In the latest months, the international fashion weeks for the presentation of the new fall / winter 2022-2023 collections were held all over the world.
We have collected below photos from the shows of the Italian fashion week held in Milan between February 22nd and 28th, organized and promoted by the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana. Below is a selection of pieces or entire outfits made in knitwear.
Many of these knitwear garments made for the fashion shows look like garments made with regulars orthogonal top quality fabrics, rather than with yarns worked in the most incredible ways on knitting machines, obtaining pieces to be sewn so well that they look like garments made with a fabric from which to cut the garments. Instead of knitted pieces dropped and knitted to size and laced or sewn together in the most fantastic ways. This speech is even more valid for the collections of those very high brands, which do not spare any expense and understand the value of a high-level knitwear garment.
Looking at the fashion shows from the Vogue Italia website, let’s start with the letter A.
A as Alberta Ferretti. In her collection some beautiful knitted pieces, some long dresses and mainly sweaters to combine with the tailored suits that come out under the jackets or coats, overlapping the satin shirts. The knit stitches are beautiful, many of which, albeit in their “classicism”, are reinterpreted with shiny yarns and/or often through laminas glued onto the surface of the garments, in order to give the effect of silvery metallic surfaces, mysterious and precious.
At the letter B we stop at Bottega Veneta. Here the new creative director, the Belgian with a super background in high fashion brands such as Balenciaga, Celine and Calvin Klein, among others, Matthieu Blazy sees the new collection as a journey. In his words below, as from the origins of the brand this is an always associated theme to Bottega Veneta, having it been born as a handbag brand.
“The idea was to bring back energy, a silhouette that really expressed motion, because Bottega is a bag company, so you go somewhere, you don’t stay home. This collection basically is a journey, ”he continued. “There’s many characters, they all have places to go, they feel quite free.”
Everything in the lines of garments and accessories seems to really want to return this idea of movement that is not stopped in time, everything is projected forward. The use of plastic materials such as leather and woolen fabrics is beautiful. There are basic knitwear pieces paired with leather skirts, for example, and others that are more fashionable, really beautiful for the use of original yarns and great chromatic choices.
In spite of the alphabetical order followed so far, we now face the Giorgio Armani fashion show. The designer decides to open his show with a statement in English read by a voiceover:
“My decision not to use any music in the show was made as a sign of respect to the people affected by the evolving tragedy.”
With this statement he communicates to his audience that he is going to host an entire show for them, an entire parade, in silence, as a “sign of respect for the people who are suffering the tragedy in progress”. The reference obviously is to the victims of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which although already underway, despite the lack of media coverage since 2014, had its definitive escalation in the days of the last Italian fashion week.
Giorgio Armani, a man of great sensitivity, even after the show said that the only way he could show that his heart suffered from the ongoing tragedy was through silence, that the show music would give joy and the best signal to give is that we are not happy, to recognize that something serious is happening. He who lived the Second World War as a child, not only lives a step back in history, he relives his memories.
Here we have collected some photos of knitted garments and others that most likely are but we cannot be sure, since several similar textile effects can be achieved both through knitting machines and textile machine. We refer back here a bit to the speech with which we opened this article.
If you love the classic and timeless style of Mr. Giorgio Armani, you will also love this collection. It has all the hallmarks of its timeless elegance, with hints of a modernity made of rhinestones that give light and become futuristic fringes and oleographic materials. Colors and materials, in fact, together with crystals, fringes and patterns chosen with the confidence of a designer who have the mastery of always creating garments that are new and at the same time unchanging in charm.
In any case, if you want to see the complete show, we recommend the video, which we leave you below, because it is really suggestive. Silence gives a sense of solemnity, yes, but also of sadness, the right one to convey the message. Almost 13 minutes of silence punctuated by the footsteps of models, photographers’ claps and occasionals applauses in total silence.
Missoni, under the creative direction of Alberto Caliri who succeeded Angela Missoni, leaves the brand in March in turn, but first brings out this collection with the hyper-colorful flavor typical of the brand. This with a slightly different sense of intention regarding knitwear than usual, as Alberto tells us, there is the search for a “lived-in knitwear”. Here are his words:
“I wanted to give knitwear a lived-in, warm, emotional quality,” said Caliri, referring to the perfect-imperfect techniques he applied to the textures of roomy cashmere jumpers and tank tops, which were felted, cut and left slightly flawed. “To me, they convey the same intimate, familiar feel of wrinkles on a beautiful face.”
Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, who have been designing together for the women’s line of the Prada brand since 2020, bring feminine yet androgynous suits to the stage. Jackets with oversized lines in woolen cloth and skirts below the knee divided horizontally in layers with the use of different materials. In some of these, we notice a few pieces of ribbed knit. Other interesting items from the point of view of knitwear are certainly the sweaters with geometric or abstract Jacquard patterns, with a very vintage effect, which refer to the “aesthetic of ugliness” created decades ago by Miuccia. Then there are basic pieces such as crewnecks or V-necks with oversized fits and made with yarns or knit stitches that create the necessary structure to keep the rigidity of the refined shape. It is all really beautiful combined with the hyper-feminine skirts. These are the words of Miuccia Prada about the collection:
“You want to live again, to be inspired. And to learn from the lives of people, ”Prada said in a statement that was distributed after the show. Our great post-pandemic reawakening has been foreshortened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and incipient war, but her point di lei remains: dress like you mean it.
The Sunnei parade is very original. The creative directors Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina choose to create a fashion show-performance. The set is a pedestrian and cycle path in an outdoor space in an area of Milan. Models arrive on the set aboard many taxi cars, get off and, closing the car door, start running on the path adjacent to an underground-flavored wall complete with graffiti, covering it all the way to the end.
The audience attends standing on a side platform. All very fast and impressive. The garments in the collection look beautiful, even if seen in this way, a bit of profile, running-away in the true sense of the words, you get more of the general sense of the outfits, rather than studying their lines and details. Here the review of photos of the show is required to really grasp everything.
Here it is our photographic selection of the pieces with interesting “knitwear” references
In the collection some really interesting knitted pieces. Like the sweaters and the two-tone ribbed sleeveless or the pieces worked with fur stitch, used both for sleeveless and for headdresses halfway between a beanie and a balaclava.
So much more has been seen in these shows and it would be impossible to collect all our favorites in one article, we will help with another piece on this topic soon!