milan fashion week 2015 s/s : no.21

You have to wonder if the favorite game at Alessandro Dell’Acqua’s design studio when working on the latest No. 21 collection to roll around is a kind of oppositional word association. As in: Grunge . . . Glamour. Transparent . . . Opaque. High . . . Low. Utilitarian . . . Jeweled Within an Inch of Its Life. Dell’Acqua confirmed as much when he was chatting backstage and he mentioned he was thinking about strong contrasts. Oh, and he was interested in bringing together the United Kingdom and Italy in ways different from that of the EU. From the former, he drew on Scottish plaids and checks (all very timely and topical, given Scotland is voting on whether to remove itself from Britain tomorrow) though his also had a distinct whiff of nineties Seattle about them, given they looked, if not smelled, like teen spirit. And from the latter, it was the fifties Cinecittà va-va-voom, all hourglass curves and figure-hugging skirts. To cap it off, Dell’Acqua finished by saying he’d been looking at his beloved back copies of The Face from the nineties, the Brit magazine that charted street style as it flitted across the years from a fifteen-year old Kate Moss posing for its cover for photographer Corinne Day, ushering in a new sense of raw naturalism; to rave; to the deification of vintage chic; to Britpop. (Surprisingly, issues from this era can still be found cheaply on eBay, kids.)

In its way, Dell’Acqua’s No. 21 riffs on all of this, and still somehow manages to single out all the salient notions of the new season that have emerged thus far. So you’ll find the longer, leaner line; the sharply cinched (and lavishly embellished) belts or bra tops, both explicitly designed to emphasize the waist; the khaki army shirt transformed with couture-y volumes; and the way skirts have become some barometer on how sheer you’re willing to go. To finish it off, Dell’Acqua decided to go with the utterly bonkers gesture of mules (they’re competing with sneakers for the award for Most Ubiquitous Shoes on the Spring 2015 Runways) which looked like the models’ feet had been wrapped in gargantuan satin bows. And you know what? Somehow, all of this just worked.