The Miuccia-ness of Prada, the Gucci-ness of Tom Ford

MILAN — On the very finish of the Prada present on Thursday, the viewers witnessed a kind of symbolic moments whose weight will solely be really felt with the passage of time. Fabio Zambernardi, who has been Miuccia Prada’s proper hand for nigh on thirty years, entered stage left to take a public bow for the primary time with Miuccia, alongside together with her co-designer Raf Simons. Watching that second, it was arduous to not suppose that the gathering we’d simply seen wasn’t some form of swan tune to their years of artistic collaboration. There was actually sufficient of the sly, twisty, idiosyncratic, perversely glamorous essence of Prada to bolster such hypothesis.

Bernard Herrman’s soundtrack for “Vertigo” performed whereas the fashions walked. That film revolves round doppelgängers, alter egos and fractured psyches. The identical themes had been taken up in “It Follows,” essentially the most clever horror film of the previous decade, a snippet of whose soundtrack adopted shortly. The musical choices in a Raf Simons present at all times communicate volumes. They did right here as nicely, as a result of the gathering supplied a splintered imaginative and prescient, not solely previous, current and future but additionally stark juxtapositions of arduous and mushy, masculine and female, mild and darkish, work and play. However these contrasts have at all times been basic to Prada, and it appeared solely proper that they need to be celebrated in a set that was a goodbye to the person who’d certainly talked them by with Mrs. Prada a thousand occasions through the years.

The previous actually weighed in with the eye paid to Miuccia’s grandfather Mario, who based the corporate in 1913, and whose questing bohemian curiosity impressed the eccentric detailing on this assortment’s equipment. Mario’s early Twentieth-century artisanship was additionally the inspiration for the embroideries and ornament, the spirals of sequins, the constellations of beading, the gilded fringing and the grommets. However the toughness of the gathering was additionally placing: sturdy worn barn jackets, patchworked black leather-based coats and attire, broad-shouldered shirt jackets and tightly belted waists over rah-rah shorts. Pure movie noir. In reality, the entire thing was extravagantly, evocatively cinematic in a manner that Prada hasn’t been for a protracted whereas. Hey, that’s some method to say goodbye.

After which, on the opposite facet of city, a hearty howdy to Peter Hawkings, taking on the reins at Tom Ford. There’s nobody higher outfitted for the job. Hawkings was Ford’s Fabio for 25 years, since Gucci days. He’s been working the boys’s operation out of London, whereas Tom’s design workforce dealt with womenswear out of LA. That precipitated a disconnect, which Hawkings acknowledges as he involves design womenswear for the primary time. He’s as sharp as a tack. He sees the frequent sense in bringing the 2 nearer collectively. A suitable couple. True, they haven’t been that not too long ago. Ford’s man has at all times had snap, however his girl has edged flashy-trashy of late. On the proof of the gathering he confirmed on Thursday night time, Hawkings’ treatment is a return to the times that made Tom nice, the mid-late-90s when Gucci redefined glamour and intercourse and style devil-may-care.

That’s a problem if you’re not genetically inclined to the disco loucheness that Ford so completely embodied in his partying prime. However proximity has clearly prepped Hawkings. He confirmed The Velvet Swimsuit (“We personal velvet,” he crowed), a fishnet gown and a collection of languidly second-skin ground draggers with a hedonistic indolence you may think mirrored Ford’s personal temperament. Then once more, you could be unsuitable, though the spirit of Carine Roitfeld inserted itself with the re-evaluation, a protracted jersey sheath clasped by a low-slung buckle. Roitfeld styled Mario Testino’s advert campaigns for Ford’s Gucci and, within the course of, created among the defining pictures of the period. “We had been all influenced by her,” Hawkings says. When he says “all,” he certainly consists of Whitney Bromberg, the girl he met 25 years in the past once they each began work at Gucci. They finally married, she went on to turn out to be Ford’s SVP of communications. You’ll be able to sense she’s his sounding board. “I’ve needed to reboot so much with regard to make and luxury,” he acknowledges.

Hawkings’ lasting contribution to the Ford canon will most likely be the fiercely trim, tailor-made womenswear silhouette which walks arm in arm along with his menswear. Leaving the present house, I bumped into a few Italian style professionals who had been in a state of bliss. “Tom’s again,” they marvelled. Nevertheless Hawkings feels about that — massive footwear, and so on. — it’s clearly a place that has wanted filling.