed flounces, practical cloaks and a suicidal palette saved by a bright touch of peacock blue.
Collections like Alberta Ferretti and Pringle, designed by Clare Waight Keller, have the range of a conversation conducted over a backyard fence. Ms. Waight Keller has a flair for knits, but her Pringle is all discreet sensibility and no humor. Her press notes refer to a “clean, disciplined correctness,” and that meant capes and austere poncho dresses. But only to a fashion person disciplined in little details would these “correct” clothes have value. To someone else, a blank husband, they would read as “nag, nag, nag: take out the trash.”
Christopher Bailey has steadily moved away from the idiosyncratic groundwork he first laid at Burberry. Those clothes were always surprising and informative, a mix of British heritage, new influences and masculine uniform, and they made Mr. Bailey a contemporary pathfinder.
His show on Monday restored some of that freshness, particularly in the A-line wool coats worn with bric-a-brac jeweled necklaces (hung on chains like decanter labels), and smart, sculptural knit tops worn with sexy silk trousers. But he still gets lost in the couture effects, like frumpy Empire lines and pleated cloqué, the stiffness and fit making beetles out of supermodels.
It took giants to build the Milan fashion houses, and apparently it takes corporations to bury them. Gianfranco Ferré is the latest management fiasco; after Mr. Ferré’s death last June, the company hired the designer Lars Nilsson. That marriage was swiftly annulled — did somebody not ask enough questions at the start? — and the collection on Monday was a respectful team effort that stopped short of embarrassment.
Mr. Ferré’s fashion was modernist architecture with the blood thirst of a diva. It always said: Go for it. Designers are fumbling all over Milan, doing delightful things with seams. This would be a lucrative moment for someone at Ferré to get it right.
No words could properly describe Cristina Ortiz’s first effort for Salvatore Ferragamo, another house in perpetual transition, until I looked out the car window on my way to Prada and saw a billboard of the tawny mane and cleavage of Celine Dion. But exactly!
Like a lot of designers, Angela Missoni finds inspiration in “The Women,” the George Cukor film now in remake, and as she observed on Sunday, “135 actresses and not even the shadow of a man.”
Well, not quite. There is the incredible influence of Adrian, the MGM costume designer of the film. Ms. Missoni didn’t attempt to channel Adrian — that would be pointless — but she did appreciate his feeling for asymmetry and unusual prints, among other bygone qualities.
Who doesn’t admire self-expressive fashion and wish there were more choices for women? Ms. Missoni’s trouble is that while she understands the principle of having an independent style, she doesn’t have the imaginative powers to realize it in a contemporary way.
She may believe that women would feel happier in a poncho lined in a Missoni print, more sophisticated in a turquoise print silk dress over a turtleneck, and more mysterious in a pair of gray flannels with a stiff floral stole, but the results, on this outing, looked self-conscious.
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