Italian Fashion Brands Make a Novel Pitch: ‘Real Clothes’
At men’s fashion week in Milan, straight-legged jeans and utilitarian jackets with European tailoring dominated the runways: ‘It’s not just about jersey T-shirts and sweatshirts’
4 min
The streets of Milan are alive with the sound of English. On baking June afternoons, American tourists in droves are ordering veal Milanese in trattorias, snapping selfies outside the Duomo and toting around bulging shopping bags from keen luxury labels like Zegna, Armani and Gucci.
This season, the Italian fashion labels are delivering a wealth of wearable fodder to feed those paper parcels: The weightiest trend on display at Milan men’s fashion week, which wrapped on Monday, was a predilection toward what could best be described as “real clothes.” Brands like Prada, Neil Barrett and even the high priests of baroque styles, Dolce & Gabbana, sent out focused collections built upon items like straight-legged jeans, pin-sharp black suits and tailored shorts.
“The beauty of today is that people are finally looking at real clothes again, and it’s not just about jersey T-shirts and sweatshirts,” said Barrett backstage after a show of wardrobe fundamentals like graphite short-sleeve shirts, gray trousers and polished black boots from his brand, which is based in Italy. Barrett, who is British, was returning to the runway after an extended hiatus and drew inspiration from the archives of his own brand and his many years working at another Milan-based label, Prada. “There’s real people out there with real businesses,” who need real clothes, he said.
Raf Simons, co-creative director of Prada, also gave a shout-out backstage to the “real man” and the uncomplicated things he wears: “jeans, pants, a white shirt, utilitarian photographer’s jacket.” Several looks in Prada’s well-received collection echoed the workmanlike style of the artist Joseph Beuys.
Simons said he and Miuccia Prada began with the elemental white shirt, sprawling out to include curt pleated shorts, straight-cut jeans and button-up-weight blazers with button cuffs as a new, very literal update on the shirt jacket.
Simons also said the pair was looking at how to “liberate” the codes of tailoring from as far back as the 1940s to plumb a fresh form of sartorial ease. Those featherweight, lapelled shackets had removable shoulder pads. “Every piece is actually really constructed like a shirt, there’s nothing inside, whether it was shirt material or wool,” he said.
Overall, the wares at Milan fashion week conveyed cultivated European luxury. Americans “want a taste of culture, they want a taste of connoisseurship, they want a taste of elegance, old money is in style, and more than that, quality is in fashion,” said the content creator known as Gstaad Guy, a British-raised, U.S.-educated 20-something whose droll Instagram videos wryly lampoon old-money culture. He was speaking after a dinner for the luxuriant Italian label Loro Piana. “The fact that the affluent of the U.S. are now very Eurocurious, vacationing more in Europe and spending more like Europeans, is not a coincidence,” he said.
He shrewdly drew a comparison between the traditional old-money labels in America and abroad. While the gold-buttons-and-popped-collars preppy look of entrenched U.S.-founded brands Brooks Brothers and Vineyard Vines has been mothballed for years, the allure of more aspirational, easy-wearing European luxury brands is only surging.
“I’ve always found European style just more tailored and stylish,” said Andrew Weitz, a Los Angeles-based style consultant to entertainment and finance executives. “That’s what I try to bring to all my clients at home. It’s how we should all be dressing.”
Weitz was pleased then by the sea of Americans he saw frequenting Milan’s tony shopping promenades. “You can see the influx when you walk around in Milan on Via Monte Napoleone, like how many people actually are here, how many people are actually purchasing,” he said. Their presence reflects a broader trend: According to a report from travel-insurance company Allianz Partners, travel to Europe from the U.S. is up 55% over the last year.
Throughout Milan men’s week, designers offered options in ease-stoking staples that felt as carefree as an afternoon in the Lombardy sun.
1017 ALYX 9SM., known for its hard-edge, heavily-treated creations, showed a capried gray sweatsuit and a serene matching pant set that looked like something plucked from a karate dojo. Valentino presented a medley of swoopy off-the-calf shorts and past-the-elbow T-shirts; and Giorgio Armani dove in with prodigious pleated linen trousers and buoyant double-breasted suits.
They were pieces that nodded reverently to Armani’s own extensive archive—a veritable Library of Alexandria of elegant ease. Many of the immense trousers looked nearly identical to the same well-aged Armani pants that 20-something shoppers are searching for on the cheap at resale sites like Depop and stores like New York’s Lara Koleji.
“I think young people are loving to be quite untouched by the clothes,” said Etro creative director Marco De Vincenzo, just before a show peppered with a bevy of barrell-size shorts and kicked-out pants that stretched into JNCO territory.
“I have to now educate all my clients that, hey, we’re not so tailored and tapered, [pants are] looser, more easy in the thigh and the bottom,” said the style consultant Weitz, just before a Zegna show brimming with roomy linen trousers and off-the-body overshirts. “You’re going to see in the next few years Americans catch up.”
