Two British designers, Paul Andrew of Salvatore Ferragamo and Paul Surridge of Roberto Cavalli, have unveiled womenswear collections for their respective brands in Milan.
It’s the mission of each to navigate that perennially sensitive trajectory of bringing modernity to a storied house.
The former was raring to go, fresh from hearing that he had been appointed creative director of the entire Ferragamo company. Despite heading up the womenswear and footwear categories since 2016, the move, he told the Guardian backstage, was about “consolidating one design vision” across the womenswear, menswear (looked after by Guillaume Meilland) and footwear for which it is famed.
That the entire collection was inspired by the palette and construction of a single shoe is no surprise, especially given it was the original remit of the house founded in 1923, as well as Andrew’s own metier that saw him win multiple awards for his New York-based footwear brand before he was enticed back to Europe three years ago. The shoe in question was a rainbow-hued suede patchwork mule made by the brand’s founder in 1942.
“If you imagine a woman walking down the street in that,” he said pointing to a photo on his moodboard, “it’s totally mindblowing to think about how Salvatore combined technology, innovation and craftsmanship. If you study the clothes [in this collection] in detail, there’s so much technical work in how the clothes are bonded and finished.”
He was referring to the texture mash-up in this collection. Full-look leather dominated, appearing in padded coats and hooded anoraks, slinky slip dresses, boilersuits and even a pyjama set. So too did fleece and shearling – seen in large sumptuous teddybear coats (a trend that will stretch from this winter to next), while fringed cashmere, corduroy and technical wool gabardine took care of outerwear across both men’s and womenswear.
Another nod to the past was seen in archive prints, which Andrews digitally remastered and reworked.
With his newly bestowed mantle, the designer is keen that while the brand must still appeal to women in an older demographic, “[it’s] a brand which has clients in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s and more”, echoing his show notes which noted that this cross-generational approach results in a “quiet power that distinguishes the house”. In this collection, Andrews sought to solidify the idea Salvatore Ferragamo has something for everyone.
Over at Roberto Cavalli, it was also a case of bringing the back catalogue up-to-date. Since his appointment in 2017, Hertfordshire-born Surridge – who spent years in the design teams of brands such as Burberry and Calvin Klein before being given the top job at Cavalli – has explored the traditional codes of the house and now, he says, he feels he has hit his stride.
Like Andrew, his show was in part a homage to the brand’s archive. The show notes told us that the collection “evokes memories of Cavalli – not direct references but reflections”, something that Surridge did through the brand’s most synonymous of all patterns: animal print.
It appeared in what Surridge described backstage as “a stylised tiger print”, which came in saturated shades of fuchsia, chartreuse and deep azalea blue on long silk maxi skirts, coats and body-conscious wool dresses. Snakeskin was seen in a jacquard weave on tuxedo tailoring, while all-over metallic embellishment appeared like glistening scales as though a second skin.
All this talk of hot-house hues and excess may sound like the Roberto Cavalli of old, but Surridge is keen to keep things moving forward in order to (as he put it) provide “modern solutions but in the Cavalli code”. Like Andrews’ reinvention of his “old lady” archive prints, Surridge stressed that the hand embroidery here was “discreetly done so it doesn’t feel passé” and said he was after a more futuristic aesthetic.
This came from studying the work of Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka, who he said inspired him to think about futurism in austere times. This was most obviously manifested in the stretch bandage dresses which were cut to stand away from models’ frames, a 3D crease technique which was applied to silk skirts, and full-length Matrix-style leather coats.
“We’re not very futuristic at the moment and I like the idea,” said Surridge after the show.
