Recently COUNCIL OF FASHION DESIGNERS OF AMERICA launched some upsetting proposals for the fashion system, and European fashion coucils tried to respond, even if they didn’t know how to. The hot topic concerns twice-yearly fashion shows and their impossibility of immediate purchase for those who want to buy everything just after the final catwalk. So the question is: Do fashion weeks make sense anymore?
Antonio Marras is the perfect embodiment of what I call “poet-designer”. He is one of the few visionary characters who lives fashion and everything that goes around it, as a means of expression of his cultural identity. I think that due to this reason his invitation and press-kit are the most wanted objects of desire of the Milan Fashion Week; they are like small art works in which he explains his point of view, through images and words inviting the reader to discover a different world.
Haute couture time in Paris. Models on the runways need to have a great screen presence; styling should be perfect; clothes must impress the press and the 30 richest women of the world who can buy them; guests must seem like stars in the sky, while smiling at the cameras. In this ritual concerning abstraction from reality, mere mortals can watch the celebration of fashion as a pure art form only via streaming.
Gilded mirrors, soft lighting, international guests and the garden full of people. It seems to be in one of those wonderful hotels that survived the Haussmann’s renovation of Paris, waiting for the collection of the latest child prodigy who will change fashion for ever, but actually is June 16th and I am at the Polimoda Show 2015 in Florence to see the 20 best collections from the Polimoda Fashion Design Course led by Patrick De Muynck.
During the latest Milan Fashion Week seems that one woman stood out among the infinite variety of fashion designers who brought the style of the 70s back. She was Vivetta, the fashion outsider who debuted on the catwalk thanks to the project of Mr.Giorgio Armani dedicated to the new fashion generations, according to which he hosts the best new talents of the moment in his sacred temple, the Armani Teatro.
Miuccia Prada presented the FW 2015 collection during Milan Fashion Week in the post-industrial venue of via Fogazzaro set up by the Rem Koolhaas’ AMO studio as a maze of candy-colored Chinese boxes, in which she showed a story of “experiments on proportions” that could confuse the less trained eyes to the search of beauty.
During Milan Fashion Week you could feel a sophisticated atmosphere at via Pontaccio 21 for the presentation of the Kiton FW 2015 womenswear line, crowning glory of the Neapolitan tailoring brand Kiton, which welcomed the guests with a sensorial installation where dresses perfectly matched with colors, scents, flower compositions and contemporary art.
My Milan Fashion Week begins with the Angelo Marani FW 2015 fashion show. Finally, after too many seasons, I had the chance to begin my fashion tour with one of the fashion designers I appreciate the most for his industriousness, pragmatism and creativity. His unique style is the result of a perennial and personal research that non only involves the love for women, but also for art, photography, cinema and, above all, the textile research.
The Gucci Fall Winter 2015 collection will be remembered for the debut of Alessandro Michele. The new creative director of the brand, with a show of a few minutes, has permanently deleted 10 years of Frida Giannini’s vision, marking a deep breaking off with the past.
Fashion is a merry-go-round which many people wish to get in and the beginning of a new year means “time for a new ride”. Come on board, the fashion carousel will spin again soon!