Spring 2018 marks Angela Missoni’s 20th year as creative director of the house her parents founded. That’s cause for celebration, right? Yes, but next year also happens to be the 65th anniversary of the brand itself, so she’s decided to save the retrospective reckoning for that moment. Tonight, she’s hosting one of her famous dinners—relaxed family atmosphere, delicious Italian food and wine—followed by a special bash held outside under the same rainbow-striped parachute tarps by American artist Rachel Hayes that shaded today’s show. The late-night festivities provided Missoni with the season’s theme. In prep mode backstage, she put it this way: It’s party clothes.
Hence the emphasis here on sheer dresses, leggy shapes, and sparkly Lurex-shot bits. The look was very bare, less suited for a party in Milan than in Ibiza, where no one would bat an eye at see-through knit bodysuits and matching capes, and going pantsless probably isn’t so rare an occurrence. As a rule today, the more substantial the knit the better it was. There was humor in a fitted cardigan and leggings combo and a black-on-white jacquard knit of smiling faces, and a full-color version of that portrait motif turned a chunkier sweater into a potential collectible. The coat dress in a multicolored repeating harlequin motif was good-looking, too.
This was the first time that Missoni combined the women’s and men’s collections on the runway, a formula that other brands have recently adopted and this house plans to make permanent. The juxtaposition emphasized the trickiness of many of the women’s things. Beyond the excellent lineup of crewneck sweaters in the men’s category, jean jackets in bold space-dye patterns and short-sleeved shirts in blown-up ikats had a compelling real-life viability—Ibiza, Milan, wherever.