From 'ladylike' to what ladies actually like
By Vanessa Friedman for Financial Times
Published: September 27 2005 03:00 | Last updated: September 27 2005 03:00
Like a herd of migrating bison (or gazelles chased by a few bison), the fashion pack thunders on to Milan. The spring/summer '06 collections have got off to a slow start. The big news out of New York and London was mostly no news. This winter's hot stories - the rise of Victoriana, the continuation of the ladylike aesthetic, a flirtation with the '60s - are also next spring's, at least thus far, meaning it is up to the Italians to offer some fresh ideas. The good thing at this stage in the cycle, though, is odds are they are going to do exactly that.
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Not because they are the radical thinkers of the industry - that honour would go to the Belgians and Japanese who show in Paris - but because, first, they are the biggest brands and thus have the biggest sense of the need to shift new product, and second, for the most part they are different.
A subtle shift has occurred in the Milanese fashion world over the past eight years, an evolution that has happened so gradually that no one has really noticed. But it is one that makes what happens there even more significant than usual: the majority of the most influential fashion houses in the city are now run, at least artistically, by women.
Prada? Designed by Miuccia Prada. Gucci? Frida Giannini. Versace? Donatella Versace. Marni? Consuelo Castiglioni. Missoni? Angela Missoni. Ferretti? Alberta Ferretti. Of the big swinging brands, only Armani, Cavalli and Dolce & Gabbana are still designed by men.
This is not the case in any of the other fashion cities, where the bold-face style setters are almost entirely male, from Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, Narciso Rodriguez and Michael Kors in New York to Paul Smith and Giles Deacon in London and Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld, Dior's John Galliano, Lanvin's Alber Elbaz and Jean-Paul Gaultier in Paris. This isn't to say that there aren't influential female designers in these cities - there are, from Donna Karan to Chloé's Phoebe Philo - but they are few and far between, except in Milan. In Milan they are the majority. And that could herald meaningful change.
At least if one assumes that there is something different about women designing for women when compared with men designing for women, and to a certain extent there has to be. As Donatella Versace says, "being a woman is part of who I am - it defines everything I do." And as Miuccia Prada observes, "the differences between designers come from personal history, culture and experiences, and in that sense, being a woman makes a difference."
Most blunt is Alberta Ferretti, who says: "A woman who designs for another woman is more sensitive to social changes and much more in tune with the requests and the need of the feminine perspective." In the same way that a female photographer such as Cindy Sherman or Nan Goldin or Sarah Moon will look at her female subjects differently from a male photographer - they will be less objectified, more personalised and politicised - a female fashion designer will bring her own sense of self to her task, both physical and psychological. She is both consumer and creator, and knows what it's like to wear, say, a hobble skirt or a corset dress, and can assess the sacrifices involved.
"One of a designer's main objectives is to create clothes that encourage the wearer to overcome whatever insecurities they might have," says Gucci's Frida Giannini, "and being a woman I understand these insecurities on a personal level, as I have a few of my own."
Consuelo Castiglioni of Marni shrugs. "I design what I like to wear myself," she says. "It's how I started and how I continue to work. I do not have a muse, other than different elements that I like."
A female designer is her own muse; a male designer must necessarily find another, and because he is looking outside himself, that other often tends to be an idealised version of something, whether a friend, a family member, a film star or a memory. Female designers are grounded by their own corporeality; male ones can fly loose on the wings of their imaginations. "Male design is more informed by fantasy and archetypes," says Castiglioni.
It may be an oversimplification, and as Prada says, "there are men who think about practicality and women who love fantasy", but it also explains the current situation in fashion, which offers women consumers a number of roles: Victorian heroine (see Olivier Theyskens' floor-length, lace-trimmed frocks for Rochas); nun (Stefano Pilati's austere, high-necked black-and-white suits for Saint Laurent); Edie Sedgwick (John Galliano's beatnik stripes for Dior); Hitchcock heroine (Roland Mouret's and Alexander McQueen's curve-defining, walk-inhibiting dresses).
The difference between such visual dreams and what is to be expected in Milan - indeed, what is happening in Milan - is the difference between clothes that act as symbols for different parts of your character and clothes that tap into a more universal sense of self, one that defines a comfort zone, both mental and physical, and that looks at the realities of women's lives.
Consider the following statement, from Prada, vis-à-vis the collection she will be sending down the runway later today: "I am a little bored of ladylike. I want to explore something different this season, something more naïf, more childlike. I am going back to my closet and remaking things I like from many years ago."
Or this, from Castiglioni, regarding the show she is doing this morning: "I love to think the clothes I create will make the woman who chooses them feel like she's always had them."
For her part, Angela Missoni often talks about the importance of comfort and ease - the point in many ways of her striking and physically liberating signature knits - as does Ferretti, who made her name producing the kind of clothes that form the backbone of many women's wardrobes and are often simply labelled "pretty". And if you look at what has been happening at Versace recently, and how the first effort from Gucci's Giannini, last summer's cruise line, took shape, it is easy to see an evolution in the sense of whom, exactly, each house is designing for.
In the first case, for example, the aesthetic has moved on from an exaggerated glitter ball of red-carpet-ready evening looks, legacy of founding designer Gianni Versace, to mostly body-aware, but not body-baring, "Sharon Stone in Casino" day clothes. In the second, the look has journeyed from the black bombshell slither of Tom Ford to Jackie O. jet-set style. The result, when combined with the work of Prada, Missoni, Ferretti and Marni, may well move the current debate from "Oh look, more ladylike" to defining what ladies actually like. Which, when it comes to fashion, is something worth talking about.
