Starting from Fendi's summer dressing to Jordanluca’s Freudian tailoring, here’s what went crazy at the city’s summer menswear fashion week SS23.
Exquisitely, after London comes Milano, and this season we bounty of top-tier fashion's at the city’s SS23 menswear week. From elevated norm core at Prada to maximalist exuberance at Versace, kooky visual puns at JW Anderson, this was a season in which Milanese menswear felt particularly varied, with a sense of fresh creative energy palpable in the air. Definitely an amazing experience that went down this year's SS23 mens.
CLASSIC MEETS PLAYFUL - Giorgio Armani
One of the qualities that have most distinctly characterised the SS23 menswear collections we’ve seen so far is a breezy sense of optimism, an ease that feels like a counterpoint to the more peacockish spirit we saw so much of for SS23. That was what characterised Emporio Armani, who delivered a collection that expertly toes a line between urban sophistication and a holiday-ready insouciance. The sharpness of lightweight wool blazers was offset by fluid wide-leg trousers that floated with each step, while vertical slashes and playfully yanked collars brought a measure of hot-boy-summer sensuality into the mix.
ALL DENIM & FRINGE - Fendi
Temperatures in Milan were unusually high and the fashion crowd scooted from show to show with the thermometer topping 34 degrees Celsius and forecast to keep getting hotter in the coming days. That makes linen an easy sell, but less so for the leather and even fur making appearances on Milan’s spring-summer 2023 runways. Silvia Venturini Fendi created earthy, grounded looks for a planet-conscious generation in shades that ranged from soothing chambray to hearty ochres, merging into a new motif created from images of swirling weather patterns of planet Earth.
The collection carried some nostalgia for more innocent times, from fraying hems on jeans to soft seams on denim bags, embroidery accents that recall beaded daisy chains and long, lush tassels on moccasins. Bucket hats are cut out for a visor feel, while knit cloches sport brims. Chunky rubber slip-ons were emblazoned with the inverted double-F logo.For an easy day look, denim trousers were worn with knitwear in matching tones, accompanied by faded denim Fendi shoppers with a long, fringe crossbody strap.
BOXY SABOTAGE - Jordanluca Freudian
Self-sabotage is a fundamental human value, we could argue. As we tread life’s path, the ones who most often put up obstacles are, well, ourselves. That was the point from which Jordan Bowden and Luca Marchetto departed this season with their decadently moody collection, titled ‘Sabotage’. Inspired by the Freudian notion of ‘death drive’, the counter-intuitive impulse that drives us to make. Tailoring and outerwear was proportionally boxy and expertly crafted, with gigantic horizontal slashes going from sleeve to sleeve rejoined by glinting metal zippers. At times, the pieces were styled with the zips open, causing the sleeves to gape at the bicep. Elsewhere, denims were brutally distressed and the brand’s signature trouser, a bottom-heavy slightly gothic silhouette, dragged along the floor, all serving as visual ciphers for the collection’s contemplative theme.
FLAUNTED LIGHT CONNECTED TO EARTH - Zegna
The collection was imbued by lightness, in shape and in materials. Forms were essential, borderline minimalist, ranging from sports suits with trousers or Bermuda shorts to tunics with inventive twists or intarsia knitwear recalling impressionist landscapes. Finer knitwear was near transparent, with hints of sheen that caught the slants of light. Bags include macramé cross-body bags. The colour palette of tobacco, maroon, coffee with light blue and powder rose connected to the earth. Zegna is moving to more sustainable use of materials, deploying fabric remnants and recycled materials, while maintaining tight control of its own supply chain which runs from the animal to the fibre to the garment, and investing in new sustainable production processes.
INVOKED POP BAROQUE - Versace
Versace is reaching out to the next generation, reinventing the brand’s iconic Medusa in animated versions that seem to come to life as repeating patterns on silks. Calling it pop Baroque. Donatella Versace returned to menswear with a fun and inventive collection, full of colour and verve, shown in the courtyard of the fashion house’s central Milan headquarters. Mirrored pillars swirled to life, casting images of classical statuary.In tune with the younger generation’s concern with the planet, Versace substituted exotic skins with python prints featuring neon accents, appearing as trenches or trousers, grounded by oversized pinstriped accent pieces. Leather looks styled out of eco-sustainable latex were well ventilated with a repeating diamond pattern. The new Versace man mixes design media, keeping close prized possessions from the Versace Home collection: carrying a precious urns, dangling a teacup from his belt, wearing a spoon bent into a bracelet.
GRUNGE WITH NOSTALGIA & IMPACTFUL SIMPLICITY - Prada
It started with lapel-less suits with hidden buttons, tapered skinny trousers down to pointy boots. The pair introduced boyish notes with striped ribbed or colour-block knitwear. Oversized bags contributed to a sense of childhood, playing with grown-ups’ things, while models walked through a paper mock-up of an out-of-scale house. Nostalgia came in the form of oversized gingham, recalling a kitchen tablecloth, traditionally a woman’s domain, in play against leather grunge: sleeveless short sets, and trenches, sometimes with a gingham trench layered in between.
"Fashion as a manner, a way as well as a means of appearing", "An expression of choice".
BOLD, BRIGHT 80'S ILLUSTRATION - Moschino
Jeremy Scott furthered the revival of fashion illustration that we’ve seen much of on runways of late, in a presentation that paid homage to the life and work of artist and photographer Tony Viramontes. Best known for his bold, bright work in the early 80s. Jeremy’s Moschino menswear collection, then, was an attempt to posthumously give Tony his flowers, and introduce his work to fresh eyes. Drawing inspiration from the bold palettes of his work, suiting was cast in a range of rainbow hues, featuring technicolour squiggles and glittering embroideries of Tony’s illustrations. That sense of camp was grounded by the gritty punkishness of leather baker-boy caps, wrap-skirts and calf-cladding boots, resulting in a fittingly comprehensive and overdue toast to an iconic artist.
WACHINESS RUSH - JW Anderson
If there’s one thing to expect from a JW Anderson, is the unexpected. As fashion’s undisputed king of haute-wackiness – both at this namesake label and in his tenure at Loewe – Jonathan has cultivated a feel for fusing a honed sensibility for luxury ready-to-wear with a left-field esotericism – a very little-of- everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. Jonathan’s object-driven approach expanded to sweaters with in-built snapped skateboards; striped pullovers draped slouchily across bike-handlebar ‘necklaces’, for want of a better description; boxy tees were pocked with peeled-open can-top slashes and reattached with door hinges.
DB
For DareClan
Pic Courtesy : Images of gorunway.com, AP Photo.