Italian collections show style

Press, 27 October 1982, Page 10

Italian collections show style

SALLY BRAMPTON

reports for the

“Observer” from Milan at the start of the European fashion collections for the northern-hemisphere spring.

The Italian designers showed their collections recently to give us an idea of the direction which fashion will be taking next spring. However, apart from a few confident exceptions, that direction was somewhat confused. Over the past year two different silhouettes have

been established: one oi beautifully constructed and tailored clothes, coming chiefly from the West, the other, a more complex outline from the Japanese designers. who cut cloth to drape and flow rather than fit.

Roth rely on clever cutting and complicated techniques, and the final effect is one of clean simplicity. The Italian designers may use beautiful fabrics and expert design, but this year many of them showed a tendency to complicate their clothes ’ with laborious details.

Gianni Versace produced some beautifully simple linen tunics, square-cut jackets and slim skirts, but the cut of some of his blouses and dresses was so complicated and cluttered with ideas that the models obviously found them difficult to wear.

There can't be a working woman anywhere who enjoys the prospect of waking up in the morning to press her pleated linen jacket for an hour, only to find those cleverly constructed inset panels,’ which looked so wonderful hanging in her wardrobe, transformed from riches to rumpled rags the minute she sets foot on the Central Line.

Luciano Soprani, a bright light of last year, seems to have sunk into a depression of dark brown linen that only a Trappist monk would have been happy to join him in.

However, not all was doom and gloom. Giorgio Armani decided to come out of his Garboesque retirement of last year, when he refused to show, and to reveal all.

Not without some very tedious game-playing, 1 might add. “Yes you can, no you can't, yes you can,” went on for weeks.

Finally, we could, and did see the clothes and he certainly proved his brilliance by producing not just one but three collections- the Armani collection, which is the most sophisticated; the Erreuno — younger and what he describes as “more fashionable": and the Mario Valentino collection of sumptuous suede and leather. Armani's new silhouette is based on a very short blouson jacket caught in sharply at the waist, with defined shoulders and neat lapels or stand collars.

This he put with long, slim skirts and simple silk or linen blouses. The jackets and skirts were in intricate

weaves of black and white, shot with tiny threads of colour that gave the impression of neutral grey, forming a background for brilliantly coloured shirts striped in scarlet, fuchsia, peacock green and turquoise. With the Erreuno collection. Armani kept the same short blouson jacket shape and added unstructured trench coats, with much shorter wrapped skirts slung with double belts at the hip. One of Giorgio Armani's newest techniques is to print suede and leather — so that it looks anything but the skin it is.

The Mario Valentino suedes were printed in a myriad of striped and checked patterns in dazzingly bright colours, the shapes kept to a simple T-shaped shirt with rounded shoulders and the softest, wrapped slim skirts. For his Armani collection he printed leather to look like traditional shirting stripes, then lined that in true shirting striped cotton for a trompe I'oeil effect. The Missonis produced their usual happy and colourful collection. Some of their best looks were knitted Tshaped dresses and sweaters in grey with big. bold blocks of colour splashed across them.

More very pretty, wearable clothes’from Laura Biagotti: her most dramatic look for spring was of black, scarlet and white cashmere made up into very plain loose'Sweaters and trousers.

The sweaters were in block mixes of all three colours, with attached scarfs that could be slung across the, body, wrapped around the neck’or flutter like bright banners in the breeze.

To sum up. the strongest looks for spring are the short blouson or more formal tailored jackets with defined but not exaggerated shoulders.

With these go the slimmish straight skirts, the length from just above the knee to mid-calf.

The most sensible statement about lengths is that they should be balanced in proportion to the jacket — longer with the short jackets, shorter with long.

In Milan there was definitely more of an emphasis on skirts, but when trousers appeared they were slim and simple, cropped just about the ankle or caught into a light cuff.