At last, Agnona gets a show—in a conspicuously modest space—and a dedicated designer in (the conspicuously modest) Simon Holloway. When Zegna charged him with jump-starting its previously stalled attempt at reviving this ’50s-era knitwear label as the feminine counterpoint to Zegna itself, Holloway said, “the brief was wide open.”
“This is everything I love as a designer—beautiful expensive fabrics, exquisite workmanship,” he added. “And what I think was really surprising for me was that the Agnona archive was so much more creative and interesting that it had appeared from the outside. They made fabric for every major couturier from the 1950s onwards, and they still are.”
While trawling those archives, Holloway discovered a recurring seasonal use of soft nude tones as a baseline palette, so naturally he restored it here. Those tones though were often subtly underlaid with stronger stuff. The opening bias-cut slip dress in “Century” cashmere—of a micron so fine and a cost so high as to be barely creditable—was double-faced with a hue of apricot intense enough to pulse discernably through that outer layer. Furs—something inconsistent with the Agnona backstory—were used here not as superiors but as complementary equals to the house knits around them. So the sleeves of one coat mixed goat and fox to mimic the just as lustrous checked alpaca of its body. Another hybrid blended lavender and gray brushed alpaca in a herringbone on its top, then mink and fox in the same classic menswear pattern below.
Waistlines were gently cinched, sometimes even corseted by a gentle tug at the sternum in blouses of silk georgette. One pant and sweater combination—way too elevated to be equated with sportswear but easy to wear despite that—was mostly made in a lamé jacquard of silk and wool. This had flash, and was eye candy. But a closer look at the sweater’s sleeves, back, and ribbed hem revealed a knitted, bonded, then felted cashmere jersey of such transcendent lightness that it seemed almost criminal to be so relegated to mere context. This collection changes the direction of fashion not a jot—but it should fly straight onto the want lists for retailers whose customers will thrill to conventionally sleek, unapologetically uptown daywear whose fabrication is the non plus ultra of its form. “It's like being given a beautiful present,” said Holloway, explaining that he now feels “very responsible” for taking care of the brand. Which sounds like absolutely the right attitude.
