Of all the shows held outdoors this season, Missoni’s had the best luck weather-wise. At a balmy late-evening show in Milan, the audience sat at café tables to watch the long procession of models walk by, as Michael Nyman—a friend of Angela Missoni’s—played a piano recital from a podium.
It was the brand’s 65th birthday—a remarkable milestone for the independent company, founded by Tai and Rosita Missoni on the strength of their knitting machinery and ability to fashion multicolored magic with zigzag patterns and patchwork techniques.
The occasion was marked not by a retrospective but by a display of Missoni’s relevance to fashion now. The lighting picking out the garments, the diaphanous layers of the collection glimmering and sparkling hypnotically—gossamer is a description that covers it. There were light layerings, a gentle, barely-there palette shading from off-white through neutral to delicate pinks and washed-out indigo. As the eye drifted over the textures of tunics, flares, and long slim dresses it picked out a nice idea—Missoni summer cloaks.
The sparkle came both from lurex yarn and from the occasional bugle-beaded fishnet over-layer (which has kind of been a Milanese thing of the season). For men, it was simply a matter of easy-to-wear sweaters with abstract faces or the classic Missoni raschel-zig-zag pattern on oversize shirts. Italian fashion with a real-life spirit.
