Menswear is looking for post-pandemic footing during Milan Fashion Week, landing somewhere between resort, adventurer and tailoring.
Dolce & Gabbana offered an interpretation of quiet luxury, reinventing masculine silhouettes with feminine tailoring tricks without the brand's usual color and bling. Neil Barrett dipped into the archives for crisp, uniform looks that are timeless. MSGM offered adventure with an off-road collection inspired by African travels.
The wide-ranging collection of nearly 80 looks was a departure for the designing duo in any season, a play on quiet luxury, a reinvention of timelessness, with the designer's fancy coming through in the silhouettes. There were no prints, no color and no bling. Instead, the focus was on shape and materials, with a neutral color palette of black, white and camel and ivory.
Dolce & Gabbana filled the front-row with musical talents including Machine Gun Kelly, Italy's Blanco, South Korea's Doyoung and Australian Luke Hemmings, each eliciting screams of adoration from fans as they arrived.The new Emporio Armani collection was a meditation on timelessness, set against the backdrop of a large ginkgo leaf, itself a symbol of endurance.
Models -- including some older men, in a brand-first -- emerged through mist into a striated cavern beneath Milan's main railroad tracks, as if from a cave into the African dawn. They were accompanied by rhythmic electronic music. The minimalist codes were easy to read, without being simplistic. Barrett took cues from uniforms, digging back into his archives going back two decades: shirts with simple epaulets, shorts with nearly invisible utility pockets and leather waders featured in his first runway show back in 2000.
Dresses fit the form to perfection, falling into complex, swishing skirts. Dresses at times felt purposely unfinished, knotted at the shoulders and along the hem. A macrame skirt for her and tunic top for him finished in long dramatic black and white fringe, fixed with wooden beads. Macrame bags and chunky knits had a homemade feel. Some garments were treated with peach color, as if clay from the ground.