Dolce & Gabbana celebrate 20 years of menswear

A cold and misty morning marked the first day of the Men’s Fall 2010 collections in Milan. The weather served as an apt conceit for the uncertain decade (and millennium) ahead. With sales still stagnant after the recent holidays, the runways offered differing ideas on how to perk things up.  

Some looked boldly to the future. At Jil Sander, the innovative fabrics (five dollars for anyone who can tell me what a slub pin stripe is) were technical yet approachable. Thanks to designer Raf Simmons’s absolute mastery of construction, they became something new and challenging. For the first ten looks (mostly monochrome suits) not a single button was seen; instead soft edged geometric appliqués served as the closures, the belting, and even the patch pockets. Had anyone else attempted to make suits like these, they would have looked like something out of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. But these simply seemed modern.

Similarly, at Emporio Armani the focus was on geometry. With a sculpture of a triangle, rhombus, cube, and other shapes in the background, Mr. Armani started with the signature snowboard looks that usually come at his show’s end, covering them with LED lights. The highlights were his knits: pyramidal, spiked crew-necks and caps, as well as Fair Isle and crepe-knit bottoms (most tucked into some form of high Jodhpur boot). For an encore, Armani presented the new EA7 line of sneakers, a collaboration with Reebok. The final group of models strode out wearing the kicks, nude colored briefs, and broad smiles.

Sometimes the surest bet is to find strength in one’s history. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are celebrating their men’s line’s 20th anniversary this year and returned to their fertile ground of pre-WWII Sicily. Giuseppe Tornatore’s recent film Baaria served as both backdrop (scenes were shown on the big screen behind the models) and inspirational fodder for the entire collection. It played to the duo’s strengths: three piece suits in velvet, riding pant silhouettes, heavy knits fashioned into pea coats or oversized cardigans, brown paint on acid washed jeans, band collar shirts under high closing waist coats. The looks, which came down the runway in groups that mirrored acts in the movie, were paired with broken and dusty boots, right out of the village Piazza.

Also reveling in the glorious past, Burberry Prorsum’s Chistopher Bailey found inspiration in pre-WWI military regalia. Taking the officer and cadet’s coats to their sartorial extremes, he lined the olive, khaki, or navy canvas pieces with luxurious shearling and festooned them with gold buttons. Every piece of outerwear (the show was an outerwear extravaganza) directly referenced a piece that Burberry had produced at one point in its illustrious history. Even the shearling bombers—high necked, leather banded, rugged, luxurious, and completely out of control—were based on jackets worn during the first trans-Atlantic flights. All was deftly paired with simpler microcollar denim shirts, black or navy wool trousers, and Jodhpur laced boots (too early to call Jodhpurs a trend). Smart on Bailey’s part: keep it simple below the waist so as not to detract from the triumph above.

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KEYWORDS: Burberry Prorsum, Dolce & Gabbana, Emporio Armani, fashion, fashion week, Jil Sander, milan fashion week, runway