Edie Campbell in a trench, a shirt and bra made of a poplin woven in vicuña, and a loose pant, and Amber Valletta in a vicuña knit kaftan dress were at the top and tail of this lushly fabricated Agnona collection. Who even knew poplin in vicuña could exist? Simon Holloway riffed loosely on the work and attire of Joan Jonas after being inspired by the exhibition dedicated to her at Tate Modern in London. The silver parka, the sequin relief skirt and mismatched shirt, and the dress in parrot-print silk were all literal nods to the performance artist’s personal style. More broadly, Holloway’s this-season recipe for full-volume but still structured, often ingeniously layered looks (many of whose source code lay in menswear tailoring) produced some deeply chic and grown-up pieces of womenswear.
The red—okay, cinnabar—look combining a fine-knit sweater with an extended hem at front and back over a machine-pleated silk skirt that was layered front and back with an additional panel of slightly broader-pleat crepe de Chine was a handful to describe but a delight to watch: really lovely. Holloway sometimes repeated his shapes—the silk and wool voile trench in look 34 and the in-house “Century” cashmere the look after, for instance—and played with a delicate mismatch of color. There was a pleasing contrast between the obvious softness of his minimally profiled cashmere outerwear and the riveted hardware applied sparsely to it. The shoes, both cashmere-upper, molded-sole sneaker boots and heeled leather boots, were beauties. Not many houses are providing properly womanly womenswear in Milan this season: Agnona is one of the exceptions.
