BY LONG NGUYEN
Day 1 – Building on Enthusiasm
The opening day of the Milano special men’s digital presentation showed the difficulties designers have in coming up with creative strategies to propel their brands in the busy Internet highway. Hope is great but that’s not really a strategy.
Magliano
Luca Magliano, who debuted at Milan Men’s last January after winning the ‘Who Is on Next” talent search organized by Vogue Italia in 2017 as part of their efforts to foster new and young designer talent to rejuvenate the Milano shows, was perhaps the day’s best presentation with a video that is well conceptualized with clothes that match the narrator’s absolutely hilarious commentary. The English translation does not do justice to the original Italian spoken with dramatic flair by the Italian novelist Isabella Santacroce.
“I found in the Anne Frank Olympic Pool a page from the 1992 phone book of Bologna and gifted it to my golden Wagner jacket. Out of Saint Teresa of Avila’s Chanel coat, I stole one dollar to gift to my golden Wagner jacket. I have a pornographic picture of you in my jacket, Magliano,” Santacroce read as a model standing on a gold patterned circular revolving table took off his boxy bright yellow jacket, and turned the jacket inside out, and put it back on with the white lining and a visible porn picture inside the left pocket.
Next up is a model on a white circular spinning table wearing just black corset shorts with side lacing with his hands showing off his arms muscles, as Santacroce continues her narration – “Virile stripped feminine, depraved mercenary for rich hormonal ladies, shame on you filthy harlot. Be blessed among the infernal flames, crowned redeemed wrapped in sin. May Lucifer cleanse your soul with light.”
Santacroce reads on the enigmatic prose with models taking turns to display Magliano’s boxy and exaggerated proportions as the overall shape of his spring clothes – a large yellow printed shirt paired with mustard pants, a green-blue linen dropped-shoulder jacket with brown short pants, or a light pink shirt pantsuit ensemble.
Of a black loose pantsuit with a black shirt with silver hook closures, Santacroce added this comment – “And night comes, shining dark, the moon a wonder. Imaginative is the shadow that with black light out of endless term scars the funeral dawn. In the immortality of gothic charm, I’d like to live. The skin is an invisible foil. The flesh made of marble. The eyes, invulnerable deities.”
The light violet satin slim suit worn with a white tank is actually a nice look from this Magliano preview amidst this compendium of literature and fashion.
Magliano is too young to settle into any comfortable formula, and he has to continue with his own experimentation in terms of how and what to present as his fashion and as his clothes.
MSGM
“I tried to go for what was essential with a strong and compact collection. I asked myself what was the meaning of simplicity, for me and for MSGM. It isn’t only the clean colors, prints, and patterns, always vivid, kaleidoscopic, and explosive – true to a message of optimism that I felt it was my duty to express. Clothes that bring joy,” said Massimo Giorgetti of his film for MSGM titled ‘Non so dove, ma insieme’ (‘I don’t know where, but together’) with groups of friends hanging out, eating ice cream or having fun at a circus wearing colorful prints and graphic shirts.
The idea is to convey a sense of rebirth as couples are out on the streets hugging and kissing beneath a tree or friends enjoying time together even just sitting on the grass in an empty park. The film ended with a series of testimonies in the form of self-made shorts of kids, the protagonists in the film, recalling their recent experiences of the severe lockdown in Italy with a montage of one person completing another’s sentences. “I see a lot of stars that occasionally create drawings,” one said. “I miss the sea, the beach,” said another as someone else completed her sentence saying “the most beautiful kiss I gave was… a long-awaited kiss.”
As the clothes only play secondary characters, they nevertheless are clothes that are quintessential MSGM, sporty and fun, and this time the knitwear features prints from Seth Armstrong, an American artist working in Los Angeles.
It is impossible to watch the video and not share Giorgetti’s sense of optimism about the rebirth just around the corner. And all the better if one can do so wearing the pink shorts and a tie-dye paisley polo.
