Three ideas from “Milan fashion week”

Gucci - Courtesy Gucci press office. -

As soon as the fashion week dedicated to the upcoming Summer 2023 season ended in Milan, several food for thought spread in the fashion world to then resonate amplified, starting from contemporary mass culture.

In the variegated potpourri of styles that have emerged, those who want to reflect on the languages seen on the catwalk can undoubtedly find an underlying common denominator. Here are some.

Democracy. One of the events that most upset the rules of the catwalks was the en plein air performance of Anteprima on the occasion of the brand's thirtieth anniversary. The models in fashion show dresses were transported by an ATM bus from the headquarters of the maison to Sempione park, where the actual event was held. Two hundred guests were seated but countless onlookers were able to admire the event from the civic area. The creative director of Anteprima, the highly refined and cultured Izumi Ogino, wanted to thank the city that has welcomed her over the years. Democratic, accessible event with a very low environmental impact: the very slim set-up was mainly made up of design chairs made of pressed cardboard which, at the end of the show, were delivered to the guests in order to transform them into furnishing objects with multiple lives.< /p>

Another extremely democratic event was experienced in “Diesel”; where the doors of the Allianz Cloud Arena were opened wide to employees and students, about two thousand enthusiasts who were able to observe the collection created by Glenn Martens, the visionary creative director who has declined denim, the main dish of the house, towards flavors and allegories "Y2K ” dear to “Millennials” and “Gen-Z”.

Upcycling. Starting from the suit made with jute sacks discarded by South American "cafetero" and embroidered with "lead free" Swarovski crystals, Gilberto Calzolari revealed himself as an absolute star in the art of reuse and recycling. In the Summer 23 collection “The art of Upcycling”, fabrics that had been produced for totally different uses were transformed into iconic objects. Military green backpacks from the Second World War transformed into snug skirts, mattress linings for 70s trousers, are a significant demonstration of how Italian creativity can transform waste into a beautiful, functional and respectful garment for our planet.

Double fluidity. The shows created by Gucci and Sunnei have made us think a lot; both have gone far beyond what can be considered a mundane event within fashion. Both brands, albeit with opposite budgets, have organized a happening based on a casting made up of dozens of pairs of twins.

Rizzo and Messina for Sunnei transformed the event into a real performative show, introducing the public into a white space equipped with a revolving door at the end of the walkway. Seated in the audience and shoddily dressed, one of the twins would rise and leave the hall, ushering through the revolving door his own suitably dressed double. It's a metaphor for how fashion can act as a transformative force, which is as magical as it is absolutely crazy was the declaration of the two creatives.

Alessandro Michele for Gucci achieved the subverting and destabilizing effect of attending a parade of "doubles" who, at first, walk along two parallel catwalks and then reunite in one last passage . The result is the multiplication of perspectives, of vanishing points of the versatility of identities; everything is vacillating, fluid, deceptive and illusory.

Perhaps with hints of the "Doppelgänger" born from the imagination of David Lynch in his "Twin Peaks": there is no longer a borderline between the spaces dominated by existence and non-existence, by the self and by the other, by the Apollonian and the Dionysian, from fiction and reality. The visibly upset spectators may have accepted Michele's suggestion that in the last fashion show he unites the separated couples, giving a message of self-acceptance and the reunification of our feminine and masculine principles.

Perhaps a clear message, also seen in other fashion shows, that it is no longer time for collections strictly divided between menswear, womenswear, summer, winter.

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