Etro makes clothes for the most aesthetically adventurous; even for this label, this collection was a heady prospect. For years now, Kean Etro has been deeply influenced by René Daumal’s Mount Analogue, an unfinished French novel that charts an allegorical mountaineering expedition to enlightenment. Today, Kean equipped his models for that path, taking further inspiration from Reinhold Messner—the first man to climb all 14 8,000-meter-plus mountains—and his own in-built mysticism. There aren’t many designers who would airily contend that their spirit animal is a gorilla.
“It’s about the sacredness of the mountains,” said Kean, “mixing the idea of climbing and ascendere: ascent.”
To set the tone, the show was preceded by a movie featuring a rugged explorer in brocade outerwear pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp in a wolf mask up a mountain. At the top he climbed a golden rope through a shower of feathers into a nirvana inhabited by figures in masks—some quite Pat McGrath for Givenchy. For those watching this presentation via stream, those figures were superimposed above the audience, swooshing here and there above us.
Even without augmentation, these pieces were out there. The first look matched mountain-boot sneakers with a bronze floral velour jacket secured at the wrists with drawstrings, suggesting these were clothes for explorers of inner landscapes as well as outer ones. Knits etched with mountains; capes; two kilts that Kean said he’d been itching to introduce because he wears them all the time; and double-breasted jackets and coats that were a fuzzy hybrid of Nepalese and technical outerwear were base-camp looks.
After a stage of deeply etched velvet and velour suiting with moonlight shimmer, the designer ventured into figurative illustrations of the paradise he was seeking. A sweatshirt worn under a gilet by a model with henna tattoos down his arm showed a starlit montage of antlered wolves, wheeling eagles, and serious-looking magic mushrooms. Visions. Psychedelically rich paisley and floral kaleidoscopes on drawstring-cinched ripstop and nylon pants and tops were ravewear par excellence. Wide-weave lattice check coats in green and red were more prosaic but still out-of-body colorful. A zigzag hooded jacket of clay-printed velvet had 3-D contours along its colors. The brocades, weaves, and jacquards grew denser and richer, more and more golden, until we summited at an oversize paisley T-shirt in gold-on-black above ski pants and sneakers. Kean Etro’s quest for a higher state of consciousness is producing some enlightened clothes for men of powerful taste.
