Milan Day Two: A Big Debut and a Second Coming

MILAN — A sophomore outing and a debut were the main events on the second day of shows in Milan, where the fashionscape is slowly evolving. Throughout, an enduring style trope keeps recurring: the face-off of the masculine and the feminine — how very Milanese!

Maria Grazia Chiuri’s first collection as creative director of Fendi was a homecoming of sorts. She was there right at the beginning of her career, in fact, for a formative decade during a heyday for the Roman house: 1989–1999. Now in the driver’s seat, she has a new slogan: “Less me, more us.” It’s about sorority rather than the feminism she brought to Dior; Fendi, after all, soared under its founding family’s five sisters. But something about the new mantra feels just as fabricated.

To be sure, Chiuri has a sharp vision and a keen sense for what will sell. What she lacks in ability to make one dream and unleash the imagination, she makes up for in pragmatism: Her first outing for Fendi wisely expanded the brand’s offer in several directions. The collection, a co-ed affair built around the concept of a shared wardrobe — and lots of tailoring and cargo stuff for women — wasn’t the least bit surprising, but it was convincing and assured. The woman, in particular, was very Dior — Chiuri’s Dior — but stripped of the Parisian pomp and marinated in Roman souce. This made her a bit more insouciant, a little more sly, still quite relatable. In fact, it looked like Chiuri may have modelled the Fendi woman on herself. All in all, it was a solid debut: lots of great product, if nothing particularly dreamy.

The second coming is the real testing ground for a new designer’s vision: the moment when the hints and the signs laid out in a debut coalesce into a real sense of direction. At Jil Sander, after a rather clinical, palate-cleansing first outing six months ago, Simone Bellotti felt more daring, and delivered the goods, exploring ideas of contradiction, excess, tension and eroticism in a rather unsettling, Fassbinder kind of way. In other words, he embraced moreness, without forsaking lessness, and that created an electrifying, angular frisson. There were hints of rulebook Jil in the severe, vertical masculine tailoring and in a few dresses that battled with curvaceous cuts, collapsing flaps and humongous seam allowances, and more than one nod to Romeo Gigli. This was Jil Sander breaking the minimalist mould but not entirely. Bellotti is letting go. Some added daring — in colour and sensuality — and he will be there.

More merging of the masculine and the feminine happened at Missoni, where it was all about one attitude: hands in pockets, either for women dressed like men in layered overcoats, dangling scarves, barely-hanging-there double-pleated trousers, or dressed as women in knitted dresses that were big on top and clingy from the waist to the ankle. Now in his third season, Alberto Caliri keeps pushing the idea of ​​Missoni as a look, actively reflecting on an aesthetic that was androgynous from the start, having originated from the creative dialogue of Ottavio and Rosita Missoni. This one was particularly catchy, probably way too much 1980s, but still viable

The look at Etro — layered, gypsy and grungy — needs to be rethought, because, as it is, it’s in danger of suffocating Marco De Vincenzo’s vision, which is trending back to the core boho values of the house. This time the hints of sharp masculine tailoring felt fresh and promising, but they were soon smothered by the usual high-bohemia decorativism. De Vincenzo has a wonderful way with psychedelic restraint, and it would be nice to see him take that direction more.

Finally, there were archetypes: ways to deal with the classics in order to make them look fresh. It’s always been the case at MM6 Maison Margiela, where the trope of abnormal normality is enduring. It happened again this season, but the vibe felt feisty rather than somber or conceptual, and it looked like a step in a good new direction. At N.21, finally, Alessandro Dell’Acqua, took ideas — and items — from 1940s femininity, and twisted and deflated them. Sure, there were whiffs of Prada, but Dell’Acqua’s deep love for dressmaking is all his own.