Blonde hair scraped back and forward-facing stare serene: The resemblance between model Maggie Maurer and this Agnona collection’s co-inspiration, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, was a little spooky this afternoon. Simon Holloway said he had been moved to base his lineup around Bessette-Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. after seeing a piece featuring the gone-too-soon Camelot couple by artist Jordan Wolfson. Said Holloway, “What I admire is that she was very polished but not a typical socialite lady. Her style was very cutting edge. The rigor of her taste level, even when she was dressed casually, was very, very high.” That Bessette-Kennedy’s day job was in PR for Calvin Klein at the height of his powers surely contributed to this. Here, Holloway used his own rigorous eye to channel that high watermark of New York’s reign as the superpower of style with all the material assets of this Italian fashion superpower (Agnona is part of Zegna) at his disposal.
The opening camel coat, for instance, was made of real camel hair and given extra texture thanks to a shearling midsection and suede pockets. The suede-edged and pocket-flapped work shirt in the second look was cut in camel-hair flannel over an 18-gauge (so very, very light) camel-hair turtleneck. The pants and pencil skirt looked like denim but were much finer wool twill dyed indigo.
A strapless leather dress in dark blue featured a knitted back section, before a very camel Klein asymmetric knit skirt and top prefaced the big innovation of this Agnona season: the first menswear it has presented in 20 years. This Kennedy-shaped look was a dark wool cashmere jersey suit, so therefore unstructured, and Holloway was keen to emphasize that tailoring was not his chosen direction—this makes sense considering that Zegna’s tailoring territory is already pretty expansive. Instead the role of the masculine here was to act as a sympathetic foil to the feminine, which in this context meant luxurified Ivy League dressing right down to the loafers.
The men’s camel coats, an amazing dark checked quilted overshirt, and Aran knits were as swoony as Kennedy Jr. himself, but carefully fashioned to not steal the womenswear’s thunder. This clapped most loudly in a long knit—yes, knit—overcoat in a monochrome simplified Prince of Wales: an extraordinary piece. Also worth noting was that much of the cashmere here was recycled. A “contemporary, timeless modernity” is how Holloway described his ambition for Agnona’s aesthetic. The problem with that is modernity can never be fixed, and all styles of dress must eventually pass. What this flashback today showed, though, is that the spirit of dress Bessette-Kennedy once epitomized is still highly compelling 20 years into a century she never got to see.
