Seduction still sells in Milan, showcasing dashes of levity and great clothes.
IT HAS been as busy as Santa’s workshop over at the Francesco Murano studio in Milan. While working on his new Fall outing, the designer was prompted by a personal touchpoint that had him musing about his next piece de resistance.
“I started from a personal theme that I researched during the period I began sketching the new Fall collection, which is to find a balance in the familiar,” he offered in an interview pre-show.
“The intention was to concretise these feelings through symmetries, which allude to a mathematical element to find the right proportions that can be perceived with the naked eye.” Despite this reference being a continuum from past seasons, where the designer toyed with a slew of finely sculpted dresses, he made novelty happen with breezy separates scattered with poised draping details.
“From this point, I began with this concept and the idea was to match different elements and materials through draperies, such as leather with chiffon, or very masculine pants with these very fluid and feminine volumes,” he added. “Even in the casting there was, let’s say, this vision, and in the line-up there’s an urgency to find a continuous sense of gravity.”
According to Murano, there’s a rational part that weighs more and one that weighs less, which came in the form of severe cuts juxtaposed by sartorial lightness.”The jumpsuit is a core element of the collection, which is a new model that formed by these two draperies that are held up by an inner structure—a corset—that is cut on the sides.” Murano continues to convince both insiders and female aficionados with his sinuous approach to dressing.
A sinuosity which, in part, runs the race at MM6 Maison Margiela’s Fall outing, a place where wearability has always been the end game. The label’s not trying to reinvent the wheel of creating art pieces like its niftier counterpart and prefers to remain focused on making focused, everyday staples with a shred of space-age utilitarianism.
The lineup achieved that this season with a collection full of structured pieces that would earn heavy rotation on most wardrobes, including the likes of trench coats, tailored coats, a pantsuit, polos, a column dress, the zip-up camionneur, t-shirts and skirts—timeless staples gleaned from the vast repertoire of history jumping through the decades.
The staples shunned through as panels were added on the back, moulded into body-redefining volumes through the padding, crudely reduced pulling fabric on the side or back creating an evident seam allowance that traps lining, crushed inside second-skin dresses, as something big was forced into something small.
Interchangeability has become somewhat of a signature for the label, and the standouts here were removable structures engineered to enlarge the width of shoulders, completely altering the shape of basic garments by turning them into sharp and dramatic outlines.
Elsewhere, accessories epitomised iterations and interpretations of classics: square-toed boots, high-heeled pumps, pumps with fake stockings, and capacious bags with snap handles, which earned their spots.
Still, it would be nice to see the label push itself a bit further, but its commercial appeal sits at the core of its lingua franca, which will undoubtedly convince customers and retailers in no time.
by Chidozie Obasi