Milan Fashion Week Spring 2013 Weekend Special

 

Have you been following all the fashion shows of Spring/Summer 2013 this month? FashionTV has been there from the very beginning of the season, bringing them to you with live coverage at every angle--backstage action, behind-the-scenes interviews, front row fashion, and runways that roar.  This weekend, FashionTV will let you experience the world’s finest designers transform their collections into works of art.

Image Courtesy of Fashion Tv website

FashionTV highlights Milan Fashion Week with our Milan Fashion Week Weekend Special.  The best runways, backstage scenes, and model interviews will be running all weekend long.  Join FashionTV as the creativity of Italian high fashion comes alive on FashionTV. 

Major trends at Milan Fashion Week spring/summer 2013.

As Milan Fashion Week spring/summer 2013 draws to a close, we take a look at the key trends to emerge in the Italian fashion capital.

 

Floral prints

As seen on the London catwalks last week, floral prints were big in Milan too. Blugirl and Just Cavalli collections featured watercolour floral designs awash with exquisite chiffon flowers painted onto lightweight separates.
 

Just Cavalli, Prada and Marni Floral prints SS13
Opting for a more oriental feel Etro and Marni presented models clad in rich colourful printed silks and kimono style jackets, representative of a Japanese water garden.

While Prada turned to the swinging sixties for inspiration, showcasing Mary Quant style flower power prints on outerwear pieces. 

Safari meets utility
Salvatore Ferragao, Emporio Armani and Maxmara Safari meets utility SS13
Following the New York and London presentations, safari styles also appeared over in Milan. A new twist was given to the traditional safari as Italy’s finest designers Salvatore Ferragamo, Maxmara and Emporio Armani, fused utility style jackets with classic khaki and beige tonal safari shorts and belted skirts.

Bold stripes
Dolce & Gabbana, Moschino and Fendi Stripes SS13
Items with striped designs surfaced in the Italian fashion capital as leading designers Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi and Moschino sent models down the catwalk in bold stripy summer dresses, bright blocked matching tailored skirt ensembles and long jazzy blouses respectively.

Unlike the classic spring/summer nautical stripes, this season’s tones are all about bright colours such as zesty orange, light blue and sunshine yellow.

Embroidered laceRoberto Cavalli, Versace and Bottega Veneta SS13
Known for their great craftsmanship Gucci, Roberto Cavalli, Versace and Bottega Veneta showed off their exceptional skills presenting delicate embroidered lace collections for spring/summer 2013.

Favouring classic black were Bottega Veneta and Emilio Pucci who wowed their fashionable crowd with stunning colourful embroidered lace fitted dresses and sheer maxi-length gold embroidered evening gowns.

In contrast, Roberto Cavalli produced delicate embroidered lace trousers and blouses and in similar vein, Versace opted for a neutral colour palette to show off the trend. Nude embroidered lace hot pants and cropped top sets complete with matching kimonos were just some of the highlights.

Sea greens
Gucci, Missoni and Alberta Ferretti Sea greens SS13
Sea green shone through as the key colour for spring/summer 2013 at Milan Fashion Week. Alberta Ferretti, Giorgio Armani, Gucci and Missoni all included some of the shade in their collections. At the Alberta Ferretti show, we spotted pretty see-through short dresses in green.

While at Gucci a rainbow of colours sparkled on the catwalk, with gorgeous bright sea green/turquoise silk gowns as the show highlights.

Giorgio Armani and Missoni had pieces shimmering in sea green as both designers played with glittering fabrics, clearly inspired by exotic fish.

@YLifestyleUK  

Day 4 Of The Milan Fashion Week.

It is a truism that, at its best, fashion’s job is to reflect reality: that’s what calling clothes “of the moment” is really all about. But what became increasingly clear as the Milan spring/summer shows drew to an end is that there is an inherent fault in that principle for it assumes a certain consistency. When there’s none there except uncertainty, the result is an uncertain season.

