Fashion 86 : Life Style of the Los Angeles Male Influences Italian Collections
While many American menswear designers continue to emulate the fashion mannerisms of the English, the Italians are having a love affair with Los Angeles. Or so it would seem from the 1987 spring-summer collections recently shown in Florence and Milan.
Whether inspired by Hollywood glamour of the ‘30s and ‘40s or by the boys of summer ’86 in Manhattan Beach, the Italians have positively embraced the California life style and the clothing that fits it. One comes away from these shows wondering if Italian designers get off the plane at LAX and kiss the tarmac.
The first display at the huge Pitti Uomo trade show held in the Fortezza de Basso in Florence was a photo exhibit by American photographer Bruce Weber, produced by the magazine Per Lui, entitled “Summer Diary 1986.” A valentine to the L.A. area, the show is a collage of photos taken by Weber at the Shangri-La Hotel in Santa Monica, of lifeguards at Zuma Beach, old photographs of movie stars, such as Elizabeth Taylor (in swimsuit) and a young jeans-clad Clint Eastwood, and free-association notes from the photographer, among which is a list of his “favorite things in Los Angeles.”
The “I Love L.A.” spirit continued through most of the Florence collections--most notably at the Ermenegildo Zegna exhibit, where director’s chairs and strips of film were lavishly used as props--and continued through to Milan. It is no wonder that the Italian invasion continues in Southern California, from Beverly Hills to Newport Beach.
Mila Schoen opens a boutique on Rodeo Drive in September and Giorgio Armani’s search continues for a site on which to build an Emporio Armani shop that will equal the scope and size of the store in Milan.
The strength of the Italian collections is practicality. From fabrications to coloration to temperament, these clothes are all the L.A. man needs for year-round wear. There are very few gimmicks; these are straightforward clothes, and their appeal is in the fabrics and the way they are put together.
Suits are given a new longevity. At Armani, Ferre, Soprani and countless others, the suit--ever so slightly more tailored and stricter in line--was shown with the traditional furnishings of a dress shirt and tie. But suits were also shown with polo shirts, sweaters and casual shirts, such as work shirts. So that expensive suit, which normally would only see wear during the business week, steps out on Saturday and Sunday in a more relaxed stance. This dress-up-or-down approach to tailored clothing is not a rehash of the Don Johnson/”Miami Vice” look; it is much closer to the well-heeled producer taking an informal meeting at his Malibu home.
Gianni Versace took the casual-suit approach to the nth degree by cutting wool jersey in polo-shirt weight and sweat shirt knits into single-breasted, notched-lapel jackets with matching pleated pants. Always an innovator in the area of fabrics, the designer said: “Men should have the comfort of knits with the cut of the classic suit. It’s a modern way of mixing style and movement.”
Armani’s approach to the dress-up/dress-down suit was to use fabrics that looked old and slightly rumpled from the start . . . rather like the way a man would look if he got stuck on the freeway with no air conditioning for a couple of hours in August.
The idea, according to Armani, is to “take classic wools, worsteds and linens and shed all of their stiffness through a process of blending and laundering to a state of live-in comfort.”
Spring and summer of ’87 will see men in a variety of sport coats, which played a major role in the Italian collections. After several years of taking the back seat to sweaters and suits, sport coats, both single- and double-breasted, make a fine alternative to the old standby, the navy blazer. (It will not totally replace the blazer, as the Italians have numerous versions of that as well.)
Sport coats in plaids, which range from overblown Prince of Wales to mini-patterns reminiscent of plaids of the early ‘50s, were handled in the dress-up/dress-down manner. Such a jacket is tossed over a linen-and-jersey sweat shirt and sweat pants at Soprani, over crisply tailored trousers, a linen shirt and tie at Ferragamo or over Bermuda-length shorts and a polo shirt at Byblos, Armani, Valentino, Biagiotti, Uomo, Missoni, Basile and others. In fact, the Italians are quite taken with the idea of the structured sport coat or blazer over Bermuda-length shorts . . . sort of Portofino meets the Pacific Palisades via Palm Beach.
