The Four Fashion Capitals

Fall Winter 2011-12

March 1, 2011

By Gianmarco Gentile

Milan, Italy – It’s a real globetrotter the woman shown yesterday at the Moschino Cheap&Chic fashion show.

The House’s creative director Rossella Jardini decided for a four-city imaginary setting for the collection, that is, Milan – Paris – London – New York. Four huge photographs of the cities’ most famous symbols (Milan’s Duomo, Paris’ Tour Eiffel, London’s red phone box and New York’s Statue of Liberty) were printed on the cardboard wall from which the models came out. The wall had four doors, one for each city, and models wore outfits inspired by each metropolis.

The show strated with a golden sequined mini dress with a mini coffee duffle coat with fur trimmings. A lot of fox fur was shown throughout the whole show: fur black skirts, fur details on dresses, coat’s sleeves, plain gray gloves that looked like alpaca gloves (which apparently are fashionable), and even on black suede pumps.

Glittery, gypsy dresses and golden sequined pants were shown during the first part of the show, followed by a woolen grey dress with a big phone box print on it with a matching printed shoulder bag. Moving to Paris, outfits changed to a more 60’s inspired look, like puffed sleeves on a mini grey jacket with big plastic buttons, or a pale pink handknitted long cardigan. 50’s too were recalled, especially during the New York-inspired part of the show, when a model wore a napa leather cream flared skirt with a jacket resembling those used by football team members at American high schools (a very “Grease”-like outfit). As for London, a typically English fabric like red tartan was used to create long wool cloth flounced skirts and suits with a balloon shaped mini skirt and blouse.

Prints of the four cities’ symbols were also printed on shoulder bags and t-shirts.

Ribbons – a trademark element of the Maison –  found their way to dresses, headbands and overcoats, and concurred to convey a feeling of playfulness, cheerfulness and blissful light-heartedness to the whole show.