The sonic eddies of Keith Jarrett’s spontaneously composed 1975 The Köln Concert, played live by Etro’s Circle of Poets young artist collective, filled the iron-vaulted hall of the Palazzo del Ghiaccio. From one side of the room to the other, this former ice-skating rink was heaped with vintage furniture, rugs, and other eclectic collectibles ranging from motorcycles to pinball machines. Some of this fine stuff hailed from Etro’s own family collection, but much of it came from the stores of the Il Ponte auction house, and was stickered for sale. Milanese aesthetes who’d come to see a new season’s menswear collection were walking away with mid-century soft furnishing, unable to resist.
Kean Etro, wearing a check suit and beaded headband, riffed on the relationship between abito (suit) and habitat—exterior attire and interior design. “I have always worked with habitats that become an abito,” he said. “The velvet stories, the carpet stories . . . sometimes [when I am designing] I look at sofas and curtains. And yurts!”
Almost camouflaged in this habitat, the abitos worth inhabiting included check topcoats with rough-edged hems and malachite brooches and pins at the lapel, velvet coats with contrasting paisley collars, trousers in leather corduroy, marble patterned and riotously psychedelic bombers and suits, woolen coats with horse embroideries trailing yarn fringes, Bruce Chatwin felt hats, brocade-edged robe coats, carpet backpacks, and neck chains linked through antique teaspoons. Kean named this presentation Dandy Detour. Happily, this was a much more thoughtful, soft-edged, and bohemian variety of dandyism than the peacockery on show at Pitti. Once acquired, an Etro habit would be very hard to break.
