A Modish Proposal
In Milan, Designs for a Time of Diversity

By Robin Givhan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 25, 2008

MILAN, Sept. 24

Fashion designers thrive on a relentless quest to be modern. The word is never clearly defined within the industry beyond the fundamental idea that clothes should connect with the daily lives of the women who wear them. That simple goal, however, can be a complicated, and at times perilous, pursuit.

Modern fashion should be a reflection of the times. It should be inclusive, reflecting the diversity of the population. It should also be respectful, treating women with dignity and recognizing their intelligence and their busy schedules. It should not insult them with hobbling skirts and debilitating shoes.

And price matters, too. We are far from the gilded age of the 1980s and the tech boom of the '90s. Modern would seem to mean understated or, at minimum, value-oriented. A design house must be serious about its goods, otherwise a woman can do just fine buying her cashmere sweaters at J.Crew, where $200, give or take, still isn't exactly cheap.

But creating a modern collection ultimately begins with whether the clothes make sense in a woman's life. That doesn't mean that designers have to create collections filled with banal blazers and sensible shoes. Women have wildly diverse lives, and there is a place for a pastel, one-shouldered evening gown, such as those created by designer Giorgio Armani, just as there is a need for the soft blazers and well-tailored trousers that floated down his runway Monday afternoon.

There is a place for fringe in a woman's life. It could be on one of the girlish dresses from Alberta Ferretti. Flapper fringe provided a welcome relief from what had become a steady diet of acutely sweet ruffles. A woman who enjoys an intellectual exercise would probably prefer one of the artfully cut dresses and scooped-out blazers from Jil Sander that shiver with fringe each time a woman moves. Designer Raf Simons played with notions of control and freedom and reached from the West to Africa in search of inspiration.

A woman whose BlackBerry overflows with social engagements will find the extravagantly glamorous collection from the new designers at Gianfranco Ferré -- Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi -- to be utterly practical. She will have ample use for their architectural cuts that keep flourishes to a minimum yet never hesitate in their use of a bold ruffle that flows along the hem of a jacket or the bodice of a dress.

Another kind of woman, perhaps a globe-trotting romantic, will fall in love with the collection those designers created under their own name, the newly christened Aquilano e Rimondi. (It was formerly called 6267.) She will be mesmerized by their satiny dresses in spice colors that slither up the body and fall open in the back. She will be struck by the lush T-shirts that are thick with antiqued gold sequins.

Purposeful does not have to be boring. The collection from Marni on Wednesday morning was a cacophony of rousing prints, color-blocked and double-layer sweaters, printed mesh dresses and wonderfully cuckoo platform shoes that looked like marzipan confections. And the collection designed by Burberry's Christopher Bailey was rich in brocades and filled with permutations of trench coats, including one that was so light and frilly it practically floated on air. Bailey captured the kind of watercolor blur of a hazy spring day that can be simultaneously beautiful and melancholy.

Earlier in the week, designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana gave a woman who likes humor in her clothing a good chuckle. Their D&G collection mixed nautical elements such as navy-striped shirts, faux bathing caps and sailor pants with cheeky winks to Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel and her signature camellia brooches and boxy tweed jackets. It was a bit like watching the recent -- and disastrous -- Lifetime biopic about Chanel come to life with better costumes, more laughs and without the preposterously ill-cast Shirley MacLaine, who managed to make the famous French designer sound like Bea Arthur.

There was one spectacular scene in that movie, however. When the designer presents a truly awful collection, the guests walk out in a huff while models are still twirling. This scene came to mind halfway through the Roberto Cavalli show Wednesday afternoon, during which he sent out a mad mix of French maids and courtesans, Halston-inspired disco girls, techno chicks and at least one model in a green sequined mini-dress who seemed to have wandered in from Planet Crazy. My, my, how good those exit doors began to look.

Modern clothes should not leave an audience baffled. They should provide answers, offer solutions, induce a sigh of pleasure. But the goals of modern style can't be achieved by the clothes alone. Modern style means understanding the way in which the world is changing, seeing it as a global community and adapting one's vision to take that into account. A modern designer doesn't wall himself or herself behind a phalanx of publicists, assistants and yes-people who validate a misguided vision.

