Designers travel the world and its history to plunder its riches for inspiration, but it has been a long time since German culture has influenced fashion to the degree that is being presented this season in Milan. Prada, Fendi and Sportmax are just a few that have been drawn into the darkly glamorous world of pre-war Europe for their autumn collections.
Miuccia Prada was seduced by the German avant garde of the 1930s, showing beautiful, pallid-faced models wearing mannish coats and boxy jackets edged in bright shearling over filmy organza sack dresses with metallic straps. The emphasis was on outerwear, with shearling in intense colour combinations.
A band playing Kurt Weill’s music set the tone for these loose, silky shirt dresses in art deco and Bauhaus geometric prints and oversized school uniform-style sweaters, a vibe enhanced by the thin scarves tightly tied round the models’ necks. Prada has a way of giving her fashion a seemingly dowdy sensuality, but this collection, with its rubberised tango shoes and wedge-heel boots, has all the ingredients her fans adore.
There was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a Germanic vibe in the Fendi collection, given Karl Lagerfeld’s background. Drop-waisted dresses with hems that swished around the calves, parkas and sturdy Loden coats sprouting tufts of fur had a ladylike sophistication. No shearling here but luxurious mink and fox, sometimes exploding out of shoulder seams like Mohicans.
There were sporty elements such as mesh inserts on dresses and jackets that tap into the current sports luxe trend. Beautiful coats pinned with romantic white orchid corsages or embedded with starry crystals and long velvet dresses covered in cosmic prints added a romantic touch. Dangling from the fingers of Cara Delevingne was the cult item from this show – one of Fendi’s witty, furry animal bags bearing a distinct resemblance to Lagerfeld.
Fur and leather are hallmarks of Milan’s winter collections and there was a wealth of structured leather pieces and chubby fur jackets in the Sportmax collection. Where once Sportmax had an urban style, the shapes now are strong and sophisticated with sturdy croc and calfskin dresses and jackets. A little more relaxed were the Klimt-like brocades and the Jackson Pollock-inspired, splash-print velvet dresses.
Tod’s is famed for its leather accessories so the designer Alessandra Facchinetti had a wealth of leather at her disposal for her second collection. She found countless ways to work it, making it as fine as silk, or lacquering it to give jackets and dresses a paper-like quality. The silk, meanwhile, was worked like leather into big, bold coat shapes printed or appliquéd with a Persian carpet motif.
The Milan shows are clearly shaping up to be about outerwear and drop-waisted dresses for autumn, which translates as “all covered up”. Even Donatella Versace showed a few dresses with hemlines below the knee and trimmed with gold buttons, like a drum majorette, then reverted to the familiar territory of bias-cut, asymmetric minidresses spliced from matte silk and shiny satin, taking us back to early Versace circa the early 1990s. This reprise heralded the return of the brash, gold Medusa-head medallions dangling like mayoral chains from models’ necks and decorating bags and buttons.
There was an alternative to the midi skirt for next season: short skirts doubled as little printed tunic dresses at Emilio Pucci, or in the crisp geometric cut of Gucci’s 1960s inspired collection, with its cute double-breasted, silver-button coats and short shifts. It was Bond girl meets Carnaby Street cool – frill-fronted minidresses and neat shifts, or a chubby shearling jacket dyed pale blue. It was also an opportunity for the designer Frida Giannini to revive the signature loafer from the 1960s with its horse-bit detail, revamped as a polished boot.
Pucci was a bit more bohemian in aesthetic, with its trademark prints toughened up with gold studs to resemble armour or reproduced as intricate laser-cut patterns in leather. There was an underlying 1970s mood to the collection, with hippy-chic fur jackets thrown over minidresses, languorous printed gowns and a couple of richly coloured, wide-leg trouser suits in velvet. While a few trouser suits were also spotted at Emporio Armani, dresses with knee boots remain the default choice.