Mosaics of Contradiction

Marco de Vincenzo’s show notes set out the conceptual backdrop for his fragmentary feast of cut and fabric: “his mosaic defies any possible definition, and together these elements are new, peculiar and coherent”. Even the words are purposefully contradictory, suggesting a kind of unity in disunity and a strange cohesion in the disparate. But what about the clothes? Well they were as varied as promised…

Painterly Ribbon

Things kicked off with a coat formed from innumerable strips of ribboned fabric that gradated like a blurred canvas down from black into canary yellow at the bottom – though gradated might be the wrong term here given that the colour-clashes were sudden and purposefully surprising. Then there was a shirt adorned with a super-vivid, Japanese-inspired mountain print followed by a dress that was all delicate-and-dainty floral beneath and then became toughly-underwired as it reached the bust. Contradictions and juxtapositions: everything de Vincenzo promised in his notes.

Rising Suns and Ruffled Textures

The Orientalism bubbled up again towards the end of the show in the form of more metallica with kimono-esque sleeves. Those ribboned pieces returned too, as, for example, a full length black dress that did, I must admit, feel a little shaggy-dog. All in all, it was plenty of the extreme fabric-innovation that we’ve come to expect from de Vincenzo, which meant a whole lot of surface play and experimentation that was as sublimely indefinable as the designer intended.

Words: Benji Walters

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Skater girls

From the skate sneakers to the models’ power-attitude on the runway, MSGM’s SS16 show drew inspiration from grunge, the underground and skate culture – as seen and experienced through the female eye. Whilst the models’ chunky skate sneakers and oversized outfits paid homage to traditional skate ‘uniform’, MSGM made it feel relevant – even romantic – with a feminine twist. Pale shades of pink featured in fluid silk and cocktail dresses were adorned with bright colour-block asymmetric ruffles. The flounce of the ruffles hinted at an elegance, which was perfectly offset by the platform sneaker.

Ruffles and Deconstruction

Deconstructed designs dominated the catwalk, with oversized ruffles featured on shirts, skirts and trouser hems. Draping bows attached to models’ sides, billowing as they fiercely walked the runway. Check-printed muslin was seen frayed, the strands sashaying with each step, whilst metal eyelets were sewn on to dresses, contrasting in shape with the ripped-up garment edges.

Chain Reaction 

Chains featured heavily in the collection, worn as harnesses and draped over more delicate dresses. There were also chains attached to handle bags and hung from belts and earring fastenings, giving a certain hardness and edge to the collection. The collection’s motif served to bring each look back to the source of inspiration: skate, grunge and the underground.

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Push it to the Limit

“Freedom of body” was key to Peter Dundas, the new Roberto Cavalli creative-director, this season. And in a sense, Cavalli has always been concerned with freedom: the freedom to push designs into the realm of maximalism, the freedom to throw leopard print around with abandon, and yes, the freedom to dabble in what might occasionally be perceived as bad taste. All three things were represented here, and so they should be.

Roar Baby!

A blazer that appeared to be made from a paisley-type fabric was shown, upon closer inspection, to be a high-impact lion head print – a not so subtle nod to the atmosphere of animalistic-sexuality that so often seems to go hand-in-hand with Cavalli’s clothing and campaigns. Then there was a sleeveless perfecto jacket fabricated in a kind of aggressively-stonewashed pink denim that recalled Cavalli’s famous sandblasted jeans. That other leitmotif, exposed flesh, was also present and correct with a great number of cut-outs and lots of leg on show.

She’s on Fire

Club-wear (sometimes eighties, sometimes early noughties) was probably the best way to describe much of this: leather trousers, tight-dresses, animal print this and that etc. The thing is, where other label’s flirt with the deliberately ‘tasteless’, playing ironically with this or that (a sequin here, a print there), this season at Cavalli was full on Tony Montana’s Scarface mansion: admirably brave, unabashedly money but not, by any stretch of the imagination, subtle.

Words: Benji Walters

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“I dipped in the stash, splurged on a chain / Now I’m Titanic, Iceberg’s the name”

Once a 90s Hip-Hop mainstay – to be mentioned in the same breath as a Coogi knitted and infamously a Jay-Z favourite – with a long and potted history of designers behind it, including Marc Jacobs, this was Iceberg’s first season under the directorship of Arthur Arbesser. He wanted to focus on “the brand’s most authentic DNA: knitwear” but to add “a streak of madness, a playful spirit drawing upon the multi-coloured creativity and the sense of humour of Enrico Baj, an Italian artist…”

“Ballin’, cop some Charles Jordan and some Icebergs / Ice herbs, nice curves, girlfriends with the white fur”

And multi-coloured playfulness is certainly what we got; it came in the form of bold red barber striped trousers and matching tops with corset-style lacing at the neckline (and the trouser-hems…), as well as blue and lilac squiggle patterned skirts that looked like a topographical map on an acid trip. Then there were the lavender raincoats, soaked in a deliciously questionable, shiny-plastic coating and the green and black chequerboard skirts that were the closest you could get to wearing an optical illusion.

