Two classics from the ’90s heartbreak canon bookended the soundtrack—“Missing” by Everything But The Girl and “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinead O'Connor. They signaled a flashback to Veronica Etro’s time studying fashion design at Central Saint Martins. That was between ’93 and ’97—great years in London—so did she party hard? “No, I was a very good student! I had also a very dark period but I loved it. I loved the freedom of expression, the freedom to create.”
Her thesis was entitled Advertising Adverteasing: Breaking Boundaries in an Image World as Fashion Imitates Life, and today Etro was trying to present a show with many looks that were transferable straight to street. That, though, was within the kaleidoscopically unrelenting decorative codes of her family house. Bikers in purple or black came backed with brocaded panels of tattoo-touched embroidered florals and beading and were worn over dresses that layered lace under, over, and within (as panels) swaths of floral or dragon print silks and chiffon. Parkas, one of them a hybridized kimono, were presented in metallic floral brocades with shaggy fur-like collars. One, quite jarringly, looked at first to be in a plain taupe gabardine, but as it floated open on the runway you could see a lining of purple floral-print silk that allowed for a quick inside-out switch to retro Etro Deco. One overt insertion from the ’90s was a block check, all 90-degree normality in the midst of the swirling curves and petals of Etro’s psychedelic staples. Knits were oversize to enable tortured sleeve tweaking and featured frayed hems at their ribbed waists and cuffs. They sometimes featured a fine translation of military frogging into golden branches of suppressed paisley.
There was more, so much more—including some wonderful yellow-splashed velvet dévoré pieces that zipped past way too fast. Watching a collection as intensely dense as this one can challenge the eye’s capacity to process the detail and craft in front of it. But it does make you want to keep on looking.
