For anyone here of a certain vintage, entering this venue was a queasy flashback to five and a bit years ago: Philipp Plein’s Spring/Summer 2015 show. Because, yes, this was the very same swimming pool in which Theophilus London rapped on a Jet Ski while we watched on and were slowly devoured by mosquitoes.
And yet it was also not the same. This then-dilapidated, fascist-era open-air lido has since been fully restored—by donors including Giorgio Armani—into one of bourgeois Milan’s most chichi destinations: the Bagni Misteriosi (“mysterious baths”). Its waters dapple cool and blue beyond perfectly tended beds of herbs. There is a café where you are spritzed by cooling jets as you drink your post-swim Aperol Spritz.
It made for an ideal spot for James Long’s first womenswear-only show, not only under the banner of Iceberg but also in his design career at large. He said he had chosen his title, Underwater Lovers, long before discovering the bagni. As he explained backstage preshow during an urgent search for nail varnish remover: “Because we’ve been showing in London, I really wanted this to feel like Milan, and it does. It’s a bit show-offy, like Iceberg.”
There was certainly a lot of showing off poolside from the audience, and when the looks began their circuit, they just as certainly fit Long’s description, along with that of one of my bench mates: “These are clothes for influencers.” Vivid pastel-sequinned swimwear and minidresses, and long color-paneled silk dresses scattered with houndstooth I reliefs, which were sometimes paired with knit sweaters patterned with Looney Tunes graphics, represented the first section. Then Long stepped back into a nearly all-white section which featured a fluorescent-green piped lapel jacket over a double-layered pleated long skirt with more Is, also green. The models wore pool-slide and slingback sneakers. The third section was all about oomphs of color and roamed across the Long-defined Iceberg landscape, a broad topography that runs from airy sportswear to finely observed tailoring. The final section flipped the second to go all-black—“mermaid gone bad,” as Long put it—and came to a full stop with what he said was a reference to Grace Jones. In the middle of the pool, on an island sunbathing area surrounded by loungers, DJ Siobhan Bell was throwing out some crisp tunes (Smoke City, Gwen Stefani) that sadly splintered against the ear as they echoed off the apartment buildings around us. Long’s collection, just as tightly mustered, faced no such handicap: Impactful both on the eye and smartphone lens, it’s paradise attire for aquatically inclined attention seekers.