“*Jeah*, and on that note / Iceberg Slim is back to rock a boat, c’mon”

Metallics weren’t left out from the party either, and were cut into silver disco-ball trousers and a short-sleeve shirt-jacket that felt both retro and relevant. A particular highlight was a slouchy blue bomber jacket with just the right amount of slippery sheen to it, not to mention some upscale white dungarees with an elegantly billowy bottom half. In essence it was exactly what Arbesser set out to achieve – and you can’t ask for more than that.

Words: Benji Walters

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Ode to Italia

For SS16 Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce celebrated everything Italian – from pasta box prints and ‘Italia is Love’ slogans, to tourist attractions like the Coliseum found embroidered with sequins on the bodice of a black gown, and an embroidered gondola grazing a model’s hip on a lemon-yellow shift dress. The show closed to the romantic tone of ‘That’s Amoré’ as models walked the runway dressed in mini-dresses featuring iconic Italian holiday postcard prints.

Seaside and Selfies

Striped tops, skirts, silk turbans and glittering sunglasses conjured up the essence of an Italian seaside vacation. This was accented by sequin embroidered starfish and crabs found on pencil skirts and a sleek black tailored suit. If the collection looked to celebrate nostalgia and Italian cliché, the addition of models taking selfies brought the show thoroughly into the modern day. As models walked the catwalk, they stopped to pose for selfies that shot up to overhead screens.

Natural Embellishment

This was a collection founded on embellishments, be it sequined depictions of tourist attractions or the fruit, flowers and pom-poms found adding flourish to headbands, sandals, tote bags and headphones. Outfits were decorated with bags of all shapes and sizes – from vanity cases to totes and black Dolce & Gabbana shopping bags. This Dolce & Gabbana Italian summer was an ode to sun, sand and of course, shopping.

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Grace and Favour

Everything fluttered by this season at Etro with a graceful softness: boho prints with a romantic energy were cut into pleats and ruffles for a feminine, folkish charm. There were long dresses aplenty with tied waists and necklines which bloomed into soft ruffles around the necklines – it was all unabashedly ornate and delicate.

Queen of Print

Etro, like their fellow Milan-showing cousins Missoni, have always been known for their lushly patterned fabrics. So, it should come as no surprise that this collection was replete with miniature florals and intricately detailed textile designs that perfectly complimented the flouncy skirting, tiered sleeves and generously fabricated pieces that flowed down to the ankle in a shimmering cascade. The usually militarily-influenced bomber jacket was softened up with the Etro treatment and was presented in the same fabrics as the dresses: a lovely take on what is, by this point, a sure fire staple.

Suggestively Buttoned-Up

The gypsy-Victoriana theme carried on by way of knee-high ankle boots with laced fronts going all the way to the top that were somewhere between old-school prim and sexed-up-equestrian. This tension – though tension is perhaps a misnomer given the grace of this collection – between proper 19^th Century lady and saucy bohemian was key throughout, with sheer-bra-less-ness and open, raucous-ale-house necklines being played against loose-fits and long hems: petal-soft but never, ever, boring.

WORDS: Benji Walters

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Riveria Tripping

In comparison to previous seasons, where Missoni’s riot of pattern has been combined with dramatic shapes (such as the breezy flamboyance of SS15), this season was more tempered in its approach to cutting. The stalwarts of the knit world were all accounted for: Talented Mr Ripley polo shirts (and many pieces with, at the very least, polo shirt collars), unstructured jackets that blurred the cardigan/jacket divide, semi-sheer cover ups and knitted dresses – often sleeveless – came thick and fast.

Printed Swimmers

It wouldn’t be Missoni without print. That’s no understatement. So worry not, their characteristic zig-zags were thrown together with plenty of LSD-nautica in the form of brightly coloured horizontals, not to mention the African inflected prints that were cut into swimsuit style pieces which left lots of skin on show: appropriate for such a warm-weather collection.