By Vanessa Friedman for Financial Times
Published: September 27 2005 03:00 | Last updated: September 27 2005 03:00
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Not because they are the radical thinkers of the industry - that honour would go to the Belgians and Japanese who show in Paris - but because, first, they are the biggest brands and thus have the biggest sense of the need to shift new product, and second, for the most part they are different.
A subtle shift has occurred in the Milanese fashion world over the past eight years, an evolution that has happened so gradually that no one has really noticed. But it is one that makes what happens there even more significant than usual: the majority of the most influential fashion houses in the city are now run, at least artistically, by women.
Prada? Designed by Miuccia Prada. Gucci? Frida Giannini. Versace? Donatella Versace. Marni? Consuelo Castiglioni. Missoni? Angela Missoni. Ferretti? Alberta Ferretti. Of the big swinging brands, only Armani, Cavalli and Dolce & Gabbana are still designed by men.
This is not the case in any of the other fashion cities, where the bold-face style setters are almost entirely male, from Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, Narciso Rodriguez and Michael Kors in New York to Paul Smith and Giles Deacon in London and Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld, Dior's John Galliano, Lanvin's Alber Elbaz and Jean-Paul Gaultier in Paris. This isn't to say that there aren't influential female designers in these cities - there are, from Donna Karan to Chloé's Phoebe Philo - but they are few and far between, except in Milan. In Milan they are the majority. And that could herald meaningful change.
At least if one assumes that there is something different about women designing for women when compared with men designing for women, and to a certain extent there has to be. As Donatella Versace says, "being a woman is part of who I am - it defines everything I do." And as Miuccia Prada observes, "the differences between designers come from personal history, culture and experiences, and in that sense, being a woman makes a difference."
Most blunt is Alberta Ferretti, who says: "A woman who designs for another woman is more sensitive to social changes and much more in tune with the requests and the need of the feminine perspective." In the same way that a female photographer such as Cindy Sherman or Nan Goldin or Sarah Moon will look at her female subjects differently from a male photographer - they will be less objectified, more personalised and politicised - a female fashion designer will bring her own sense of self to her task, both physical and psychological. She is both consumer and creator, and knows what it's like to wear, say, a hobble skirt or a corset dress, and can assess the sacrifices involved.
"One of a designer's main objectives is to create clothes that encourage the wearer to overcome whatever insecurities they might have," says Gucci's Frida Giannini, "and being a woman I understand these insecurities on a personal level, as I have a few of my own."
Consuelo Castiglioni of Marni shrugs. "I design what I like to wear myself," she says. "It's how I started and how I continue to work. I do not have a muse, other than different elements that I like."
A female designer is her own muse; a male designer must necessarily find another, and because he is looking outside himself, that other often tends to be an idealised version of something, whether a friend, a family member, a film star or a memory. Female designers are grounded by their own corporeality; male ones can fly loose on the wings of their imaginations. "Male design is more informed by fantasy and archetypes," says Castiglioni.
It may be an oversimplification, and as Prada says, "there are men who think about practicality and women who love fantasy", but it also explains the current situation in fashion, which offers women consumers a number of roles: Victorian heroine (see Olivier Theyskens' floor-length, lace-trimmed frocks for Rochas); nun (Stefano Pilati's austere, high-necked black-and-white suits for Saint Laurent); Edie Sedgwick (John Galliano's beatnik stripes for Dior); Hitchcock heroine (Roland Mouret's and Alexander McQueen's curve-defining, walk-inhibiting dresses).
The difference between such visual dreams and what is to be expected in Milan - indeed, what is happening in Milan - is the difference between clothes that act as symbols for different parts of your character and clothes that tap into a more universal sense of self, one that defines a comfort zone, both mental and physical, and that looks at the realities of women's lives.
Consider the following statement, from Prada, vis-à-vis the collection she will be sending down the runway later today: "I am a little bored of ladylike. I want to explore something different this season, something more naïf, more childlike. I am going back to my closet and remaking things I like from many years ago."
Or this, from Castiglioni, regarding the show she is doing this morning: "I love to think the clothes I create will make the woman who chooses them feel like she's always had them."
For her part, Angela Missoni often talks about the importance of comfort and ease - the point in many ways of her striking and physically liberating signature knits - as does Ferretti, who made her name producing the kind of clothes that form the backbone of many women's wardrobes and are often simply labelled "pretty". And if you look at what has been happening at Versace recently, and how the first effort from Gucci's Giannini, last summer's cruise line, took shape, it is easy to see an evolution in the sense of whom, exactly, each house is designing for.
In the first case, for example, the aesthetic has moved on from an exaggerated glitter ball of red-carpet-ready evening looks, legacy of founding designer Gianni Versace, to mostly body-aware, but not body-baring, "Sharon Stone in Casino" day clothes. In the second, the look has journeyed from the black bombshell slither of Tom Ford to Jackie O. jet-set style. The result, when combined with the work of Prada, Missoni, Ferretti and Marni, may well move the current debate from "Oh look, more ladylike" to defining what ladies actually like. Which, when it comes to fashion, is something worth talking about.
We're all well aware that most male designers are gay. I have always believed that this contributes heavily to this phenomenon. Sure, all gay men have mothers (talk about archetype), many or all have women friends and muses. But there's still a very real separation there that really facilitates idealization. 
