In the after-glow of the Alta Moda—the unforgettable Valentino show in the Piazza Mignanelli in Rome and Dolce & Gabbana’s decadent weekend-long shows, banquets, and parties at Portofino– it’s beginning to feel as if something is coming alive again in Italy. Whereas the whole of the haute fashion world seems to have spent the summer circumnavigating the globe in search of experience-simulating locations, the Valentino designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioliand Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana did the opposite: They stayed at home and invited people in to share what they love about their own country. It’s felt like a long time since Italian fashion has felt as confident, centered, and happy in itself. What was it which felt so relevant? Their styles might seem poles apart—Valentino’s serene with goddess-like purity; Dolce & Gabbana’s hot with curvy, colorful decorativeness—but they are all feminine, flattering clothes which glorify the deep history all of the designers feel. Emotion, believe it or not, is the X-factor which separates desirable clothes from the mechanically ordinary. And for the past decade, sorry to say, it’s felt like an emotionally dead time in Italian fashion. But not now!-
The sensation of watching the poetic, emotionally nuanced Valentino haute couture collection in Rome rather than Paris seemed symbolic of one of those general shifts people in fashion like me are constantly scanning the horizons for; any inklings of a movement in the offing, the breeze of an authentic breath of fresh air blowing, the harbinger of something which could sweep along a change, and break with a routine which has gone on too long: We are out for it.
It takes a long time, and a lot of people to build up such rare collective moments with the power to compel the world’s eyes to swivel towards it. During the Berlusconi “bunga bunga” years, frankly, the world’s eyes have all too often swiveled away from Italy in an embarrassment shared by many haplessly mortified Italian designers. But since old Silvio has gone from power, a new generation has been coming in. Changes of the guard at major labels are giving new Italian talent a chance. Italian independents are making appealing clothes and bold moves. As I add it up, it makes a long and variegated list.
There is Alessandro Michele, the designer who has broken the hard corners offGucci to show a softer, quirkier view of what Italian fashion can be. He lives in Rome. There’s Marco de Vincenzo, who has been capturing press approval in Milan—he’s Roman too, and is backed with money from Fendi, which, of course, is also a storied Roman family business. Delfina Delettrez Fendi, the brilliantly imaginitive jewelry designer, full of modern and hip ideas, is another Roman (the daughter of Silvia Venturini Fendi). Giambattista Valli, who shows his couture and ready-to-wear in Paris, is wholly Roman in his projection of sunny southern Italian woman-loving glamour. In a new fantasy scenario, could all roads lead to Rome again?
If all those people came together, it could happen again for a city everyone enjoys going to—a second-coming for the exuberant scene which last flourished when Rome was full of couturiers in the fifties and sixties. Other Italians could follow:Anthony Vaccarello, Belgian-born, but with Italian heritage, who Donatella Versace has anointed creative director of Versus Versace, could (after all, the glam and sexy Versace spirit comes out of the south rather than gray industrial Milan). As does the super-glam rock-chick look of the Florentine house of Roberto Cavalli, where Peter Dundas has just taken the lead; across the same city asEmilio Pucci, where Massimo Giorgetti was recently appointed creative director—yet another talented and successful new designer, whose own label MSGM is a colorful, exuberant riot of color.
Come to think of it, why couldn’t foreign designers join in to show their pre-falls, pre-springs, resorts, and whatnot? Fashion people love to be in the right place at the right time. In my fantasy vision for a new Italian fashion future, it would only happen once a year, a sort of biennale of the new dolce vita, where we could all bask in the sunshine, talk, see amazing things, watch incredible creative ideas evolving before our eyes, and feel like fashion is an intelligent, human, evolving medium to be involved in.
via Vogue