Which is not the same thing as a bad season. The clothes, as a rule, were safe: designers putting their heads down and doing what they do best. While they did not provide a solution to the problem – the collections did not elicit gasps of recognition at some alchemical combination of form and fabric that made you realise, suddenly, exactly how you had not realised you needed to look in order to navigate the future – at least they acknowledged it existed.
Indeed, there was less of that “it’s the fantasy” talk than there has been in years. It’s practicality time. Mostly. Giorgio Armani even acknowledged it obliquely, opening a retrospective exhibit at his headquarters of 50 handpicked examples of his more “eccentric” works – elaborate, imaginative, worn by Lady Gaga or at a Beijing-opening – of the past 27 years, while next door on the runway he showed a collection of his most un-eccentric best.
Eschewing his me-hip-too-ism of recent seasons for a languid, sophisticated silhouette built on the straight liquid trouser, Mr Armani showed layered tone-on-tone suiting with cropped jackets, sometimes in the most supple leather, sometimes beaded like constellations, over longer shirting or simple straight dresses over sheer trousers in an agelessly cool nod to the current pyjama look.
Aside from a star-spangled wire model of the cosmos encasing the final look, it was a primer in how to marry ease with unfussy elegance, and a reminder of how Armani elevated what once upon a time was office wear to a different sphere. For all of our benefit.
While he had his feet firmly on the ground, however, Angela Missoni had her head not in the clouds – she was past that – but in some other universe. “The Missoni woman” for spring, she declared, was a “mysterious intergalactic tourist who has landed on our planet”.
To be fair, it wasn’t quite as weird as it sounds. It was, rather, the house’s signature zigzag knits digitised, rendered in degrade and sequins, and layered, literally, one piece atop the other in a holographic parade of capri suits and A-line dresses, thigh-high, or floor-length, sometimes veiled in organza, or filigree crochet. What was missing, though, was the sense of chic simplicity formerly synonymous with the brand; the idea you could just toss on a sweater and go – in style. Not to Saturn, but the supermarket.
Meanwhile, at Salvatore Ferragamo, designer Massimiliano Giornetti stuck notably closer to the heritage of the house. As the show notes said (granted in somewhat overwrought terms): “The force of modernity is constructed upon a legacy of great tradition.” The catch is that said tradition is as a leather goods house, which can be a strange starting point for spring/summer clothes.
But that apparent hurdle did not stop Mr Giornetti. Instead he sent out chic trenchcoats in leather and suede, later de- and reconstructing the garment in cotton dresses and skirts. If we have seen that before – and we have in many places – it was offset by sporty leather skirts, open weave sweaters and gold-studded dresses.
One hemisphere’s autumn, after all, is the other hemisphere’s spring and these clothes get sold in February and March anyway. There’s nothing inherently risky about ignoring what are effectively meaningless seasons to begin with. Indeed, you could argue, it is actually a more realpolitik – or “realdesign” – approach to the cycle.
As was Roberto Cavalli’s, which involved simply doing his own thing, whether or not it had anything to do with anyone else’s thing. Of course, given the confusion about what exactly will consumers’ things be, this was probably a smart thing (enough things).
And in practice it meant laser-cut leather made to look like lace and appliquéd on real lace in dresses and trousers and blouses, matching floral/animal print silk chiffon trousers and tops, crocodile cropped jackets, and all the rest of the ingredients of a rock ’n roll luxury wardrobe.
On any other catwalk it might have seemed extreme but for Cavalli it was impressively par for the course, and as such it was also a pretty effective summation of the current Milanese approach: when in doubt – or surrounded by it – dig in and distil. Come Wednesday, we’ll see if Paris agrees.

For all the FT’s online coverage of the shows www.ft.com/fashionweeks

More Thrills as Milan Fashion Week clocks day two.

Italy has stagnation on the mind – and not just because of the economy. The fashion industry, long dominated by the same names and brands, has been grumbling for seasons about the lack of fresh blood, talent, ideas: the stuff that gets consumers excited about discoveries and sends them into stores to buy.
After all, the youngest designers to have broken through since the start of the millennium are design duo Aquilano Rimondi, who show on Saturday, and they are in their forties.

On day two of the Milanese collections, however, fashion began to take things into its own hands.
There was Vogue’s equivalent of quantitative easing, Who’s On Next and Vogue Talents. This is a “talent show” of numerous young designers from around the world, not left to fight their way through on their own, but discovered by Italian Vogue and presented to retailers and editors alike. The Vogue-anointed designers will be forcefully injected into the fashion world by sponsors such as Value Retail (which will stock the work of 10 participants) and Yoox.com (which will stock one).
And there was Prada, where Miuccia Prada proved once again that you don’t need to be new to have new ideas.