MFW: Parting words (everything old is new again)

I’m savoring my last meal of Milan (the fugatto at Torre di Pisa, you should try it if you’re ever here*) and thinking about all that I saw this week. There seemed to be an overall feeling of returning to one’s roots. Dolce & Gabbana, for example, was all Spanish lace and lingerie (complete with a grande finale of models dressed in corsets) with the occasional moment of men’s tailoring. The collection was bold and sexy in a vintage Dolce & Gabbana way. It felt like a return to what Domenico and Stefano do best in much the same way that Alberta Ferretti’s romantic dresses and Donatella Versace’s sexed up bombshells did. Even the Versus collection re-imagined the safety pins that helped put Elizabeth Hurley and Versace on the map. Clearly a few staffers spent some time in the house archives. 

Meanwhile, in other ways, this week felt like a changing of the guards of sorts in the fashion week seating charts. More than a few fashion editors were surprised (and maybe irked?) to see the Sartorialist, Garance Doré and Tommy Ton sitting front row at D&G and Dolce (Scott also sat front row at Marni and I spotted he and Garance sitting second row at the massive Burberry** show in London.) And for the past three weeks, it has been the bloggers I’ve heard people gossiping about (not the editors and stylists, like in seasons past.) It’s also really telling that the 13-year-old Tavi was one of the most talked about and photographed guests at the New York shows. This seems to be the season in which bloggers are finally being embraced by the fashion PR reps, who were slow to see the value in courting their coverage before. The online voices were once the ones standing outside the shows waiting to shoot the guests. Now, they’re the guests being photographed. I’m now really curious to see what Paris will be like.