Missoni: a modern day meeting of minds

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Feb 25, 2018

It was Carnaby Street meets Portobello Road with a large shot of tribal techno in a Missoni show that celebrated global culture, not nationalist sentiment.

No other brand, anywhere, quite frankly, can create natural fabrics as varied as Missoni whose selection of materials this season was beautifully overwhelming.
 
Faded ikats; worn Donegal plaids;  patchwork herringbones; futurist Lurex meshes; shaggy faux shearlings and floating mohair. Above all, the bold bright Rothko rectangles of color seen in long sloppy mohair sweaters and cool hippie cardigans.

All of them catching the light in a raw factory show-space, whose concrete runway was covered with pools of water. In a sense, Missoni has the finest – and often most expensive – casual clothes in fashion. A certain easy nonchalance that is quite pricey to acquire. Add in the slinky multicolored mesh sheaths or spider-web coats and you had a gutsy fashion show, one of the strongest from the house in years.
 
“It’s a moment of meeting of cultures, which is what we are doing with this collection,” said Angela in a pre-show presentation, accurately describing her oeuvre.
 
One could only applaud her casting; at a moment of growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe, this was the most racially mixed runway on the continent.
 
Last year on women’s catwalks, one Big Idea was carrying rugs; this season in Missoni the boys got to carry them too chez Angela. They all looked very dandy in their patchwork St Andrews coats; Balinese ikat blazers and dark-hued cricket blazers that looked as though they were made of tweed but were really cashmere knit.
 
All told, a great example of a family-owned business keeping its mind and eyes open precisely at a moment in Europe when so many politicians want to close our frontiers to other people and their culture. Fashion as a statement of tolerance.