Reviews of Salvatore Ferragamo, Kiton, DSquared2, & Numero 00 Spring 2021 Fashion Shows
Day 3 – Made in Italy
BY LONG NGUYEN
Day 3 of Milan Digital Fashion Week began with visual odes to the stunning beauty of Italy – of its outdoor piazzas and statues, of its old buildings, of the Florentine countryside and of course of its traditional artisanal craftsmanship.
Salvatore Ferragamo
The Piazza Salvatore e Wanda Ferragamo in Florence is the city’s tribute to the Ferragamo family for the generous donations to restore the various statues including the bronze copy of Michelangelo’s David at the Piazzale Michelangelo, and the equestrian statue of Cosimo I dei Medici by Giambologna, and the statues of Hercules and Cacus by Baccio Bandinelli among others. The Ferragamo established the business in 1927 and has been an intrinsic part of the city ever since.
In an aspirational video presentation that summed the history of the Salvatore Ferragamo brand, images of Florence are intertwined with the company’s famous print scarves. Most remarkable in the short video are close-up shots of the art of dying fibers and leathers coupled with the cutting of the wooden model of feet for making customized footwear, a tradition at the house, and the hand stitching of the threads on the suede boots.
Then it’s on to the current business at hand – new products. That means brown and white printed trench and ecru shorts, a navy tailored coat, or a tan suit. The end is the simple promise of a possible live show in the near future.
What is critical in seeing the dual images of the house printed silks with the Italian countryside in split-screen format is how important the fashion business and manufacturing are to Italy. During the severe lockdowns, many of the independent artisans were having a difficult time keeping their doors open.
Kiton
Founded in 1968 in Naples by Ciro Paone, Kiton specializes in the haute traditions of Italian tailoring where each garment represents the sartorial know-how from this family firm employing over 800 people, half of them master artisans, in five production sites located throughout Italy.
The less than two-minute Kiton presentation does not make any attempt to sell any products nor is it any kind of preview for next spring. The men who buy and wear Kiton most likely would not require any of these types of propaganda. They know exactly what they are buying and what they are buying into.
Instead, we see a man approach and touch a single-breasted jacket hanging on a wooden mannequin with the shape of the jacket hugging the sculpted form with a Kiton jacket, seasonless. Then there are majestic views of Italian palazzos, courtyards, city squares, statues, and seaside Naples.
But the most important images are those of the hands holding the white wool, the machinery that dyed the yarns, the machines that spin them into light purple wool fabrics, the factory floors, the stacks of fabrics on rolls, the hands with white chalk drawing lines on a blue wool plaid fabric, the hands with the needle sewing a jacket, the local tailor at his shop cutting a client’s suit, the hands with the needles – all ingredients just to make one jacket.
All of these are treasures of Italy just like the monuments, the statues, the palazzos, the churches, and the piazzas. All of these artisans are the backbone of Italian fashion, some may be in jeopardy in the current crisis.
DSquared2
In a quirky short black and white video that lasted less than two minutes, Dean and Dan of DSquared2 presented a sort of backstage view of a studio shoot of guys and girls in what the duo termed as clothes for everyday wear. What the duo means is not the sporty and often showy clothes they are famous for and the clothes they made for their fashion show, but the more realistic and yes tailored collection the brand has focused on in the last decade.
A slim fitted tight pant single-breasted gray tropical wool suit with a white shirt and grey tie, a gold jacquard tuxedo jacket with black shirt and pants, a fancy sparkling black jacket with a black silk shirt and cigarette pants are certainly not the kind of style anyone thinks of when they think of DSquared2. But surely those narrow silhouette single-breasted black wool suits are now part of the brand’s bread and butter.
The latter part of the presentation shows a few of the logo sportswear looks but these seem secondary to what’s important to the growth of the business.
But then again making those tailored clothes in special fabrics requires getting the fabrics made in Italian mills and craftsmen and artisans to handmake the garments.
Numero 00
“Vietato Non Amare” (Forbidden Not to Love) is both the title of the video presentation and the spring collection that designer Valerio Farina used as a format to espouse the notion of love as personal freedom, filmed in the city of Rimini where his brand Numero 00 is based. Farina is the ‘father of Numero 00’ per his Instagram since 2012.
“This time we will not be in Milano but in the city that has allowed me to study, learn, dream, love, live – Rimini. As a starting point and as a destination,” Farina said of how the city municipality has allowed him to use a large section of the city to make the film for the presentation. The film has his models travels through parks, on the riverfront, and around the city touting their global sense of travel and freedom. Since showing in Milan last year, Farina has moved the brand a bit away from its own streetwear origins.
Numero 00’s aesthetic and the clothes reminded me of when I first saw Raf Simons’ early first shows in Paris in 1997. The clothes may look a bit dressed up at first but they are not dressed up in the normal sense, nor do they display an affinity towards any sense of formality.
The soft fabric of tailored black wool short and well-cut tee, black wool short pants, and drawstring belted pants, a grey short sleeve tropical wool shirt pantsuit, or a black pinstripe short sleeve tunic and matching pants in striped gabardine makes the clothes fluid and perhaps more relaxed in attitude. A hooded bathrobe coat and loose gabardine wool pants paired with a hooded pullover is representative of Numero 00’s combination of classical Italian fabrics and tailoring cuts with more casual basics and outerwear.
Numero 00 is a suggestion for a way out of the streetwear dominated genre in menswear without pushing a formal suit look.
Epilogue
In Day 3 of Milan Digital Fashion Week, securing the national treasure that is ‘Made in Italy’ requires that brands not just safeguard the arts but also secure the future of craftsmanship that is also the tradition of Italy. That should also mean support for younger and independent Italian brands like Numero 00, as fashion talents should also be part of the national treasure.