Milan Fashion Week: AW18
Elizabeth Cady Stanton once said “The best protection any woman can have… is courage.” Designers have a responsibility especially in the climate of #MeToo, in representing strong female figures and offering collections which indeed trigger confidence and courage. Protection of oneself or others, whether male or female, young or old, seems to be the red thread linking together this season’s global fashion weeks.
The point was made most obvious at Milan Fashion Week which kicked off with a captivating presentation by ultimate outdoor brand Moncler and it’s innovative Genius Project. Moncler has taken advantage of the fashion industry’s rapidly changing environment - adapting to the fastening pace of consumer demand offering a range of bespoke, one-off capsule collections dropping periodically throughout 2018. The inaugural presentation included 8 cutting-edge collaborations with some of today’s most inventive creatives. Moncler puffer jackets were reinterpreted by the heightened romanticism of Pierpaolo Piccioli, utilitarian abstraction of Craig Green, and Victorian femininity of Simone Rocha - why not face sub-zero temperatures in style? The project is cutting ties to the restrictive nature of traditional fashion weeks and bringing a convincing alternative to the table.
Another brand which lent protection included Jil Sander, where designers Lucie and Luke Meier chose to focus on a range of tender fabrics and cocoon-like silhouettes. In place of handbags, models carried duvets, or alternatively wrapped them around the shoulders or cinched them tightly around the waist, catering to our need to feel comforted.
Capturing the moment of unsettling macro-environmental developments, a range of collections translated these feelings into the presentations themselves, often into a troubling sci-fi dystopian setting. A meaningful example was the disturbing mise-en-scene at Gucci set in a creepy suite of operating theatres. Fashion’s favourite magus, Alessandro Michele’s explained the metaphor in how people today consciously “operate” on their identities in real life (IRL) or on digital platforms inspired by a mix of Hollywood, Instagram, and brands such as Gucci. “We are the Dr. Frankenstein of our lives,” said Michele. “There’s a clinical clarity about what I am doing. I was thinking of a space that represents the creative act. I wanted to represent the lab I have in my head. It’s physical work, like a surgeon’s.”
Also at Prada the atmosphere suggested troubling times ahead. The setting was surreal and unnatural, with a black-mirrored floor, blinding neon signs attached to heavy plate glass windows - a hovering drone recording the show and audience reactions from the outside in. Big Brother is watching you. The collection was made of an intelligent mix of intriguing contrasts, whether that be a combination of hefty workwear with delicate tulle, romantic cocktail dresses with unforgiving corporate ID cards, digital prints with humble tweeds and knitwear (welcome reminders of a simpler age). Many looks were paired with clunky rubber boots with protective nylon drawstring leg-coverings. Were we protecting ourselves from the rain? Or something lethal which escaped from a top-secret lab, similar to the one in the Shape of Water? I felt this collection successfully married science and art, highlighting through blinding fluorescent colour the sour taste of artificiality and man’s never-ending assault on nature. Like all great art, the collection sparked food for thought and presented an image of a courageous woman who doesn’t have to rely on strong-shouldered blazers to come across as powerful.
With presentations getting more innovative in the hope to generate more buzz, shares, and likes (hopefully leading to an eventual sale), various brands focused on unusual accessories. Various Gucci models glided through the operating rooms holding replicas of their own heads, which has led to the #guccichallenge already trending on Social media. Is today’s fashion intentionally designed for maximum “likes” and e-word of mouth or is social media popularity a welcome byproduct of autonomous creative brilliance? The Tod’s presentation also trended, not due to pet dragons or severed heads in hand, but with the most adorable puppies propped onto the arms of supermodels including Gigi and Bella Hadid. Cuteness overload. Smiles flooded across the audience as these little guys made their runway debuts. A gesture of course to the Chinese “Year of the Dog” however dogs are surely not accessories and should not be seen in the same context as a new handbag or burnt orange leather boots. While yes, Tod’s is known for its accessories, the pups distracted from a rather dull collection.
While London was crowned with the presence of HM The Queen attending NEWGEN recipient Richard Quinn, Milan was linked with the institution of the Vatican due to the launch of the exhibition: “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”. For this year’s highly anticipated exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Vatican, Versace, and Vogue are joining forces to show off the Catholic influences in fashion. The exhibition, which opens May 10, will present some of the Vatican’s most precious treasures from the Sistine Chapel sacristy - exhibited for the first time outside the Vatican.
“Some might consider fashion to be an unfitting or unseemly medium by which to engage with ideas about the sacred or the divine,” says curator Andrew Bolton. “But dress is central to any discussion about religion. It affirms religious allegiances and, by extension, it asserts religious differences.” Also, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s culture minister, added that clothing oneself is both a material necessity and a deeply symbolic act that was even recorded in the biblical story of Adam and Eve. “God himself was concerned with dressing his creatures,” Ravasi said. Also translated into this season’s Dolce and Gabbana’s opulent collection, religion remained a central topic.
In times of chaos, we are left searching for answers often from higher powers from above. We look for direction, for centrality and grounding. As we continue to proactively protect our bodies, minds, and souls, Milan’s collections offered a range of intriguing solutions; often otherworldly, catering to our direct needs and desires through cultural ingenuity.
