Guests of the Etro show were each dispatched the invitation with a pocket-size travel book published by Adelphi, and designer Kean Etro had his tome, “101 Zen Stories” by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps, peeking out of his shirt pocket.
The designer opted for the Bocconi University to stage the show, decorating the floor of the expansive venue with winding walkways, which allowed the models to “each choose their own path,” he explained.
All this contributed to a feeling of new horizons at the company, whose majority stake was sold last July to L Catterton, and following the arrival of its first chief executive officer, Fabrizio Cardinali, a few weeks ago.
The designer said he was aiming to inject newness and to simplify his designs, focusing on new volumes and clean lines. Indeed, the brand’s signature paisley motif was scarcely seen throughout the lineup, except on velvet evening robes.
However, simple at Etro does not mean minimal, and the designer played with colorful floral patterns and three main motifs: a wolf, whose conservation the company has been committed to since 2020 in cooperation with WWF; a rose, represented by an ancient Latin word on shirts and linings or presented in a stylized form, and the North Star, embossed with crystal patterns on knitwear and outerwear.
The silhouette was soft, but Etro indulged in some layering and various textures, as in the corduroy or nylon pants. Other examples were boiled wool sweaters, and a purple trench coat made with a rubber usually employed for gardening hoses. The palette was rich — forest green, orange, red, electric blue and mustard, in addition to icy shades of gray.
In yet another shout-out to the power of words, Etro chose to include the word “gioia,” which means joy in Italian, in the lining of jackets “to boost one’s self-esteem and bring happy thoughts” to the wearer — never too many in these uncertain times.
