In the fashion imagination, there is obviously the stylistic aura of the Parisian, but also the glamor apart from the Italian. A sex appeal that designers have revisited on their catwalks during Milan Fashion Week Spring-Summer 2022, from September 21 to 27, celebrating bodies and revealing skins.
At Versace, it is through the house’s iconic printed silk scarf that Donatella Versace expresses sensuality. “The scarf is a fundamental part of the Versace heritage. This season, it is no longer fluid or evanescent. He is provocative, sexy, tied very tightly ”, details the designer. The parade, opened by singer Dua Lipa, demonstrates this through bustier tops revealing the hips, brassieres slipped under neon costumes extending the leg, slit micro-skirts worn with men’s jackets. The look is sexy and frankly assumed.
A bias that can be found at Dolce & Gabbana, used to not skimping when it comes to showing as much skin as possible. “We wanted to pay tribute to the feminine world by giving women the opportunity to express themselves and assert their sex appeal”, detailed the duo before the show. Lace bodysuits slipped under jeans adorned with flashy jewels, leather Perfectos paired with black guipure bras, dresses with ultra-close laces or very short in transparent chiffon, little is left to the imagination.
At Roberto Cavalli, for whom Fausto Puglisi signed his second collection here, the sexy with ferocious accents was not far away, it was enough to take a little tour in the archives. The tiger, leopard or historic zebra prints of the Florentine house are worn alternately on long slit dresses, coats voluminous or tiny dresses with suggestive cuts… Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez have already succumbed. “ I want sexy to be celebrated as a part of life, sex is a part of life, right? Women today are no longer subject to the gaze of men, I want them to be free to wear what they want! “ explains Fausto Puglisi.
Houses with a more cerebral universe have also questioned the notion of sensuality, like Prada, whose collection imagined by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons has sought to redefine its contours, through two identical parades. , organized simultaneously in Milan and Shanghai. “ We have reflected on the language of seduction, which ultimately always comes down to the body. This collection is an investigation of what these questions mean today, what is seduction? “ Miuccia Prada specifies in her intent note.
In response, the duo played very intelligently on these questions, with aged leather jackets worn next to the skin, duchess satin panels escaping from the back of the miniskirts, molded bras. in wool sweaters, corset-style jackets and fine-knit polo shirts, accentuating the breasts or even the ties of dresses that are not fully closed, showing the lace of the lingerie. A modern take on the notion of suggestive seduction, perfectly executed.
For Massimo Giorgetti at MSGM, sensuality goes through cutting games revealing the skin, sometimes that of the stomach thanks to an electric green crop top, sometimes that of one shoulder by the asymmetry of a draped and flowery dress, or else even that of the legs thanks to shorts or ultra-short skirts.
The skin is also the playground explored with subtlety by Guillaume Meilland at Salvatore Ferragamo. Less frontal than that of her peers, her sexy attitude is nestled in a deep neckline over a long black cotton dress, another in fringed suede creating a draw on the stomach, a fishnet top or even a draped top. right on the chest.
A restrained sensuality that echoes that diffused by Walter Chiapponi at Tod’s, which offers a wardrobe tinted with sportswear references – short zipped parkas, mesh dresses revealing the underwear, jackets with patch pockets … – served by a palette of soft colors, between yellow, orange and poppy.
Giorgio Armani, meanwhile, received his guests in his personal home, a palazzo of a lively district of Milan. It is in the basement, in his small theater, that the designer unrolled his spring-summer 2022 collection. An ode to summer softness, to the sea and to the sun, articulated around flowing pants, small fitted jackets, dresses and trouser sets with shimmering gray reflections or petticoats fashioned in iridescent tulle.
If the question of sensuality is not strictly speaking the object of the collection proposed by Francesco Risso at Marni, that of the performance of bodies holds its place. The designer, who took over at the head of the Milanese house in 2016, imagined a participatory fashion show: each guest was dressed in one or more Marni-branded pieces, most often large hand-painted recycled cotton shirts. Add to that a choir, violinists, saxophonists, a poet declaiming verses and the American singer Zsela Thompson installed in the center of the podium … difficult to distinguish the models in this assembly, who wore a series of striped and colorful dresses cut diagonally and assemblages of daisy patterns on short skirts accompanied by bras. A refreshing show parade, served by a cast of different body types.
Finally, surprise: Sunday evening, when most of the journalists and foreign buyers had left the city, the houses of Versace and Fendi unveiled a joint collection called Fendace, during a parade kept secret. Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi reinterpreted the Versace codes while Donatella Versace seized those of Fendi. Result, a sexy hybrid collection at will, mixing glamor, scarf prints, logo tights, flashy jewelry or suggestive lace, worn by cult supermodels Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Amber Valletta, who have also reinvented the notion of sexy in 1990s.
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