Show Report
This was gypsy done Missoni style: many-layered, multi-coloured and almost entirely knit.
Much of Milan has been swinging to a hippy, gyp-py vibe for spring 2012, and as thats an essential part of the Missoni heritage, it made sense that Angela Missoni chose to revive it for her latest collection. After all, Tai and Rosita Missoni were a self-declared pair of flower-children when they set up the house back in the sixties.
But of course, this was gypsy done Missoni style: many-layered, multi-coloured and almost entirely knit. The silhouette generally was long and lean, bias knit against the body and energised with tight-packed ruffles bouncing from hem and around bust. There was an air of the twenties about those, a louche South American tango feel to dresses slit about the body, fringing cascading down necklines and fabric falling open over limbs. Sometimes those limbs were encased in natty crochet suits, slender trousers in jacquard knit peeking out from underneath wrap-around Senorita skirts with billowing frills, the same jabots edging narrow blazers, jaunty with a Conquistador air in iris-blue, cranberry and deep brown.
Let's talk a bit about those Missoni colours: they were hot, every shade of peacock blue opening the show and melting through brilliant yellow and orange to a fuchsia so vibrant it hummed. They even managed to make a brown look interesting, rich and earthy like a cross between hot sand and Lindt chocolate. That's me getting tangled up in metaphors, but suffice to say it didn't look boring, or unflattering, or old.
The accessories pushed the look overboard a bit - where would a fashion gypsy be without her sweeping oversized sombrero or comedy fan? They were clutched in the hand rather than brandished, however, so Missoni managed to get away with them. After a while, you didn't even notice them. Not so the lucite-heeled dancing pumps with overblown, exotic blooms perched on the ankle, nor the giant golden earrings, each mismatching pair hung with kitsch totems like charm bracelets. Those were unmissable. Tacky, trashy, overstated and utterly fabulous. The perfect finishing touch to a sexy, sensual technicolor hippy romp that proves too much is never enough at Casa Missoni.
