Milan Menswear Shows Highlights – Autumn/Winter 2016

Round and round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows. That’s right the Menswear Rollacoaster is on its merry way again, but we actually do know the next stop, cos its in the title of this post. Milano, the Italian capital of cool !

Thats right, and this season it can be summed up in three little words, Wonderful, Weird and Wearable, all of the events during Milan Menswear shows all fall into at least one of these categories, we’ll leave it to you to make your mind up and categorise them.

Starting off proceedings we have, an understated Englishman, in Neil Barrett, who did a real Love Story to growing up in the 1970’s. Always, subtle in his interpretation of trends, it’s never literal, unlike some other houses. He harped back to flicking through back issues of NME and the artists who littered its pages during this decade.

Keeping on the 70’s vibe was Diesel Black Gold, who offered us Vampiric Mods, kinda like The Lost Boys meets Quadrophenia. Striking the right balance of Fashion show pretentiousness and wearability.

Meanwhile, Tomas Maier over at the height of Luxury Fashion House, Bottega Veneta, was also in a vampish mood. He presented us with svelte looking models, who once again wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Lost Boys, OK minus the bouffant 80’s hair. It was a muted Autumnal colour palette, but all in the finest of materials, a lot, money can buy.

Once again the decade of the moment, kind of, the 1970’s, was playing inspiration for the family Missoni. As always a beauitful riot of colour and as always for a shows of this season Autumal tones were abundant.

Moving away from one major trend onto another, in the form of Sportwear, nothing new there, the cynical among you may say. But as always, with a modern twist. Emporio Armani launched their show with a Sci-Fi one, using skiwear from Mr Armani’s highly successful EA7 sports range, which gave the proceedings a more contemporary and space like feel with their storm trooper-esque helmets and use of silver.

Following with Armani’s amore for Metalics was Italo Zucchelli for Calvin Klein Collection, who was trying to out do Giorgio’s silver with their usage of space age gold. Whether is was a hint used as a base colour for their white denim or as a C3PO cummerbund or a full on Bacofoil overcoat, apart from this it was a simple and parred down affair.

Along with Emporio, Calvin, was Ralph Lauren and Moncler Gamme Blue on that Sports Lux tip, but it was another Brit in James Long, celebrating his first collection as Menswear Designer for Iceberg, who steered the reinvention of the house to the best collection they’ve produced in years, fun creative and wearable luxury sportswear, particular the Mickey Mouse section.

Out on their own in the wild frontier was a duo who love a theme, this season Cowboy, played it out for Dolce & Gabbana. A complete spaghetti Western was presented for our delectation and boy did they run with it. We saw it all bar Stetsons, there were ponchos, six-shooters, cacti, wagons, saloon dancing girls and lassos. But the D&G duo have to be commended for, probably, the most diverse casting of models in a show so far this season.

And so too the best for last, the premise for Prada‘s Autumn/Winter 2016 collection may have had a highly intellectual inspiration on “Immigration, famine, assassination, pessimism,” and the state of the modern day world we live in. Nonetheless, fashion and style are all about escapism and enjoying yourself, so I’m going to ignore this. If I want to feel depressed I’ll watch the news, but I go to Fashion weeks to be uplifted and inspired and this show certainly did that. It offered us beautifully cut and created clothing, which perfectly balanced the wonderfully wearable with the creatively commercial and was finished off with a great sound track which included Nick Cave and PJ Harvey. Lightly up Miuccia, it’s a great world we live in we just need to look for it.