Designer Miuccia Prada is by far Milan's most visionary designer. Whether she draws inspiration from the past, the present or the electrical storm inside her own head, her sensibility is always forward-leaning. The collection she showed Tuesday was tantalizing because it evoked the languid elegance of a 1950s beach town while simultaneously suggesting contemporary dishevelment and sexuality.

The models were styled with their hair smoothed back and tucked into a neat chignon. Their chests were slightly oiled to suggest heat, perspiration and eroticism. The fabrics were crinkled and crisp and often looked as though they had been hand-dyed into a sort of, but not quite, batik print. Finely woven cardigan sweaters opened in the back and were casually cinched with ribbon. Metallic gold dresses glittered under the lights. Skirts rolled down along the waist and dresses hung off one half of the body with modesty maintained by a simple white T-shirt.

A plain white Prada T-shirt, people. Pause for a moment and guess how much that might cost in this age of the almighty euro and the demoralized U.S. dollar. Doesn't the mental exercise make your head hurt? Stop thinking about it. Just buy a Hanes.

The collection speaks to a contemporary woman's desire for comfort, ease, sex appeal and chic. Yet it is impossible to call the collection a success, a pure example of modern style. The women wearing the clothes -- and specifically the shoes -- were so tense, fearful and unsure of themselves that their body language became a painful distraction. The models were wearing sky-high slingbacks with a raffia-covered platform. To make matters worse, their feet were encased in little fabric slippers -- like something a shopper would borrow in a store to try on a pair of shoes. Their feet were sliding atop the ill-fitting, impossibly high shoes. The models wobbled. They stumbled. A couple of them collapsed onto the concrete floor in a mortified heap, their legs splayed out beneath them.

Bad shoes happen to good designers all the time (although rarely at design houses famous for their leather goods). Heels have been known to snap on the runway and models have often simply stepped out of ill-fitting shoes. But this seemed to be a matter of placing aesthetic vision over respect for the woman. The models were done wrong.

Diversity is also essential to being a modern designer. Anyone fully and genuinely engaged in the world understands the growing diversity of high-end customers. Designers are constantly on the move, hunting for inspiration, parachuting into foreign cities for store openings and fawning over consumers in Asia and the Middle East. So it is not just politically correct frothiness that should compel a designer to cast a diversity of models in shows, it's also a savvy business move. To do otherwise makes designers look out of touch.

There has been a public debate about diversity in fashion in New York, led by agent Bethann Hardison, a former model. And the thread was picked up in Italy by Italian Vogue, which dedicated its July issue to black models. The issue sold out and received second printings in the United States and some parts of Europe.

There have been noticeably more black models on the Milan runways this season, notably at Prada, Alberta Ferretti, D&G and several other shows. Equally striking was the lack of any obviously black models on the runway at Giorgio Armani and Jil Sander.

The significance of their absence from the Armani runway lies in the designer's prominence in this city. He may not set the direction of fashion in Milan, but he remains the designer who resonates most strongly with the average shopper whose fashion knowledge is based on movies and red-carpet photographs.

So it was disappointing to see Armani use an array of scrawny, look-alike white female models with their pale hair gloppily gelled into a stiff ponytail, as well as several men who all looked as though they'd just had their hair frosted, hadn't shaved in a week and needed a bath.

Armani has dressed Tina Turner and Beyoncé and supported concerts for an array of black performers. But the range of his customers was not reflected on his runway. He has done better in the past, and one hopes he will do better in the future.

The Jil Sander show was significant because the label has been one of the foremost champions of a homogenous runway -- one filled with models cast and styled to be virtually interchangeable. It is an aesthetic vision that began with the house's namesake and continues with its current designer, Raf Simons. The show this season looked like a Teutonic death march.

Simons has an inspiring, minimalist vision. And it's one that speaks to any woman who sees herself as on the move and unencumbered in her ambitions. His sensibility also champions individualism and independence. Simons makes clothes for women who don't want to fit into the status quo. They want to redefine it.

One hopes that next season he will allow that spirit to inform his runway presentation so that not only are the frocks modern, but so is his style.