Fashion Brief
If the positioning of politics within fashion feels a bit problematic, on the final day of the shows in Milan, at least one party line had been drawn: in menswear, logos are going nowhere.
This was perhaps most surprising from Giorgio Armani, the king of Milan but also of understated chic. Hosting the show in his favoured concrete auditorium, the Italian designer had hung a billowing white curtain at the end of the catwalk, embellished with a large “GA” logo from the 1980s archive. At Fendi, which took place nearby a few hours later, there were logos on almost every single piece.
The rest of Armani’s collection was logo-free, with a focus on summer rather than spring, with the designer taking a deep dive into the doublebreasted suit, recast here in chalk white, hemp grey and blue for summer. Save for a few large knapsacks, Armani loafers and espadrilles, accessories were minimal, so the models carried their grosgrain hats like handbags.
Suits are an Armani mainstay, but the shape, styling and mood will change each season. Updates came in the shape – high-waisted gaucho-style trousers, with unconstructed jackets that were zoot-like in cut – and in the styling, worn over T-shirts, or waistcoats, which appeared in leather, knits, tie-dye prints. The mood was predominantly louche and, like the logo, 1980s in proportion; there was more than a whiff of Richard Gere in American Gigolo on display.
Elsewhere, Armani flipped perception over the role of an item of clothing, casting silky blouses as jackets and jackets as blouses. In the show notes, the designer even suggested the suits be worn “casually, on the beach”. Any queries over the practicality (for one, they add a whole extra layer of fabric) were swiftly hushed by the penultimate two models who walked together, their jackets almost completely open, with nothing underneath.
If logos at Fendi were a theme, they were as prescient on the catwalk as they were off. As fans scrabbled for photos of K-pop stars in logo’d cross-body bumbags and buckets hats outside, inside the audience were sated by the same aesthetic, with logos appearing on backs, jackets, tops, sleeves, and even sock toes.
Fendi has recently begun collaborating with artists, most memorably Sue Tilley in 2017. This season creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi worked with Italian multidisciplinary artist Nico Vascellari. Part of Italy’s hardcore punk scene, Vascellari went straight for the jugular, turning “Fendi” into an anagram with the words “amor” and “fiend” on neon lights at the end of the catwalk, and on the pieces themselves.
Accessories are the most lucrative aspect of any luxury house, in particular bags, and at Fendi they dominated. There were totes, bucket bags and clutches, weekend bags and bumbags worn several different ways. Every model carried one. Some carried two. Expect the Peekaboo X-Lite bag – a large tote with the middle frame removed – to be a social media fixture. The bags too shifted under the weight of old logos and new ones, layered up and even overlapping in a hyperbolic fashion.
The clothes themselves played second fiddle, with the show notes describing them casually as “easy staples”. Here, that meant short shorts (another Milanese theme) alongside spring clothes suitable for rain. Transparent raincoats and anoraks were worn with track pants knitted polo shirts, and everything came in a contrasting palette which focused on red, black, white and brown.
Financially, the focus on logos makes sense. The Armani group is Italy’s second-largest fashion company (after Prada), but Armani’s strategy in selling through a whopping seven different lines has been under scrutiny (he now has three: Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani and the lower priced Armani Exchange). Fendi, meanwhile, is attempting to court the oft-mentioned millennial market by rolling out a new logo, the double-F emblem, based on the 1974 squared iteration. In turn, accessory sales at LVMH, the conglomerate that owns Fendi, were reportedly up almost 20% for the whole of 2017.
