Milan and Paris broaden the dress code for men
Gender lines remained blurred at Milan and Paris menswear shows.
Milan and Paris autumn-winter 2020-21 menwear’s shows continued to blur gender lines.
Gucci, Milan
If any one designer can take credit for revolutionising menswear, it is Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, who made his runway debut as creative director five years ago with a menswear collection that challenged masculine codes.
The menswear previews of the past fortnight for autumn-winter 2020-21 confirmed the shifting conversation on men’s dressing. Designers across the spectrum made clear that introducing feminine elements to a man’s wardrobe — in colours, silhouettes and textiles — is a durable trend into the new decade.
“I don’t want to give the impression I want to deconstruct or destroy the masculine world. I want to enlarge it,” Michele says.
He is inviting his Gucci tribe to discover their inner child and “relearn” what it is to be masculine.
Michele’s return to childhood included a sort of Alice in Wonderland journey through the rabbit hole, with clothes made to look too small, like a tiny boy’s suit that he had grown out of, or too big, like oversize T-shirts, plaid shirts and jeans that looked like hand-me-downs he was still growing into.
There were no blousy shirts with big bows similar to those from Michele’s debut runway show, which set off the Gucci disruption. But men wore big jewelled necklaces over business suits, cropped knitwear naively embroidered with baby chicks, and finished looks with buckled mary jane shoes and perforated socks. Suits included boyish shorts or knickerbockers more often than a trouser.
Fendi, Milan
Silvia Venturini Fendi presented a rich collection for the family-run fashion house that subtly blurred gender lines, without ever abandoning a masculine silhouette. The collection hit just the right note in the conversation of what men’s dressing can be today.
The art lay foremost in the overcoats, which were tailored in three lengths that zipped on and off, depending on the mood or weather. In their most cropped version, the coats swung sensually like short capes with shortened sleeves.
Men’s suits featured slightly larger lapels and were paired with knitwear, including soft sweaters with generous turtlenecks that could be pulled over the head for extra protection against the elements. Knickerbockers sometimes substituted trousers.
A series of Fendi-emblazoned bags in bright yellow were the accessories of choice; especially tantalising were eye-catching leather shopper bags that could be mistaken for their in-store brethren.
Armani, Milan
It’s definitely winter in Giorgio Armani’s world. The designer opened the collection with a series of ski and snowboard wear in puffy black or white in a capsule collection dubbed Neve, or Italian for snow. Transitioning into ready-to-wear, Armani made the overcoat the statement piece of the season, with the focus on texture. A wool coat had a nubby boucle finish; a shawl collar added elegance to a suede coat; striped overcoats were meant to recall blankets.
Plaid suits were set off by solid lapels; jackets were relaxed, from Nehru-style to sweater-like coats. The trouser of the season tapered slightly at the cuff.
The colour palette was mostly steely neutrals, with departures into rich velvet suits in moss green and royal red set off by navy blue.
Prada, Milan
To a fashion crowd in arena seating above a surreal piazza featuring a cut-out 3D equestrian statue, Miuccia Prada presented workmanlike looks in clean neutrals with just a flash of colour for her first collection of the new decade.
Prada says she wanted to give a message to young people in an era of confusion “that the only thing that makes me calm, relaxed and optimistic is to give value to work”. And, she adds, to give value to things that are durable.
The collection fit the overall Milan trend towards formal wear, with Prada’s targeting the working man as an ideal of an everyday hero. It includes overcoats cut just a little broadly, slightly cropped or car-coat length. Geometric patterns on silk scarfs peeked out of necklines.
The collection features few adornments, and bags were functional attaches or overnight bags.
Salvatore Ferragamo, Milan
The new Salvatore Ferragamo collection had touches of femininity against a canvas created from six masculine archetypes: sailor, surfer, soldier, race car driver, biker and businessman.
“I feel like the way that millennials are dressing today, it’s much more about mixing these very classic archetypes of men,” designer Paul Andrew said backstage after the show. “Some of them are masculine, some of them more at ease with their femininity and mixing it all together … There were tiny touches of feminine, a little bit in the colours.”
Soft pastel shirts were worn with suits, some with trousers, some with bermuda shorts and some with both, layered one over the other. A converted camera bag was carried firmly on one shoulder, like a purse, contrasting with more masculine duffel bags.
Dolce & Gabbana, Milan
Designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana put their fashion house’s artisans on full display during the Dolce & Gabbana runway show. Knitwear specialists sat in the showroom foyer, knitting together four strands of yarn, to create the sort of chunky sweaters with Lurex detailing that would later fill the runway.
The Dolce & Gabbana collection was softer than usual, with models enveloped in generous knitwear, from big-stitch sweaters, to jumpsuits or long-johns, to full-on cable-knit double-breasted suits.
A model wearing a Jon Snow-style woolly black coat carried an actual lamb down the runway as the designers sought to link the finished product with its source.
There were a few sartorial notes, such as a double-breasted suit worn with a small cross-body bag cinched with a watch chain. But the mood was more cosy than business or evening sleek, featuring rich velvet and corduroy, knitwear knapsacks, distressed work boots and earthy tones.
Louis Vuitton, Paris
Having been propelled to the top of fashion as the king of streetwear, Virgil Abloh turned his magpie gaze on the boring old business suit for Louis Vuitton.
“Tailoring,” he promised, was about to be dragged out of its “corporate comfort zone”.
Yet apart from the odd little detail, it was hard to see how the first dozen looks differed from anything you would have seen in a department store window anytime in the past half century.
Suited and shiny-booted, in shirts and ties complete with clips, his models looked at first glance like straightish young city slickers.
Look again, however, and you began to see the “surreal” details that Abloh said “make the ordinary extraordinary”.
Vintage brass Vuitton buttons were used to fasten the top of the wool gabardine jackets. Blink and you would miss a sawn-off waistcoat worn as a kind of cummerbund.
Powder-blue braces that were somewhere between a harness and a holster gave another look a subtle and unexpected edginess.
Dior Men, Paris
Kim Jones injected a spot of English aristocratic insouciance into the DNA of Dior, with a starry men’s Paris fashion week show that riffed on British upper-class eccentricity.
This was the fabled French label at its most dandyish and decadent, with top coats with velvet collars, trompe l’oeil grey minks and a staggering silver-embroidered opera coat which will retail for €75,000 ($121,000).
Jones dedicated the show to his friend Judy Blame, the British stylist and punk and New Romantic iconoclast who died two years ago.
Several of Blame’s jewellery designs were included in the show, including a chain with a coin bearing his head, as well as his signature pearl-encrusted opera gloves.
“The world is a bit depressing at the moment and I wanted to do something celebratory” as a tribute to Blame’s genius, said Jones.
AP, AFP
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