For Francesco Scognamiglio 's most high-profile clients—your Lady Gagas, your Rihannas—what mere mortals might consider everyday, to-the-grocery-store wearability isn't really an issue. But businesses cannot live on Gaga alone.
So while his Spring and Fall runways are stocked with the kind of rubber dresses and translucent frocks the stars may favor, inter-season, commercial collections are a good place for the designer to adapt his sensibility to the demands of the sales rack. With his pre-fall offering, Scognamiglio mostly succeeds at just that. He borrowed shapes, he said, from the twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties—not that denizens of those decades would easily recognize them. The designer kept things very much in his own oeuvre with tufts of fur, shots of sheer, and a collection of gold Byzantine cross jewelry and accessories, very eighties Material Girl. (Her wild-child fashion antics are at least largely behind her, but one imagines Madonna would've found plenty in Scognamiglio's atelier to love at one point.) Tailored pieces remain a high point. A new print, inspired by the markings of the tiger shark, comes in chiffon and silk jersey gowns, including floor-length ones designed to keep the label's growing Middle Eastern clientele happy. And an abbreviated little skirtsuit in stretch wool crepe—a cropped zip jacket and a high-waisted miniskirt, both covered in ruched floral details—hits a sort of happy medium between ladylike and divaesque. Apparently La Gaga's already requested it. Turns out even she hits the grocery store sometimes.
