New Designers Make a Splash at Moschino, Tod’s and Blumarine during Milan Fashion Week

 Models present creations from the Moschino Fall-Winter 2024/2025 collection during Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, February 22, 2024. (Reuters)
Models present creations from the Moschino Fall-Winter 2024/2025 collection during Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, February 22, 2024. (Reuters)
TT

New Designers Make a Splash at Moschino, Tod’s and Blumarine during Milan Fashion Week

 Models present creations from the Moschino Fall-Winter 2024/2025 collection during Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, February 22, 2024. (Reuters)
Models present creations from the Moschino Fall-Winter 2024/2025 collection during Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, February 22, 2024. (Reuters)

Designers are giving their first impressions at their new fashion houses during Milan Fashion Week.

In a game of musical chairs, Matteo Tamburini showed his first collection for Tod's on Friday just hours before his predecessor there, Walter Chiapponi, made his debut as creative director of Blumarine.

Adrian Appiolaza premiered his first collection for Moschino Thursday evening in a bittersweet moment just a month and a half after being named. His appointment followed the sudden death of David Renne just 10 days into his tenure.

Here are highlights from designer debuts during Milan Fashion Week of mostly womenswear previews for Fall-Winter 2024-25.

TAKING A STAND AT MOSCHINO Having just six weeks to pull together a collection forced Argentinian Appiolaza to be very decisive, creating a collection that he said "didn’t feel too overthought."

He plunged into the archives, taking inspiration from fashion house founder Franco Moschino’s sense of subversion, love of archetypes and trompe l’oeil playfulness.

Appiolaza’s vision invoked a dreaminess. Looks were as if being roused from sleep, and the garments were at times surreal — folded newspaper boat hats, turbans created from shirt sleeves, or a cowboy hat that was unfinished in the back, like a piece of stage scenery seen only from the front. A top was constructed out of men’s ties; a golden bowtie hung sideways as a necklace. Extravagant strands of pearls were worn under a sheer dress.

The feminine silhouette was defined by ruffles, bustles and slip dresses, complemented by men’s vests fitted with garters, oversized cloth shirts and masculine trousers.

"The idea was trying to convey Franco’s universe. It was not really about creating a ready-to-wear collection, but something that told a story," Appiolaza said backstage after the Thursday evening show.

While many brands made circumspect reference to global conflicts, responding mostly with comfort collections of cozy clothes, Appiolaza was more direct, with garments emblazoned with peace signs or the word PEACE written capitals. "I thought it was a good idea to bring peace as a universal message," the designer said.

Closing the show, a Black model wore a top of the Italian tricolor, green, white and red, which Appiolaza said was part of the collection’s message of inclusion. Some social media commentors read it also as a statement about the war in Gaza: the Palestinian flag is green, white, red and black, the black reflected in the closing look’s monochrome skirt and collar detailing on the tricolor top with a trailing tassel. The model carried a piece of bread.

TOD’S FOR THE TRAVELER Matteo Tamburini’s journey with Tod’s departed from a Milan tram depot, with the city’s distinctive vintage orange trams serving as a backdrop.

"We selected this location because it speaks to dynamism, which is closely linked to Tod’s aesthetic. The collection was thought for people who travel, who move in the world," Tamburini said backstage, citing the daytime workhorse Di Bag and the trademark driving moccasin as key starting points.

The mostly monochrome looks featured rich leather dresses, skirts and overcoats, made cozy with layered, twisting knitwear. Trenches were oversized; button-down cotton shirts were layered one over the other; trousers featured deep cuffs, while jacket shoulders were slightly enlarged. Bags were soft, molding into the body. Belts had oblong buckles resembling a vehicle grating. The driving shoe featured long tassels, for movement.

Tamburini said the collection reflects the duality of Milan, at once an expression of the bourgeois and Italy's industrial power.

Tod’s group recently announced an operation to delist the company. Speaking on the sidelines of the show, chairman Diego Della Valle told reporters there was no reason to sell the business after the operation is complete. "We have a family business with young people who want to do this job. What could be better?’’ he asked.

