Milan Gets a Leg Up on Pants, and Color Is Black
As predicted, trousers are a big message for fall here, as designer showings get off to a somewhat equivocal start.
With a schedule so packed that buyers and journalists have to choose from as many as three shows occurring simultaneously in different parts of the city, there is still very little to write home about. The big color is black, with shades of purple, pink, red or bright blue showing up in most collections. Skirt lengths are usually at the knee or just below it. And everyone is showing pants.
Giorgio Armani’s Emporio Armani kickoff show early Sunday morning featured all manner of fake fur accessories, trimmings and linings, along with classic blazers and slacks, which were never shown together. Armani takes all the classic, timeless wardrobe elements, mixes them with contemporary pieces, and comes out with outfits much like those that California kids have been putting together for themselves these past few seasons. Legging-like pants beneath a short, slim skirt are worn with a classic tweed jacket, for example. High-waist, straight-leg solid gray pants are teamed with a blue denim vest and a boldly checked jacket. Skirts, sometimes fringed at the hemline, are short and either gathered or side draped above legs covered by boots, opaque hosiery, or sometimes bicycle pants.
Gigli Mainstream Now
For evening, Armani’s black chiffon crepe Bermuda length shorts and jacket is decorated with shiny jet beads; his short full-skirted shocking-pink dance dress is shown with matching pink hosiery and pink high-top sneakers. The Emporio Armani bride wore one layer of embroidered white chiffon, shaped into a flight mechanic’s jump suit.
Designer Romeo Gigli, once a rebel voice among Milan’s classic sportswear designers, has become mainstream now. And he’s not about to mess with success by changing his narrow-body, intellectual style. Gigli’s fall collection features straight-leg pants with long, slope-shoulder jackets, lots of narrow-bodice, tube-like knit dresses and a typical pallet of subtle mauve, taupe and mousy shades. His sweaters are extraordinarily handsome and appropriate for Southern Californians: cape collars, shawl collars, and off-the-shoulder collars top pullovers and cardigans so long and cocoon-like that many could double as dresses. The off-the-shoulder numbers, with rib-knit portrait necklines, can be worn for daytime with turtlenecks or blouses underneath, and for evening with bare shoulders.
Jubilant to Resigned
Gigli’s other big night-or-day-look is the one-shoulder, one-sleeve knit tube dress. For daytime, it’s teamed with a new-fangled turtleneck knit dickey that covers the bare arm, the shoulder and neckline. For evening the tube dress is worn as is, with one shoulder and arm left bare. Gigli also uses a piece of knit tubing from bosom to hip on top of a pale chiffon strapless evening dress, so that a bit of chiffon peaks up at the bosom and a full chiffon skirt poofs out below the tube.
Executives from Bloomingdale’s, Neiman-Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Maxfield and Macy’s have turned up at most shows. The Macy’s contingent looks jubilant and the Bloomingdale’s groups look resigned. If and when R. H. Macy acquires Federated Department stores, then Bloomingdale’s, Bullocks and I. Magnin will be, as one Federated buyer phrased it, “eaten up” by Macy’s.
Internal chaos notwithstanding, every U.S. retailer here is searching for adventure--something really eye-catching to purchase or simply to translate into affordable merchandise for the customers back home. Toward that end, they all packed the house at Dolce & Gabbana, a 3-year-old firm headed by Domenico Dolce, 28, and Stefano Gabbana, 25.
The news here was black and more black, styled into underwear looks for evening (dresses that look like 1950s slips or old-fashioned bras attached to billowing petticoats). There were more of the firm’s old-fashioned Sicilian peasant looks, consisting of fitted black jersey bodices above full, mid-calf skirts.
But in among the theatrical costume looks rehabilitated from past eras was a sparkling group of velvet pantsuits, in black or grape, made up of handsome, long jackets with matching straight-leg pants and pristine white blouses with neckline frills poking out. When this perky group hit the runway, even the photographers cheered.
Sidesteps Issue
Gianni Versace, one of Milan’s heavy hitters, sidestepped the hemline issue at his show Sunday night by offering lots of wide, straight-leg pants and such stupendously styled black leather or bright wool jackets that no one really cared what was happening on the bottom half. Versace’s jackets are long and shaped and some curve down over the hips to hit mid-thigh. With these, he also offered leggings under side-slit sarong skirts, or velvet knickers, or miniskirts. One handsome charcoal redingote was shown over a miniskirt of ruffled tiers with boots to mid-thigh. Very short skirts are still around, but so far audiences haven’t been responding to them.
Mariuccia Mandelli for Krizia took a firm stand on length Monday morning at her show offering all manner of textural daytime knit dresses and crinkled woven wool suits at the knee or just below it. She calls this, in her program notes, “the wise length,” and indeed it seemed right to the audience. Mandelli’s favorite color is gray spiked with bright turquoise for blouses, sweaters and the underbrims of felt hats. Her blue angora two-piece sweater dresses were topped with lightweight jackets of sheared gray mouton reversing to turquoise leather.
Mandelli’s pants are usually wide and straight legged with slanting pocket flaps at the hip. Like most other designers she shows knee-length Bermuda shorts in velvet or leather. For evening, it is miniskirts all the way. Some of them like powder puffs of pink tulle or pink mink, beneath tailored pink satin shirts. Her best evening look however, is a stunning black velvet pantsuit with elongated jacket and a discreet bit of glitter on the shoulder and sleeves.
