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GCDS and Moschino Get Provocative
For Fall 2024, Prada's luxe basics continued to flourish, coming to life with a lineup that added a slick of silliness to the house’s refined polish. This translated into pieces carved out around the body, peeled away to expose inner layers: Skirts created a façade of fabric, juxtaposing delicacy and strength, with tasteful fragile silks laid against tailoring wool — for added contrast.
MM6 Maison Margiela
Then again, contrasts like that have also been at the heart of MM6 Maison Margiela’s collections: for Fall, the collection struck a balance between sweetly prim shapes and sculptural ones, which felt as traditional as seasons past. Abstraction, ultimately, translated in a relentless play with length and width: there was plenty of color to be had, though it was the pieces with a minimalist palette that hit home the most.
Moschino
Add to that a cool dose of retro-driven sensuality and you gain a lineup that strikes a nice juxtaposition between the novel and the more timeless: a new, new challenge taken on by Adrian Appiolaza, newly-appointed Creative Director of Moschino who for Fall 2024 looked to craft, but also gestures and ideology, paying homage to the late Franco Moschino. The sensitivity of the collection was touching: logos of peace and love feel as relevant and timely in a time of social unrest. Timeless classics were pleasingly twisted, with a slightly provocative undertone that rose through: trenches and toppers were worn over body-morphing lingerie, embellished with clutched pearls — they brought forth the distinct lexicon that the Italian house has long been known for.
GCDS
Elsewhere, the tension between the hard and the soft is something Giuliano Calza plumbed in his outing for GCDS, casting soft-looking separates with oversized volumes to match. The starting point? “When I began devising this collection, I really wanted to do something fun and colorful, but then I didn't resonate with it,” Calza told office backstage post-show. “So I chose another path, a tension that pushed me to be dramatic while maintaining a youthful vein: Going back to my childhood memories and the moments of laughter and pain, I wanted to depict the dualism of these emotional states,” he expands. Amid the dramatic offerings, there were tons of fuss-free proposals that were pleasing: ultra-cozy styles featured all-white coats with enough arm-room for layering, but clothes promptly got, well, sexier, further down the lineup.
This collection was hardly an exercise in simplification, but there was a clear preference to strip things back and focus on clothes that matter and that people can wear, too.
Uptown Classics, Downtown Subversion at Milan Fashion Week
Diesel
Seen through that lens, Diesel’s Fall 2024 outing was a case in point. Through a lineup of characterful attractions, democratizing the fashion show is an increasingly commonplace phenomenon for Glenn Martens, who had over a thousand aficionados connected through towering screens that projected the behind the scene process from the HQ. Now here’s the thing: You don’t really think of Glenn Martens’ practice as a vehicle of inclusivity, but this was a clever way for an insider to both acknowledge how fashion can both change and take a step forward — a step that, season after season, keeps the levels of curiosity on a high, showing funky results which keep the brand’s DNA moving. All in all, this was a wardrobe that looked mature, mixing retro glamor with contemporary codes.
Fendi
Elsewhere, you could feel a sweet, uptown tension at play at Fendi, who for Fall 2024 looked to its 1984 archives for inspiration, adopting a newfound ease that teamed comfort and ‘strident confidence’. “The sketches reminded me of London during that period: the New Romantics, the adoption of workwear, aristocratic style and more,” noted Kim Jones. Heaving with an interplay of references such as utilitarianism and drama, they acted as a catalyst for the Fendi woman this season, translating into severe tailored offerings, juxtaposing a feminine sensibility that embraces the austerity of sinuous lines with rounded silhouettes. The graphic details of rich, compact wools and layered wool coats were tied and belted, borrowing more from robes. Knitwear looked sleek, with a somewhat layered — and softened — second skin found in silk ribs which employed traditional Britishness such as the Aran and Guernsey.
Marco Rambaldi
And in times of unrest, can references ever be enough? Not for designer Marco Rambaldi, who chose to encompass a medley of emotive underpinnings in its Fall collection, detailing the current state of our times. “This is a collection that epitomizes the turbulence of our era — a time where empathy fades, the order of things tears apart and failsafe approaches become far-flung memories,” notes Rambaldi in a backstage interview with office. Rambaldi continues to have a taste for the archives, too, though this season was an ode to its classics such as the knitwear made in jacquard rainbow hearts, and garments dating back to its beginning such as the sleeveless-meets-short bomber revisited in wool, denim and leather, nodding to the art of conceal and reveal. Additionally, embellished twin sets with Swarovski crystals tinted of a heavenly blue felt pleasing.
N21
Rounding up the day was N21, where Alessandro Dell’Acqua landed on bourgeois territory for its Fall outing: albeit a tasteful set of color-blocked separates which were body-morphing and breezy in equal measure, the collection — which recalled the uptown glamor of the ‘80s — lacked cohesion, and had offbeat proportions that felt somehow redundant here and there. These are clothes that can turn into easily transformable must-haves: A seriously good (and sexy!) relish for a buyer's recipe.
