Salvatore Ferragamo Spring Collection 2018

The spring Ferragamo show was spiffed up as a nighttime prelude to a fragrance launch party, the glass runway snaking across a grassy, flower-strewn set outside the Milan stock exchange with Maurizio Cattelan’s statue giving the one-fingered salute in the center. Anyone who’s attended a Salvatore Ferragamo show in the last handful of years has seen that statue, erected as a statement to the financial system, outside the Ferragamo venue many times. Yet it still commanded more attention than the collection itself.

You have to wonder how the design process works now that Paul Andrew is firmly in charge of accessories and Fulvio Rigoni, the women’s ready-to-wear. Who leads? Here’s guessing it’s Andrew. The leather goods are far more valuable to the house in terms of sales, and the collection’s shoes, bags and belts drew the eye more than the clothes, which felt built to match. Andrew came up with crisscross mules, slides and heels with ankle straps, some with flashy Deco-ish heels with sculpted ribbing. They came in rainbow colors blush, red, mauve, black, seafoam green, gray and white. There were colorful snakeskin shoes and booties that looked like some kind of marled mesh. Rounded minibags slung from a big strap or looped onto a wide belt cinched around the waist felt fresh.

Rigoni’s lineup played second fiddle, an incongruous attempt to muster slinky glamour with glossy liquid silks, halter and bustier dresses, fringed frocks and some strange daywear separates done in iridescent transparencies. It was done in palette that matched the accessories, and the red moments two slipdresses, one silk, one fringed — felt right and matched many ladies in red, a hot color right now, in the audience