The plaintive refrain that rings through Milan every Fashion Week goes thus: "Where are all the young designers? Who's got a different voice?" So although he's a transfer from Paris, the arrival of Damir Doma is something for locals to relish. He's a jolt of beard-scratchy thoughtfulness in a town whose fashion business is gripped by the sleek; a bit of spiritual underground to offset all the commercial overground.
Doma held his first Italian womenswear show in two adjacent garages behind Via Torino, which gave it that most blessed of elements, outdoor space. On a rough-and-ready catwalk of chipped concrete, the designer showed some comely new variations on his severe and monastic metier. Crisp papery cotton—in all-white, checks, or darkened navy strafed by stripes—was melded into restrainedly asymmetrical shapes given depth by fold and knot. A loose micro-check overcoat was satisfyingly gathered by a looped closure. The burnt-out opaque jumpsuits were a touch iffy—had the unreconstructed testosterone that courses through Milan dosed DD?—but the same fabric incorporated into patched degradé black trousers worked well. A fil coupe of distressed abstract shapes was deeply Doma: palely interesting, austere, moody. It suits this designer to be close to the production of his clothes, and it suits this city to host him.
