Reading in Vogue Runway yesterday about Etro’s Star Wars capsule, due to jump into retail space on July 1, it was hard to parse how it would meaningfully be integrated into this afternoon’s collection. The fear was that this great merch-led disturbance in Etro’s force would lead to something terrible—or at least highly incongruous—happening on the runway.
No worries. Kean Etro, who cites Yoda as his favorite character in the series, has the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. Pre-show he cited Joseph Campbell’s notion of the monomyth—often linked to George Lucas’s films—amongst his usual Gaia-flavored, hippy-vintage, early-sustainability-adopting, spiritual-wanderer mix of seasonal influences (these included a book on astral projection and Le Petit Prince). It also didn’t hurt that this season’s collection—entitled Desert Saga—had an overlap with Tatooine (real location, Tunisia). The collection was gorgeous.
As A Horse With No Name was trotted out over the PA, the leather-sandaled models kicked up bright clouds of powder dye as they strode through the garage around the corner from Etro’s headquarters. Their attire was a traveling man (and woman, wearing men’s looks) mix of cross-cultural garments and decoration. Ponchos played against suiting, bombers against kaftan hoodies, and trench coats above keffiyehs. There were richly detailed oasis jacquards on jackets and grip bags, and plenty of rough, textured striping.
In many ways Etro is closer to Indiana Jones in spirit than it is to Star Wars. This house has spent years exploring the furthest reaches of human decorative traditions and taking inspiration from them: in this collection there were designs drawn from Indian, Persian, and Mauritanian culture, amongst many others. Which leads, in the present cultural climate, to another potential for disturbance in Etro’s force. Carolina Herrera’s creative director Wes Gordon was only last week called out by Mexico’s culture minister for appropriating the signature patterns of indigenous peoples in that country for his Resort collection. At today’s show one element in Etro’s mix—as declared loud and proud on his moodboard—was patterns and symbols created by Mexico’s Sierra Madre-dwelling Huichol people: what would Kean say if it prompted similar criticism to that leveled at Gordon? “It’s difficult, but we have to find some way to be free based on mutual respect. I also think about the idea of glocalism we used to talk about so much back in 2001, 2002.” For Etro, reference goes hand in hand with reverence: the extent of Kean’s research and travel is testament to that, as is the beauty of the clothing that results from it.
