Add Aquilano.Rimondi to this season’s list of pivoters. “What’s important is that, moving forward, we incorporate the energy of a new generation,” as Tommaso Aquilano put it backstage while cradling his dog, Hugo. The designers happily cited Joan Miró as inspiration for the colorways and, to a degree, Geoffrey Beene for the spirit of progressive sportiness they were set on evincing here. They succeeded well enough via film-covered poplin dresses, trenches, and skirts with rope belts and detailing. Stretch pants with sports stripes were worn south of a logo T-shirt in digital-clock print. A fitted lattice monochrome and red–accented stretch dress peppered with hand-applied pins was—its model reported—comfortable to wear and easy to move in. A red skirt fitted low on the waist with a ruched drawstring section and a high split was worn below a red racerback body with a monochrome detail at the neck. A top-stitched black jacket with pigment-pressed patches of reflective blue was worn over black shorts whose white flash at the inner leg echoed the zipper line above.
Evening pieces in sporty shapes combined wide-armed T-shirts in bead and pin over narrow-armed long-sleeved tops. Not all of the experiments here were entirely successful: A wide-knit black net peppered in sections with grids of metallic spherules, worn over white pants and a body, was not nice. And the transparent mac and shirt dotted with repeated letters taken from the names of the designers—panels of other pieces featured this decoration, too—were lifeless ciphers stripped of meaning to serve no function. But maybe that’s just a writer being oversensitive about the use of content.
