Although freshly relocated to Milan from New York Fashion Week, this Boss collection was rooted in Manhattan. As chief brand officer Ingo Wilts explained: “The pattern that runs through the collection was inspired by an early morning walk I took through Hudson Yards early in the summer. The sun was just rising and the colors, especially the blues, were mirrored in all the buildings there.”
Being Boss, much of the womenswear and menswear on show today was dedicated to suiting. However Wilts’s decision to show much of it in head-to-toe tonal color and the buoyant bounce of the fabric helped to highlight cuts, especially for men, which seemed sleek and unstuffy. Wilts even made cummerbunds look cool, which is some achievement. In womenswear there was a game of contrasting volumes-wide pants with fitted jackets and vice versa, and plenty of quietly chic touches including folded sash necklines and piping. This brand is very accomplished when it comes to making minimal outerwear, and here there were many overcoats to relish in treated nylon and leather.
There was a lot of leather elsewhere, as at many of the shows in Milan this season, and the sight of a scarlet leather hoodie with paracord detailing, an object perfectly attractive but which is highly unlikely to perform at retail, made me think: Has the time has come to declare a voluntary moratorium on performative leather runway pieces? If I had a dollar for all the leather shirts, pants, and shorts I have seen at (especially menswear) fashion shows that almost certainly never go on to be produced, let alone worn...and they seem especially absurd in Spring collections.
This is not criticism specific to Boss, however. Wilts talked backstage about the “individuality of fashion now” and it is to his credit that within the context of such a large corporate concern as Boss—and one so associated with providing corporate attire—he presented many pieces you could imagine appealing to an eclectic range of customers.
