Report from Milan: Forget You, La Scala! ::Rope Burn::

Since Milan is more than just opera (let's not forget soccer, food & fashion), Opera Chic is pleased to share other cultural events that go down in the city of la madonnina from time to time.

This past week when Opera Chic left Milan, her zona was quickly replenished by hoards of fashionisti clamoring for spots at the Autumn/Winter 2007-2008 Milan fashion shows, as well as invading her favorite boutiques, bars, and restaurants. Usually predictable, the conclusion of the shows leaves us only with new information about palettes and trends.

However, this week was a bit different: Nobel literature laureate Italian Dario Fo promised something quite extraordinary for designer Gentucca Bini's first foray into Milan fashion house Romeo Gigli; and as of last night, the duo definitely succeeded.

Complaining that the fashions shows were conformist and boring, Fo invented a revolutionary presentation that concluded menswear week of the Autumn/Winter 2007-2008 Milan shows with a bang.

Last night, while Fo gave a playful lecture on Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna's "The Triumphs of Caesar" (a series of nine tempera paintings from the end of the fifteenth century that depict soldiers carrying looted treasure, elephants, exotic animals, and Caesar on a triumphal chariot), male models worked the runway in beautiful and lush colors (the majority of designers this season revived the heavily-played black trend) taken directly from Mantegna's series of nine canvases, which hung at the venue as backdrops.

"They [the models] danced or ambled down the catwalk to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" in oversize shoes and short wellingtons, taking delight in the paintings and the informal atmosphere. Jackets were buttoned up awry, ties were plaits of tie-ends, scarves were wrapped nonchalantly several times round the neck, and hats -- every model had a hat -- were pull-on casuals reminiscent of favourite hand-me-down trilbies."

Pretty kewl aside from that whole "Four Seasons" crap. Those violin concerti are so played, I'm surprised that Wu Tang hasn't remixed them with rhymes about chessboxing.

Comments

[Crew Mantle]

Milan does sound like a nize place to park your boots every once and a while. Black is a great colour for mens wear in my simple opinion, as it is so very easy to co ordinate with other shades of black. My tuxedo is black, and my idea of splashing out is white tie.

[Opera Chic]

Yeah, black is a good base for mens fashion, Crew Mantle, and imagine that you are quite the stylish man around town...i'm sure you wear it well.

I rock black a lot, but have a more difficult time wearing it than with colors. I find that with black, you really have to spend a lot of $$$ for it to look really lux. Because with black, it comes down to texture, cut, and material. And for that, you need to spend a lot to get outside of the base market designs.

Milan is heavily saturated with black, much more than NYC; You'd fit right in here!