The collections at Loro Piana’s presentation were much more interestingly sited than in the men’s and women’s lookbooks. Shown in the galleries of the recently reopened Palazzo Citterio, their colors, textures and silhouettes were set within walls hung with works by Boccioni, Picasso, Carrà, Morandi, Modigliani and more. It was quite gutsy, and borderline presumptuous, to suggest these garments could hold their own in a conversation with the canon of abstract modernism.
As a light chat rather than a heavy dialogue, however, the clothes held their own perfectly well. The pith helmet-esque hat in an off-pink microcheck—in what looked like a cashmere–silk blend that also appeared in the suit beneath—worn with a brushed-cotton country check shirt and a knotted pale foulard, did, oddly, echo both the color and form of the Morandis behind it. A very handsome marine-blue patch-pocket field coat with matching straight-leg trousers, paired with a beige beanie, seemed almost adversarially positioned against Picasso’s 1942 Testa di Toro. And so on.
In truth the art was not really what we were here to contemplate. In womenswear, the season’s silhouette was elongated and relatively ladylike-meets-staid, set on mostly flat shoes but zhooshed by eccentrically expressive hats. Tailoring in gentle muesli tones included shawl-collared blazers buttoned low, double-breasted cash-silk blousons, and summer tweeds woven in silk. Printed dresses and coats featured floral, watercolor and marine motifs. There were some coned hats and loose pants in tiers of dyed silk strips.
Loro Piana’s menswear seems more assuredly in a lane whose destination it is confident of. The outerwear is consistently beautiful, although there sometimes feels like a slight dissonance between the stated preciousness and nobility of the materials it uses and the utilitarian forms it often favors. Tailoring was cut to a mildly loose silhouette, with single-and double-breasted jackets with both peak and shawl lapels in many lush fabrications. Loro Piana also presented a “library” of knitwear: sixteen shades of cashmere, designed as a palette to be built into wardrobes.
As usual at Loro Piana, most of the pieces emanated the beguiling glow of neutrally tasteful richness that occasionally veered towards old money cosplay. To generate a more powerful reaction, either for or against, would require a point of view as distinct and articulated as those expressed through the artworks around which these collections were set.
