The Season of Sizzle
MILAN — Call it the season of sexy chic.
That’s what the majority of the 80 designers here--including Gucci, Prada, Armani and Missoni--are turning out for their Spring 2000 collections. And by the sheer, body-baring looks of it, spring is gonna sizzle like summer. After all, designers here are banking on the old adage that sexy sells--or rather that it will sell for the first spring of 2000.
The revealing silhouettes are sleekly chic, some with plunging necklines, others with wide-open backs--most in soft fabrics, many embroidered for evening wear or light and airy for daytime.
Based on designers who have shown their collections so far, there’s a return to feminine, classic and pretty fashion. While clothes have been neither shocking, cutting edge or futuristic, they have been retro, recalling classic touches of the 1960s and ‘70s with sophisticated sweaters, graceful blouses, tight trousers and skirts from micro-minis to shapely floor-length numbers slit up the sides.
Tom Ford of Gucci bid farewell--at least for now--to his hippie chic offerings of last season and presented instead classic looks like the little black dress. Miuccia Prada’s antique dress-inspired collection suggests a time when granny was photographed as a young thing in those soft, crystal-embroidered slipdresses. There were some exceptions to this womanly trend: Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana revived and tweaked Madonna’s 1980s tough-girl act with their D&G; collection. Their signature collection, shown Thursday, ignited a fashion fireworks on the runway.
Unlike American designers at New York’s Fashion Week last month, Italian designers are offering little denim, a scant showing of ruffles and some leather but without eyelet cutouts.
Still, there are some similarities: lots of glimmer and shimmer for spring with sequins, Swarovski crystals and beaded embroidery on jackets, pants and dresses. Skirts and dresses have mostly asymmetrical hems--a hot trend here. Many dresses are held up with one strap or have only one sleeve.
Pants are mostly low-waisted, and some are cropped. Shorts are everywhere in various lengths. And hot pants, like those shown recently in New York, made their way across the Atlantic--some even shrunk to micro-hot pants.
Tops include halters, twin sets, lightweight turtlenecks, white cotton shirts and silky blouses.
Soft jerseys, sexy satins and airy chiffons are among the most popular fabrics. There’s lots of color, too, in powdered hues as well as in brights, including yellow, orange, green, fuchsia and the popular pink. Even designers here--as in New York--agree that khaki is a spring color. White, black, silver and gold also are very strong for day and night.
From Giorgio Armani,
‘Something Different’
At Wednesday night’s Giorgio Armani signature collection show, models hit the runway in a colorful array of ethnic-inspired looks that were fun and sexy and often layered. The audience broke into applause with outfits that were especially sheer and shimmering.
“I wanted this collection to be romantic and sexy and for the woman who is strong enough to not allow fashion to dictate to her because she knows style,” he said after the show. “She knows that it is perfectly fine to mix things up.”
Armani’s collection was as different as anything he’s ever done, he said. Long sheer skirts in wild prints were worn over short crystal-adorned knee-length skirts. And vice versa: crystal-beaded minis over floor-length sheer skirts.
His gray pleated pants were worn with transparent halter tops--of which there were many. Armani turned the halters into elegant garments by attaching long pieces of flowing fabric at the bottom of the top.
For evening wear, Armani’s “I Dream of Jeannie” skirts were embellished with strings of vertical dangling beads attached at the waist and the hem, allowing the strings to dance with every step.
Armani mixed and matched it all. Mesh dresses with side slits, in fuchsia, lavender iridescent short jackets with matching trousers, gray corset tops that zippered in the back that were teamed with cigarette pants, and one-piece swimsuits worn with organza shorts.
Earlier in the week, Armani showed his younger Emporio Armani women’s line in the theater of his downtown Milan palazzo. The collection combined current street fashion with Asian and exotic folk themes.
Color dominated his runway as did black-and-white gingham and crystal-embroidered blossoms on sheer skirts. Fuchsia (a favorite of many U,S. designers), as well as shades of lime and periwinkle blue, indigo and rust were standouts.