First Via Monte Napoleone, then the world.
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4 min
As Paris makes its final preparations for the Olympic games, its residents are busy with their own—packing their suitcases, confirming their reservations, and getting out of town.
Worried about the hordes of crowds and overall chaos the Olympics could bring, Parisians are fleeing the city in droves and inundating resort cities around the country. Hotels and holiday rentals in some of France’s most popular vacation destinations—from the French Riviera in the south to the beaches of Normandy in the north—say they are expecting massive crowds this year in advance of the Olympics. The games will run from July 26-Aug. 1.
“It’s already a major holiday season for us, and beyond that, we have the Olympics,” says Stéphane Personeni, general manager of the Lily of the Valley hotel in Saint Tropez. “People began booking early this year.”
Personeni’s hotel typically has no issues filling its rooms each summer—by May of each year, the luxury hotel typically finds itself completely booked out for the months of July and August. But this year, the 53-room hotel began filling up for summer reservations in February.
“We told our regular guests that everything—hotels, apartments, villas—are going to be hard to find this summer,” Personeni says. His neighbours around Saint Tropez say they’re similarly booked up.
As of March, the online marketplace Gens de Confiance (“Trusted People”), saw a 50% increase in reservations from Parisians seeking vacation rentals outside the capital during the Olympics.
Already, August is a popular vacation time for the French. With a minimum of five weeks of vacation mandated by law, many decide to take the entire month off, renting out villas in beachside destinations for longer periods.
But beyond the typical August travel, the Olympics are having a real impact, says Bertille Marchal, a spokesperson for Gens de Confiance.
“We’ve seen nearly three times more reservations for the dates of the Olympics than the following two weeks,” Marchal says. “The increase is definitely linked to the Olympic Games.”
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According to the site, the most sought-out vacation destinations are Morbihan and Loire-Atlantique, a seaside region in the northwest; le Var, a coastal area within the southeast of France along the Côte d’Azur; and the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, the Olympics haven’t necessarily been a boon to foreign tourism in the country. Many tourists who might have otherwise come to France are avoiding it this year in favour of other European capitals. In Paris, demand for stays at high-end hotels has collapsed, with bookings down 50% in July compared to last year, according to UMIH Prestige, which represents hotels charging at least €800 ($865) a night for rooms.
Earlier this year, high-end restaurants and concierges said the Olympics might even be an opportunity to score a hard-get-seat at the city’s fine dining.
In the Occitanie region in southwest France, the overall number of reservations this summer hasn’t changed much from last year, says Vincent Gare, president of the regional tourism committee there.
“But looking further at the numbers, we do see an increase in the clientele coming from the Paris region,” Gare told Le Figaro, noting that the increase in reservations has fallen directly on the dates of the Olympic games.
Michel Barré, a retiree living in Paris’s Le Marais neighbourhood, is one of those opting for the beach rather than the opening ceremony. In January, he booked a stay in Normandy for two weeks.
“Even though it’s a major European capital, Paris is still a small city—it’s a massive effort to host all of these events,” Barré says. “The Olympics are going to be a mess.”
More than anything, he just wants some calm after an event-filled summer in Paris, which just before the Olympics experienced the drama of a snap election called by Macron.
“It’s been a hectic summer here,” he says.
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Parisians—Barré included—feel that the city, by over-catering to its tourists, is driving out many residents.
Parts of the Seine—usually one of the most popular summertime hangout spots —have been closed off for weeks as the city installs bleachers and Olympics signage. In certain neighbourhoods, residents will need to scan a QR code with police to access their own apartments. And from the Olympics to Sept. 8, Paris is nearly doubling the price of transit tickets from €2.15 to €4 per ride.
The city’s clear willingness to capitalise on its tourists has motivated some residents to do the same. In March, the number of active Airbnb listings in Paris reached an all-time high as hosts rushed to list their apartments. Listings grew 40% from the same time last year, according to the company.
With their regular clients taking off, Parisian restaurants and merchants are complaining that business is down.
“Are there any Parisians left in Paris?” Alaine Fontaine, president of the restaurant industry association, told the radio station Franceinfo on Sunday. “For the last three weeks, there haven’t been any here.”
Still, for all the talk of those leaving, there are plenty who have decided to stick around.
Jay Swanson, an American expat and YouTuber, can’t imagine leaving during the Olympics—he secured his tickets to see ping pong and volleyball last year. He’s also less concerned about the crowds and road closures than others, having just put together a series of videos explaining how to navigate Paris during the games.
“It’s been 100 years since the Games came to Paris; when else will we get a chance to host the world like this?” Swanson says. “So many Parisians are leaving and tourism is down, so not only will it be quiet but the only people left will be here for a party.”
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
