Milan Fashion Week’s Best Looks
The top moments from the Italian brands.
Fendi, Gucci, Prada: so many vowels, so many good looks to choose from. BAZAAR does the hard work for you, distilling the shows down to their essence with several standout looks from each of the major collections. See what's happening on the runways of Milan this week.
Gucci
Alessandro Michele is full of surprises. The designer has reconfigured the Gucci show calendar so it falls off the regular lineup—with the Aria collection showing last April, and the brand's latest, Love Parade, walking last night in Los Angeles. While there are certainly logistical reasons for the changes, from an editorial perspective, it allows a label to really make a splash. And splash Gucci did. The surprise we're referring to isn't a simple shift in timing, it's a peek into the creative mind of Michele and the life and times that built him. "Mum worked in the film industry as an assistant in a production company. I remember all the stories she told me, and the details and the sparkles, about that dream factory," he explains in the show notes. "There was the alabaster paleness of Marilyn Monroe...There were the black satin gloves of Rita Hayworth and Veronica Lake’s velvet hair, as well as the bewitching allure of Rock Hudson and Kim Novak’s dizzying transformative power." That move star mystique translated directly onto the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where models, Jared Leto, and Macaulay Culkin stomped under street lights in front of a star-stacked audience. A modern fascination with social media and paparazzi photos has brought the idea of celebrity back down to earth, but Michele is more interested in the concept of actor as deity. "Hollywood is, after all, a Greek temple populated by pagan divinities... Here actors and actresses are acknowledged as heroes of the myth: hybrid creatures with the power to hold divine transcendence and mortal existence at the same time." A place where stars shine on red carpets and we never see them as mere mortals getting Starbucks. A place where there are no sweatpants and yoga leggings, just diaphanous gowns, pink satin tuxes, sequins that can burn your retinas, and coats as big as egos. Welcome to Hollywood by way of Gucci. -Kerry Pieri
Gucci
Gucci
Gucci
Gucci
Bottega Veneta
For round three of Bottega Veneta's salon shows, following stops in London and Berlin, Daniel Lee showed up in the Motor City to showcase his latest—and many notable names followed him there. Mary J Blige, Lil Kim, Burna Boy, Kehlani, Selah Marley, Zazie Beetz, Slick Woods, and Sasha Lane were just some of the major players in attendance. Set to techno club music at the Michigan Building (a gilded former theatre), the runway was also star-studded, with Lourdes Leon (offspring of one Madonna) casually taking a stroll down the catwalk. The palette was mostly black and white with hits of orange and Bottega green (a color so synonymous with Lee's Bottega it is now being referenced this way). The look is street sporty—think parkas and denim sets—against 90s influenced halter necks and sparkly little dresses and shirt and skirt sets. Bodycon, a look that was pervasive all season, also showed up on this runway on one shoulder and short dresses. In other words, these are 'fits that are made to dance the night away to some techno beats.
If you find yourself in Detroit, Bottega's reign isn't ending with one runway show. The brand set up Bottega Firehouse on 1201 Bagley Street. It will be open until January and features a reading room by Asmaa Walton, design works by Chris Schanck and Aratani Fay, Underground Music Academy, Substudio textiles, Donut Shop furnishings, Hamtramck Ceramck ceramics, relief sculptures by Sophie Eisner and printed matter curated by Ruben Cardenas. -Kerry Pieri
Bottega Veneta
Bottega Veneta
Bottega Veneta
Bottega Veneta
Bottega Veneta
Versace by Fendi
Stop everything: We are officially living in a parallel fashion universe. Donatella Versace, Kim Jones, and Silvia Venturini Fendi switched places for an epic fashion event that was something far fresher than the industry’s collaborations of yore. Fendace, a 50-look Frankenstein collection composed of Jones’s and Venturini Fendi’s riff on Versace and Versace’s take on Fendi, was conceived as a “celebration of Italian fashion and a to-hell-with-it disruption of the established order of things.” This merging of competitors, particularly two iconic houses not under the same ownership, just “isn’t done” in fashion—until now.
Fendi, Versace, and Jones are friends and colleagues, and after a tough year, they crossed party lines to have a little fun. The creative directors invited one another into their family archives for inspiration and crafted their take on the other’s DNA, honoring the work of Gianni Versace and Karl Lagerfeld in turn. Versace for Fendi melded the Fendi double-F monogram with its own Grecian key motif, while Fendi for Versace used the brand’s signature safety pins and sexiness with more of a punk rock edge. The event of Milan Fashion Week was, refreshingly, about fashion for style’s sake: “It’s about the need for sincerity in fashion today rather than strategy.” —Carrie Goldberg
Versace by Fendi
Versace by Fendi
Fendi by Versace
Fendi by Versace
Fendi by Versace
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