Turns out, you really can go home again. For Spring 2016, Angela Missoni took her brand back to its roots: “Sportswear!” exclaimed the designer backstage before the show. Her boards were full of photographs of Maasai tribespeople (Africa being, as Missoni noted, “the roots of humanity”) and the graphic, street-centric work of the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, whose colorful, kinetic crosswalks inspired the runway. Yet the show was full of the bright, breezy, vibrant type of jet set–ready attire that has made the house iconic for decades.
The silhouette was long and lean, with narrow, sweeping cardigans paired with hot pants, fete-ready halter-neck dresses in vibrant metallic pleats, and open-collared tunics paired with flowing trousers. Swimwear boasted generous looping ties or thick, layered Maasai-inspired collars. Fitted, striped polo shirts—the type of thing Missoni fans have long scoured vintage stores for—felt like a slam dunk. “Before we were a zigzag, we were a stripe,” said Missoni backstage, and for a house with an innately bohemian attitude (and during a season full of splashy, occasionally bewildering debuts), you can’t get more straightforward—or more comforting—than that.
