Saturday, February 26, 2011

Best of Milan Fashion Week

Bottega Veneta FW11

by Grace Gordon

If the clothes from Bottega Veneta’s fall/winter collection looked a little too much like Mad Men costume pieces, look again. Veneta’s modernist inspired show was really quite frayed around the edges and electrified with a current of romantic madness. This is prim and proper Grace Kelly or Jackie O, come undone.

The collection began with nubby textured outerwear in radiant citrus hues and matching skirts. Collars closed at the neck, and opaque white tights were paired with juicy bright ensembles in fuchsia, orange and cheddar yellow. Not an inch of skin was revealed, which gave these outfits a feeling of hushed up, librarian sexiness. When darker colors were introduced onto the stage, the tone shifted to one of more overt vixen appeal. Sheer lace paneling filled in cut-outs on dark, moody dresses. Spray-paint technique mimicked the look of sheer lace overlays on a number of dresses. The wildness of Pollack-ian splatters was a transfixing detail on one dress that was paired, in great contrast, with a sweet green cardigan. Everywhere you looked, there was an unfinished hem, a haphazard dappled weave above the bust of a cream blouse, a shredded fringe skirt, a rough-cut finish.

If the narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” were alive today, this is what she’d wear. Underneath all of the starchy self-containment of turtlenecks and jacquard coats is a woman desperate to be relieved from duty, desperate to run free. The subversive aspect of this collection appeals to the duality of feminine nature, and lets those uncertain parts of ourselves bleed through into how we dress.