CALVIN KLEIN'S DESERT COOL .
From Fashion Wire DAILY
By Godfrey Deeny
Go west young man, go west. The men’s fashion hoard sweltered through Milan on Wednesday, but the inspiration for the Calvin Klein Collection show staged in the company’s European headquarters was the dry-as-a-bone American deserts.
Underlining the dry tone, models marched out on a catwalk of plywood and before a similarly austere backdrop. The house’s men’s wear designer Italo Zucchelli set himself the tricky task of blending his American west inspiration with making commerical and sexy clothes, yet the Italian-born creative director brought it off with a savvy blend of high-tech fabrics, Mojave Desert hues and hirsute models.
What worked best were looks in beautifully crushed materials – novel blends of cotton and steel so fine it is used in surgery. These came in crumpled and wrinkled forms though employed in the minimalist silhouette made famous by Klein himself.
Other smart ideas were the aged leather bomber jackets in coffee colors, the posh workerist indigo cotton suits and the bashed up linen dusters in faded sand hues or anthracite.
In his brief tenure at Klein, Zucchelli has carefully updated the label, using younger models with a more street-smart attitude. Several youths in Wednesday’s show were not professional models, but handome guys discovered in a “savage” casting in LA.
“I came accross an old photo book that has not a word of text, just images from the empty west of America. I wanted to get that sense of expanse and emptiness, that unspoiled beauty, in the collection,” Zucchelli told FWD.
Post show, Italo and Calvin Klein’s cultural commissar Kim Vernon again cleverly mixed references in an amusing dinner party in Palazzo Visconti, a superb Renaissance city center villa built by the ducal family that once ran Italy’s most dynamic city.
Klein staff brought in orchids, scented candles and white banquettes, to nattily update the palazzo, as guests imbibed champagne under the gigantic and beautifully mannerist frescoes.
Calvin Klein looks to be regaining the pole position it used to have .
May the force be with it ..............
