There are new developments at Krizia, an Italian label that was once one of the pillars of Milan fashion but hasn’t really been relevant in a couple of decades. The brand—founded by Mariuccia Mandelli, who died in 2015—has been purchased by Zhu Chongyun, a fashion entrepreneur of no small success in her native China. She is the creative director, and she has hired Antonio D’Anna (who worked for MSGM’s Massimo Giorgetti) to be her wingman; they came out for a bow together.
Their mandate is to revive the house, using the archive without making it feel like Mandelli’s ’80s and ’90s all over again, which is par for the course in such cases. And so, Krizia’s famous animal prints reared their head in many different variations, but the shoulder pads and outsize volumes of the era didn’t. One of Mandelli’s hallmarks was the crisp yet characterful white shirt, not unlike her contemporary, Gianfranco Ferré—another label of the time period that has since languished. This collection had but one, paired with a neat black wrap skirt. Miss Zhu, as she is known internally, and D’Anna tried many other things: camel outerwear, fluid trapeze dresses, a couple of furs, a Balenciaga-ish suit. All of it was efficiently well done, if not exactly oozing with personality. That’s one of the challenges of bringing an old brand back to life— it is most difficult to resurrect its soul. Perhaps it will come with time for these two.
