In Milan this season Roberto Cavalli’s Peter Dundas worked his magic at the Italian fashion house, once again adopting the decadent boho-luxe of the moment and bringing it to Cavalli in manner of fact, frilly edges and fur trims that would even give Roberto a run for his money.
I don’t even think Roberto would have thought to go as far as garishly dying fur in tiger stripes, but these kind of sartorially impetuous decisions suddenly makes his brand feel all the more millennial, which we are quite sure he won’t mind.
Much like the tiger refraining from changing his stripes, the brazen beauty was still there and not in short supply. Dundas understanding of designing in and for Italy meant that for one of the first times this season baroque communicated with grunge in a wonderfully campy but still accessible way.
Looks for men and women were also united this season, in a move that is catching on throughout the upper echelons of the fashion capitals. This meant a look first seen on the menswear runway only last month and assembled for the catwalk once again, a look built around a multi-colour horizontally striped snakeskin jacket, was presented in feminised form for her.
All in all, Dundas is generally trying out a hard pill to swallow tactic at Cavalli, but then again, he’s also playing his cards right doing this. He’s drawing from current industry obsessions, giving it the almost ironically Cavalli treatment and launching all this at it, and then some. This should, for a brand that’s always been indeed one of the hardest pills for many of the fashion pack to swallow, should keep it moving in a way that’ll keep people engaged enough.
by Liam Feltham
Images courtesy of Roberto Cavalli