Mixing Sports With Nature

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/fashion/mixing-sports-with-nature.html

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MILAN — The models, bathed only in natural light from the windows, walked softly in sporty sandals and in absolute silence. And the power failure at the Marni show Sunday offered food for thought.

Fashion — and not just the summer 2014 Milan season — has become so raucous and rowdy, it is sometimes tough to separate presentation from product.

But here were desirable clothes offering an interesting and very current story of the lushness of nature melded with the energy of sport.

“It’s really about sensuality in form — you can be sensual in layers of light organza and you can be modern in oversized trousers. It’s all about individuality,” said the designer Consuelo Castiglioni, referring to slender, calf-length dresses and skirts, worn with sports caps and sandals; or to pants cut on sweeping rounded lines and with deep cuffs; or further still to the contrast of amplified floral prints and of fluffy flowery peplums on white jackets.

This mix of the utilitarian and the decorative, the romantic and the energetic is a definite trend and the concept fitted well with the quirky spirit of Marni — with or without lights and music.

Where would Donatella Versace have been without the rapper yell of “Versace, Versace, Versace” to affirm the brand’s street cred after all these years?

The designer started the Versace collection with the spirit of the street: high-end denim as a blouson top with circle skirt and chains round the neck — a foretaste of Gianni Versace’s metal mesh of the 1980s revisited at the end of the show.

In between were the familiar visible bras and bondage straps that are a Versace staple, but all this had a certain outdoor, or at least mean street, look rather than the interior club scene. There were even some flowers growing across a full skirt, suggesting a tinge of nature along with the urban spirit.

It was an energetic show, but the problem with Versace is that it seems increasingly like a parody of itself. But with the 1980s back in fashion for a generation that came out of the womb in that period, maybe there is a 25-year-old clientele eager to join this fashion club?

“Sports, Africa, a touch of hip hop, athletic wear,” said Peter Dundas before an Emilio Pucci show that rocked with throbbing music and the wild mixes of sport and multicultural themes that the designer had gleaned from a trip to Morocco.

Sport played a large role, although no exact sport came to mind for track shorts, apparently in leather; bomber jackets with Masai beading, and “onesies,” as the jump suits are called, in hazard-warning-orange or royal blue.

A pair of slender dresses in white or black mesh — quite a trend in this Milan season — seemed a more convincing meld of glamour and sport.

But the root problem of the Dundas tenure at Pucci is that — while he makes glam slam clothes, has a sensual vision and a very fine hand with cutting — the label’s life is rooted in Emilio, the aristocratic Florentine founder.

The current Pucci is hot, but it seemed this season’s sub-Saharan Africa — and the sports field — were a step too far from Florence.