Stripes on Stripes on Stripes…

It’s probably safe to say that only Paul Smith matches Angela Missoni in the love-of-stipes stakes (and even he withdrew his trademark multi-stripe a few years back). Yep, stripes were the main takeaway from this season. They came on almost every garment that was shown, including sandals, Converse, and dresses that had a ribboned effect – in which sheer alternated with solid for a billowy sea-side vibe. In other words, it wasn’t a revolution for Missoni. But with this much loudly-patterned history behind them, why should it be?

WORDS: Benji Walters

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Constructed Shapes

The ever eccentric and subversive Consuelo Castiglioni was interested in “using abstraction to question the status quo” this season at Marni. High-minded rebelliousness as always, then, and this time with an architectural bent, as Castiglioni presented a collection full of pieces that were preoccupied with their own structural qualities at the expense of being conventionally form-fitting; many tops and dresses seemed to stiffly hold their own shape, paying little heed to the bodies beneath them – the last three looks in particular were like moving sculptures that protruded out from the shoulder and the leg in diagonally cut blackness as if cut from midnight granite.

Obstinately Seductive

An awkward sounding prospect perhaps – and those last ensembles were certainly unconventional – but, as is so often the case with Marni, the awkward, the boxy, and the deliberately strange are carried off and cut with such flourish and elegance that it’s hard to resist their peculiar charm. Vivid leaf prints were formed into dresses or peeped from beneath in the form of sleeves; sleeves, indeed, were variously wide and, in the case of two eye-catching bomber dresses, puffed-up and inflated into typically architectural curves before cascading down into ribbed-cuffs.

Layered Illusions

Tabards, tunics and various other cuts which made discerning the separate garments in an outfit difficult were all present and correct, as was a heavy use of panelling (another structural nod to the world of building design), often in asymmetrical and complicated ways that exposed the layers beneath. The closest Marni comes to visible branding is their trademark circle pattern, which was riffed on via looks comprised entirely of stitched-together circular pieces – designed to look a little like brightly coloured plastic discs – placed over black scuba body pieces. These scuba-suits turned up time and again, and helped to emphasise the sense that the body itself was really just an anonymous shadow over which to drape Castiglioni’s flights of genius-fancy: it was clever, charming, and ever so Marni.

Words: Benji Walters

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Historical Hybrid

Karl Largergeld and Silvia Fendi looked both forwards and backwards for their SS16 collection: Tudor-meets-Edwardian-meets-modern would be the succinct way to put it. The key design motif was probably the high collar married with big sleeves which gave things a distinctly old-fashioned vibe. The combination appeared on plenty of dresses, blouses and even a leather bomber jacket. If it this sounds a bit buttoned-up then fret not, there was an abundance of flesh-revealing cut-outs to heat things up a little.

Greensleeves

Voluminous puffs also contributed heavily to that Tudor court atmosphere: shoulders, trouser legs, sleeve openings and necklines were all pleated and inflated to create extremely slouchy, very bold clothing that wore its historical influences on its sleeve. Smocking – that embroidery method used to gather fabric so that it stretches and contracts – not just at cuffs but also on waists was responsible for much of this antiquated fullness, though one of the most wearable pieces, denim pantaloons, made excellent use of smocking at the hem.

Holding Court

Despite its cherry-picking of techniques from days of yore, this was still a contemporary collection. In fact, perhaps its unusual range of sources made it, ironically, more progressive than most: the perennially modern mini playsuit found itself touched with that pleating which transmuted it into some beautifully unique hybrid. Elsewhere, what looked like woven leather found itself worn like a breastplate of armour in the middle of a widow-black dress which, when combined with floral-strapped bags, made for a fearsome-yet-feminine end to a defiantly original collection. When it comes to Karl, who would expect any less?

Words: Benji Walters

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Raving and misbehaving

It was Ibiza vibes for Dsquared2 this season. Fluoro palettes, metallic accents and scuba everything with outlandish accessories, the uniform of the clubber. But the Dsquared2 girls would never be the same as us on the dancefloor, we’re clutching a vodka and tonic in each hand, mascara streaming down our faces and clambering onto the night bus at 4am with a box of chips. The Dsquared2 girls don’t dance, they float, skirts gently flapping in the breeze while their reflective embellishments glow. They’re the dancers in music videos.

Swim Good

Often easily overlooked, the swimwear this season was lacking but Dsquared2 picked up everyone else’s slack. We were given bikinis, scuba leggings, sports shaped suits and what looked like a whole lot of lifesaving ropes as harnesses, bracelets and sandal straps.

Gilding the lily

In the best way possible that is. An already ornate collection was amplified with the accessories. Fluoro plastic life-sized flower earrings were our favourites but the choker tight collars were a close second. All in entirely artificial colours, they looked like the stirrers you’d receive if you ordered a daiquiri at Club Tropicana.

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