MILAN, June 23 — The first day proper of the Spring 2014 menswear shows began bright and early at Corneliani, which was held at the Rotonda della Besana. The late baroque structure is about a 20-minute walk from the Duomo and, as its name suggests, is a round, circular portico that served as the show’s curving runway. Eight guys who are represented in New York by Wilhelmina including Tomas Guarracino, Sung Jin Park, Chris Moore, Tomek Szczukiecki, James Smith, Andrea Preti, Nicolas Cardoso and Nicolas Ripoll featured. It was great to see the boys, many of whom I had not seen since January last season in Milan.
Daft Punk’s nine-minute epic “Giorgio by Moroder” provided the runway soundtrack, which I predicted yesterday will not be the last such time of the season. Creative designer Sergio Corneliani had the good fortune of showing his collection a little over a month after the French electronic duo released its Random Access Memories, thereby beating every other designer to the punch in the process. I do not hold out much hope that this album will not be done to death in every unimaginative way possible.
Following the Corneliani show I snagged a taxi over to Piazza VI Febbraio, where the Ermenegildo Zegna show was already underway. The collection was Stefano Pilati’s first for the house following his departure from Yves Saint Laurent and proved some occasion, not least of which included a dramatic change of venue from the Zegna headquarters at via Savona, the long-running venue for several seasons. I snapped a few Instagrams of Anders Hayward, Michael Lange, and Eli Hall as they made their way into the street following the show’s conclusion. From there, I went by taxi with Alexander Ferrario, also in the Zegna show, to Jil Sander.
For the next three hours I did the hurry-up-wait routine backstage whilst Alexander went through the paces of hair by Guido’s team and an extensive rehearsal on the labyrinthine runway. The runway was a square with a bisected X at the center. Four alternating glass panels lined the X, which later made for dramatic multi exposure runway images.
Alexander was gracious enough to explain as best as he could (below) his finale path. I was thrilled to have finally caught up with Alexander following his memorable portraits by Matthew Brookes in Numéro Homme 25. Alexander was born in France, but grew up in Argentina. If you ask him, he identifies as Argentinian. His passion is for acting and has ambitious plans for the study of the craft, but judging by his natural ability in front of the camera (the boy can dance!) his plans surely will be realized.
John Varvatos was the next and last stop of the day for me. I met up backstage at Corso Italia, 21 with Isaac Ekblad, Aaron Vernon, Greg Nawrat, and Eli Hall. The dusty rockstar quotient of every John Varvatos collection was in ample supply. There were deliberately torn details in Isaac’s look, for example (below right), and Sergeant Pepper-style jackets replete with horizontal braiding across the fronts.
Corneliani