Moschino
Moschino under the creative direction of Jeremy Scott is a brand that really needs a real fashion show, as Scott’s sense of humor and the way he mixes so many different elements into the garments means that the clothes need to be framed in a live show setting.
That said, the brief video of the house’s favorite model Denek K wearing various manifestations of what’s coming for spring, at least just in terms of a general direction, does convey a sense of calm and intimacy not commonly associated with Scott and Moschino in recent seasons. Denek is seen in a log pastel sweatsuit, purple striped biker suit, striped printed short sleeve shirt suit, a gold tuxedo with triangular patterns, a pink and violet trench, and with various bags and shoes which mostly display the house logo. A pair of blue denim jeans with red polka dots paired with a pink leather motor cross jacket, a black and gold print blouson ensemble with matching waist pouch, and a slim fitted gold cropped tuxedo round out this straight forward but still very Moschino presentation, at least in the range of clothes and accessories.
Hopefully, Scott will be able to show the full collection in the fall live, not on small screens.
Philipp Plein
Phillip Plein’s Milano Men’s digital show titled ‘Fashion is Dead. The Future is Now’ opens with a montage retrospective showing a precise count of guests attending his fashion shows over the decades – 50 guests in 2004, to 150 in 2010, to 200 in 2012, to 450 in 2014, to 1000 in 2016, to 3000 in 2018, to 5000 in 2019, and to 6000 in early 2020. Plein’s seasonal shows have grown into mammoth stadium-sized spectacles worthy of major concert events.
That brought us to today’s showing with 0 physical guests.
“Twenty years ago I started my company from nothing. I started without even knowing what I was doing. And today I have to rethink what is going to happen in the future,” Plein said in a very personal appearance wearing a light gray sweatsuit. “I still believe in my dreams. I was born as a dreamer and at the same time a believer. I always believe in my dreams until they come true.”
“In these challenging times, we have to reinvent ourselves. We have to focus on craftsmanship, quality, and our clients,” Plein reiterated as the video shows footage of a shoe and a sneaker being made by hand. “This is the renaissance, the rebirth of fashion.”
The designer himself modeled all the looks with some white robotic arms moving on the sides. What he wore from the coming spring were clothes that seemed much cleaner than those in his recent collections where endless decorations at times overwhelmed the garments.
The much simpler color palettes of ecru leathers, white slim pants, all-white sweatsuits with cuff drawstring pull-on pants, multiple zippered black leather jackets, and zebra printed shirts all retain their Plein signature and logo placements. Elements of tailoring filtered through in a simple white single-breasted jacket or a black 2 button jacket with sweatpants. The range of luxurious leather hand made sneakers were mostly white, grey or black and white mixed leather high tops, and are now part of the brand’s bread and butter. There’s one sneaker covered in black beads that sparkled just in case, or a snakeskin patchwork high top painted in real gold.
But Plein being Plein, there is always a bit of opulent flash in the form of biker jackets made from a mix of crocodile skins and black leather with elaborate beaded and gold-encrusted eagle embroideries. “There’s magic in every beginning,” Plein said while a remix of Depeche Mode’s ‘Personal Jesus’ blasted.
Epilogue
In digital formats, creative content is beyond essential – it is life or death so to speak.
Obviously it is not a simple task to conceive a short video that serves multiple purposes beyond the actual presentation of clothes. A moving lookbook that lasts for 8 minutes is simply deadly dull. Ask anyone who attended fashion shows about a show of commercial clothes that went on for 15 minutes. It’s impolite to ask how can anyone still remain seated. At least in digital, thank goodness, the click can still do the trick.
It seems that many designers are forced into this digital game with little in the way of clearly conceiving a concept that can capture an audience. Think of your audience’s enthusiasm for what you are showing them, not just your enthusiasm for making the ten-minute ‘film’.
But as Phillip Plein reminded us at the conclusion of his video with a strong opera voice singing – “Creativity. Beauty. Design. Art. Will Never Die.” He’s right.