Milan Fashion Week is getting a jolt of new blood. This week saw not one, but four debuts from new creative directors at heritage houses in the fashion capital most notorious for its lack of emerging talent. Even better, two of them are people of colour! But the most impressive, by far, was 27-year-old Maximilian Davis’ debut at 95-year-old Ferragamo, the family-owned Florentine house mainly known for its leather shoes and silk scarves. You may know of Maximilian’s work for his short-lived label, which he presented in London for four seasons as part of Fashion East. Though he closed it to start his new job, Maximilian made a name for himself with razor-sharp clothes infused with no-nonsense West Indian sensuality. Now, his job is to find common ground between Ferragamo’s Italian heritage, his own explorations of British-Trinidadian sartorialism, and the global market that he will now be catering to – Ferragamo operated more than 600 retail locations in over 90 countries. No pressure.
A handful of motto classico sandy-coloured suits and coats opened the show, almost like blank canvases. Thankfully, however, what followed was not just another take on bourgeois heritage — but a colourful, diverse collection proposing a vision of luxury for the here and now. “When I joined Ferragamo, it was about understanding Salvatore and what the starting point was,” Max explained before the show. “For him, it was when he got into making shoes in Hollywood — and so I started by thinking about that.” A glittering ensemble of crystal-laden scarlet trousers and turtleneck — so clean and sharp in their execution — drew from the pair of sparkly Dorothy pumps Salvatore made for Marilyn Monroe in 1959. A timewarp, however, this was not. A men’s tuxedo shirt in translucent red organza, and one-shouldered tops with scarf-like sari drapes billowing behind, hinted at New Hollywood, and the way a young generation of men are unafraid to embrace typically feminine elegance.
Max was also thinking about Hollywood sunsets and sunrises, and how they represented new beginnings. And here were floating chiffon dresses in sunset-inspired degradé of tropical colours lifted from Rachel Harrison’s Sunset Series, each one the kind of grown-up frock that would suit a woman of all ages. There were modern-day tuxedos debrided of the stuffiness of old-school dress codes, too: some came with contrasting sleeves in Ferragamo’s new Sienna-red hue, while others appeared as sexy combos of straight-cut trousers with funnel-neck waistcoats, and jackets over bare skin. Max’s tailoring is some of the slickest around and owes much to an apprenticeship he undertook with his family’s local tailor, Tony, before enrolling at London College of Fashion. The skills he picked up back then — as well as working on the shop floor of Dover Street Market as a student, getting acquainted with luxury consumers — have served him well.
It’s probably why every look came with bags — cut-out leather totes, suede holdalls, neat little satchels worn crossbody — that showed that Maximilian means business. He’s on a mission to make the brand relevant again, to offer clothes and accessories that look great and will appeal to many generations, not just his own. He knows that he’ll need to shift product in order to scale up his creative ambitions. That takes a lot of maturity on his part, and will likely please his new boss: CEO Marco Gobbetti, who previously hired Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy and Phoebe Philo at Céline, and has experience in overhauling a brand with a plucky young talent to make it relevant again. In fact, he gave Maximilian enough creative licence to drop the ‘Salvatore’ — Ferragamo, as it will now be known, will have a new Peter Saville-designed logo and a signature colour: Pantone 3546C, a nod to its heritage but also Maximilian’s deep connection to Trinidad & Tobago, the island his family comes from and the flag of which features the very same colour. For the show, it was dramatically splashed across the 17th-century courtyard, which was also filled with sand in the same colour.
So, what makes Maximilian’s vision of Ferragamo feel so fresh? Generally, it felt clean and classic, without feeling boring. Whereas many designers twice his age have been trying (but not always succeeding) in making clothes for Max’s generation, he took the high ground and honed in on timeless clothes and silhouettes in unexpected fabrics and silhouettes. Trousers with harness stripes and leather mini-shorts hinted at his being a fixture on the east London nightlife circuit — but it also just looked seriously chic. There was a sensuality, too, in the way that all of the dresses were artfully draped — something that he developed by experimenting with the Como-dyed silk foulards that Ferragamo produces plenty of — some of which came with insouciant asymmetries, layers of paper-thin gazar, and what seems like streaks of blotted-ink. A finale trio of goddess gowns with generous toga drapes of crystal-strewn mesh and crêpe-de-chine articulated it best: what’s old, or even ancient, can feel deliciously fresh in the right hands, or on the right body.
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Images via Spotlight