Between messages and locations

The aesthetic language for this cold season is full of references to the past and imaginative stories about the near future. The advice and suggestions from the autumn-winter catwalks are many and are told with the awareness that fashion is play and lightness but also a tool for spreading new messages and healthy habits.

Many designers, thanks to the need to limit indoor activities imposed by the pandemic, have their models paraded in different environments: beaches, museums, urban installations, streets. Fashion breaks the lines of traditional locations and becomes a sounding board for values ​​such as environmental protection and the rediscovery of works of art, while denouncing persistent gender discrimination and the difficulty, especially for the new generations, of live beyond a computer screen.

Here then are the creations with a 90s allure of Saint Laurent, between sand and blocks of ice on an Icelandic volcanic beach; those with a street style flavor by Dolce & Gabbana in a very colorful maxi videogame and those by Rick Owens at the Lido of Venice in a silhouette game made up of oversized volumes with maxi duvets and long protective masks paired with futuristic gloves and shoes. In a highly globalized context, the urban skyscrapers that frame the Missoni fashion show underline that Milan is still an important square of international fashion business while the Fendi catwalk reminds us, among glass cases, capitals and Roman columns, the power of beautiful and traditional. Will the challenge of our present be to keep the past and the future in balance or to create new aesthetic codes?

Elisa d’Adamo

NP Novembre 2021