Highlights From Milan Fashion Week

By now you know that Jennifer Lopez ruled Milan Fashion Week. That she reprised the barely there Versace jungle dress, which helped launched her into the celebrity stratosphere, for Donatella Versace’s spring 2020 collection. (This time around the dress lost the sleeves and featured more beadwork). You’ve also probably read in news reports that on their (Lopez and the jungle dress) first time out 20 years ago, the overwhelming searches on the internet for a photograph of Lopez led to the creation of Google Image search. It’s a compelling fashion digital age story.

Second time around, it still broke internet barriers. Wasn’t your Instagram feed flooded with images and videos of Lopez strutting on the Versace catwalk as it was happening and immediately thereafter? Even those who weren’t present at the show were compelled to regram the moment on their Instagram accounts so as not to miss this fashion moment. It was a major fashion statement, so major in fact that it eclipsed the entire collection. Google Versace spring 2020 collection and the overriding image will be Lopez and the green tropical print dress and not much else.

And speaking of prints, there were so many to be had at Marni and Salvatore Ferragamo, all in exuberant colors. Where at Salvatore Ferragamo the shapes where more conventional, at Marni there was more experimentation. Marni and Salvatore Ferragamo are currently headed by relatively new creative directors, Paul Andrew and Francesco Risso respectively.

But the young gun making all the waves is Daniel Lee at Bottega Veneta who has been expounding on the house’s basketweave intrecciato technique. He’s made it oversized and slouchy. He’s used it on trousers and coats in sumptuous ways. He’s also poised to make Bottega Veneta handbags hot again with his take on clutches.

Miuccia Prada delivered one of her best collections in a long time for spring 2020. There was a quiet beauty to the clothes especially the tailored jackets that borrowed their shapes from the 70’s as well as the easy muslin-like dresses that were free of any sort of embellishments. But it wouldn’t be a Prada show without prints and patterns and the most successful were those that reworked Prada’s geometric prints.

                                                               

                                                  ΦΟΡΕΜΑΤΑ ΜΠΑΛΑ

Meet Rebecca Hessel Cohen, A Female Founder in Fashion

"People are wanting that connection to something that feels like a happy path and story," says the fashion designer and entrepreneur, Rebecca Hessel Cohen, about LoveShackFancy, the womenswear brand she started 6 years ago. Cohen's line of modern, vintage, victorian-meets-edwardian-meets-floral collection were born at her wedding. She designed dresses for the bridal party that would be easy to move in, easy to dance in, and easy to live in. The result was a chiffon halter—feminine but flirty, sexy but demure. It was the dress that, proverbially, launched a thousand dresses.

Cohen and I are at her family summer home in Watermill, New York where she hosted a dinner in collaboration with milliner, Nicolas Fouquet. It's golden hour and the property is bathed in late summer shimmer laced with a light, warm breeze.

The home, where she spent her childhood summers and where she was married, is a 19th century farmhouse sat within an orchard and framed with rolling country gardens. A small gardening shed with walls comprised of antique french doors is coming slightly undone with perfectly peeling paint. The shed contains one of the two dinner tables at the party and is set with linens new to the LoveShackFancy collection. Whimsical floral centerpiececs of dusty pink roses and lavender decorate the tabletops, and the property is scattered with oversize pillows and blankets in the grasses for lounging. It's magical.

The event is a manifestation of what Cohen does so impeccably—she has a very specific vision from which she doesn't deviate, a vision which she executes down to every miniscule detail. It's why LoveShackFancy is what it is, because she is unwavering on its offering at every touch point, giving her consumers the opportunity to tell their own story, while being a part of the one she's created.

                                                            Avondjurken