Models wore the tiniest of bikini tops with slender cigarette pants and high-heeled sandals. For evening wear Armani showed sexy beaded tops with low-cut or bare backs and many that were sheer in front.
Flouncy skirts were worn over straight-leg pedal pushers pants a la the skant look, but much more refined; many of the skirts were wrapped like a sarong. Pants were sheer and embroidered, Indian-style with silver crystals.
On Tuesday, Tom Ford at Gucci went classic with a collection that included simple--yet elegant--black jersey cocktail dresses; the most striking were his one-sleeved creations offered in short and floor-length versions. The dresses were clean and simple without defined waists.
Gucci’s Classic
‘Rock Star Look’
“We did a lot of beading and colors with my last two collections,” he said before the show. This time around he wanted to create a “very chic and classic look but in a rock star kind of way. If you look at my dresses, you might be reminded of Blondie, Farrah Fawcett or Gwyneth Paltrow,” he added.
His collection also included spectacular crystal-beaded pants in leather, jersey and printed python; a slim jersey pant; and his personal favorite, the bootleg-cut trouser.
Everything was worn with hot pink hose and either stilettos or thick-heeled sandals adorned with semiprecious stones and a small chain-strap bag that hangs at midchest.
Like Ford, Prada also returned Monday to the classics in her collection of pleated skirts and ladylike blouses in crisp cotton or silk.
“Ladylike was the only new thing possible for me to try,” Miuccia Prada said backstage after the show. “Sometimes you have to go back in time in order to move ahead with a fashion idea.” She says she took her cues for her collection from young women who shop in thrift stores and antique clothing shops.
“My clothes had become so crazy with experimentation that I had to go the other way. And for me, the most avant-garde idea in fashion right now was femininity and super chic,” she said.
The Prada woman, as her collection demonstrated, loves brown cashmere sweaters, knee-length pleated skirts, cardigans, embroidered shirtdresses. But it was Prada’s evening wear of cream-colored antique-styled dresses, spartanly decorated with dark crystals that stood out above all else. They were chiffon sheer, like negligees.
Missoni’s Sexy
Knits, Retro Caftans
Angela Missoni presented her second collection with a sexy--what else?--collection of knit dresses in swirly colorful patterns and offered a retro look with mini-caftans over slim pants and bikini swimsuits.
Several dresses were cut simply and held together with a single button. Others, lined in bright colors of yellow and aqua, could be worn inside out.
Her floor-length knits--slit at the sides--and adorned with a moon and stars and a colorful landscape were among the best in her collection.
“I had no point of reference with my collection. I wanted to do something new and fresh,” she said about her line, most of which was made of the lightest silk knits.
Dolce & Gabbana unveiled their signature line on Thursday. From Old Glory capris with red and white sequined stripes on one leg and the rest of a glittering American flag design on the other to a breathtaking rhinestone-studded coat--most everything dazzled like sparklers on the Fourth of July.
That included crystal embroidered hats, halters, bra tops, belts, suits, white blouses and little purses that were attached with delicate chains to crystal-encrusted handcuffs.
The D&G; guys played with fringe, putting it on wicked stiletto boots, sexy sleeveless tops and skirts of all lengths--as well as on skirts they called the half and half because the front was different from the back in color and design.
“We wanted to play with extremes,” Gabbana said before the show, adding that for this collection he and Dolce took their inspiration from young Milan women who create their own style by “mixing it all up, something elegant with something that is not.”
On Sunday, the designing duo showed their D&G; line. Models were in punk Madonna garb: pearl chokers, safety-pinned shirts, neopunk vests and micromini studded skirts. Capris were low-waisted, and plenty of shirts and skirts were adorned with dangling crosses and zoot-suit style chains.
John Barlett, designer for Byblos, defined the collection he showed Monday as “a mixture of Jackie Kennedy on acid, the Japanese judo girl and Judy Jetson at the prom,” he said backstage.
For sure, his collection mixed business with pleasure. A herringbone pattern peppered with beads, cropped pants--’70s style--and asymmetric hems on his space-cadet satin evening gowns.
E-mail Michael Quintanilla at socalliving@latimes.com.