So what of all those unconstructed jackets that were all the rage for several seasons? Well, they are certainly still around, looking quite good in those “old school” forms in seersucker and linen. But they do look a bit youthful, which is appropriate in the less-expensive lines, such as Emporio Armani and the soon-to-be-in-America Oliver line by Valentino. The more structured jacket looks far newer, more elegant and more monied, even when worn over walking shorts.
The pivotal point of a man’s wardrobe for next spring and summer is the polo shirt. In all of its reincarnations, it is--if you could only buy one thing for the year--the thing to buy. Incredible as it may seem, the Italians have used the polo shirt in ways that work from the beach to black tie functions.
Take a navy polo shirt, be it in cotton or silk knit or one of the newer versions of the pseudo-polo in handkerchief linen with a ribbed-knit collar, and wear it under a white or tan suit . . . the dressed-down suit look. Wear the same polo shirt over shorts or trousers, throw on a sports coat or sweater . . . the super-casual approach. Take the polo shirt, add a tie, jacket and trousers . . . the office polo. Take the same polo shirt and put on a white dinner jacket, some natty plaid evening trousers, skip the tie but go with the cummerbund, and you have the formal polo look. The polo shirt doesn’t have to be navy by any stretch of the imagination, though Italians did show a strong preference for that color. No, the polo shirt can be white, any number of shades of off-white, black, gray--from pearl to gunmetal--melon or shades of green. It may be striped or pin dotted. It rarely is red.
The polo is certainly the most important shirt of the season, but it would be misleading to say that it’s the only shirt around. In fact, there were many interesting versions of the casual shirt, from oversize linen boat-neck shirts to baseball shirts. There were mandarin- and kimono-collared shirts, camp and cabana shirts and classic collarless shirts. The dress shirt has undergone a dramatic transformation in collar treatment . . . where once Italian shirts were almost all universally small in the collar, today, led in force by Armani, dress shirts sport long, pointed collars. These turn up in straight or button-down versions.
There is, considering this is a spring-summer flirtation with Los Angeles, a surprising lack of swimwear throughout the collections . . . a few bikinis at Valentino and a few at Versace, where the designer believes that two are better than one (perhaps a man is supposed to shed one suit at some point during the day?).
But what the Italians lack in swimwear they make up for in collections of underwear and sleepwear. Boxers, briefs, strings, bikinis, T-shirts and undershirts in silk, linen, silk knit and good old-fashioned cotton turned up at collections as varied as Biagiotti, Uomo, Valentino and Enrico Coveri. As one retailer said, observing all of this underwear/sleepwear mania: “As goes Armani, so goes the world.”
Armani introduced his underwear collection last year. Clearly, he was speaking only of the “world of Italy,” as Calvin Klein has made millions from his underwear . . . though Klein has never taken his to the luxurious heights of silk or handkerchief linen.
Where the Italians really hit the mark is in their choices of colors for next year. There are two distinct color palettes, one very dark and murky, the other extremely pale and sun bleached. In the dark range are navys and cadet blues, steel and charcoal grays, lots of black, tobacco browns, some plum shades and an abundance of British racing-stripe green. On the light scale are white, white and more white; ecru; oatmeal; pearl gray, and a broad range of tan to khaki. The occasional bits of other colors, primarily found in shirts, are fruit hues such as peach, lime and melon--from cantaloupe to honeydew.
Fabrics include linen, linen-and-cotton blends, cotton twill, pique, seersucker, knits, silk, seven- to 10-ounce wools, gabardine, sharkskin, rayon and some interesting blends of cotton and linen with nylon.
Given the colors and the fabrics, the Italians have provided clothes that work year-round in moderate climates such as Los Angeles. The dark colors work for late fall, winter and early spring, the lights for late spring and summer.
