Tonight Arthur Arbesser brought us to an abandoned former bakery that once made bread for northern Italy’s troops. He felt it was raw in the way Berlin was circa the 1980s of Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire, which inspired his latest collection. It’s been a long time since we cued up that flick, but we can vouch for the chill inside the bakery. Brrr.
Wings of Desire was shot in black and white; Arbesser’s show was in living color—strange colors like caution orange, acid yellow, and chalky pink. In addition to his big color message, he emphasized graphic patterns, including the black-and-white checkerboard motif that has become one of Milan’s surprise trends. He also did narrow stripes on cotton separates whose volumes were adjustable with rip cords, and a sort of pixilated, multicolored Prince of Wales check. Among all the graphic treatments, the most compelling and most likely to be worn was the clingy ribbed knit dress. It was graphic in a manageable dosage.
Arbesser has an off-kilter sensibility; he is unique in Milan, but some of the pieces here came off as awkward and unlikely: the quilted striped wraps worn around the shoulders or as a skirt over contrast stripe shorts, the clear plastic overskirt topping shorts in pepto pink vinyl, the Vibram FiveFingers sock sandals he made in collaboration with the shoe manufacturer. We’re always going on about the importance of vision, but it would be to Arbesser’s advantage to get out of his own head for a while and study how women are dressing in contemporary real life.