Front-row guests included Chinese actor Xiao Zhan, US actor Larsen Thompson and South Korean singer Jungwoo.

BLUMARINE’S NIGHTTIME PLUNGE Walter Chiopponi took Blumarine back to its romantic rebel days of the 1990s when the star vibes of Chloe Sevigny and Mila Jovovich aligned with the fashion house.

The creative director assembled an array of female codes for his debut collection: bows and lace, animal prints and florals, kitten knits and silk.

The Blumarine girl was wandering home after a night out, at times disheveled in an animal print coat, silken shorts and floral pumps with a tattered bow that looked well walked-in. Full of the emotion of the evening, she held it together in soft pastel knits and floret applique tops and dresses that epitomized femininity. A velour slip dress with lace gloves, and a black lace dress over animal print tights gave boudoir looks the final say.

"The clothes are made by the city," Chiopponi said.



In Bolivia's Scrappy Highlands, Proud Indigenous Cholas Take the Runway by Storm

A woman models a creation by a local designer at a Chola fashion show, promoting the Andean style and beauty of Aymara a woman, on Viacha, Bolivia, Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)
A woman models a creation by a local designer at a Chola fashion show, promoting the Andean style and beauty of Aymara a woman, on Viacha, Bolivia, Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)
TT

In Bolivia's Scrappy Highlands, Proud Indigenous Cholas Take the Runway by Storm

A woman models a creation by a local designer at a Chola fashion show, promoting the Andean style and beauty of Aymara a woman, on Viacha, Bolivia, Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)
A woman models a creation by a local designer at a Chola fashion show, promoting the Andean style and beauty of Aymara a woman, on Viacha, Bolivia, Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

In the huddled markets, sprawling farms and pulsing parties of Viacha, a town southeast of Bolivia’s capital, it's typical for women to sport bowler hats, tiered skirts and fringed shawls.
What's less typical is for the fashion spotlight to turn to these outfits — worn by “Cholas,” Indigenous women from the highland Altiplano.
But late Friday in Viacha, some 22 kilometers (13 miles) from Bolivia's capital of La Paz — over 12,000 feet (3,650 meters) above sea level — awe-struck teenage boys and proud mothers throbbed the main square as the town’s dirt roadway was briefly transformed into a runway, The Associated Press said.
One by one, the girls from Viacha — mostly students between 15-25 years old — strutted down the catwalk to a surprising soundtrack of early 2000s American pop music. Street vendors hawked hot dogs and empanadas. Supporters cheered in Spanish and the Indigenous Aymaran language.
Wearing glittering shoes and brightly colored, bunched-out skirts called “polleras,” the amateur models of all heights and sizes twirled, tipped their hats and threw sultry glances at the crowd.
“Years ago, people would associate these skirts with the fields, they'd look down on us as rural peasants,” said Rogelia Canaviri, 42, who couldn't stop smiling as she watched her daughter, Carolina, stride down the runway in dangling pearl earrings, the sequins on her layer-cake red skirt catching the stage lights.
“It's something I'm proud of, to see my daughter and her friends enjoy what I've worn for work my whole life," she said, pointing to the wool shawl, velvet hat and lower-key beige pollera she had on — the same clothes, she said, she still wears to milk her cows and sell her cheese at open-air markets. Her own mother did the same.
Generations ago, the Aymara were subject to waves of conquest and dispossession, first by the Inca, then by the Spanish, who forced the Indigenous communities to abandon their traditional way of dressing and adopt the style then-popular in the court of Seville.
Legend has it that the jaunty felt bowler hat became critical to the get-up after being introduced by British railway workers in the 1920s.
Bolivia's whiter, more affluent population has used “Chola” — and its diminutive, “Cholita” — as dismissive racial epithets. But in recent decades that stigma has dissipated, with Indigenous Aymara proudly reclaiming the word and younger Bolivians rediscovering the charm of their mothers' and grandmothers' vibrant garments.
“I think the ‘Cholita’ has become something very interesting, very exciting in our current context,” said Brittany Cantuta Valeria, 21, a first-time model, her hat brimmed upward and cheeks flushed a reddish gold.
“We’re now at the point of being respected because of everything that’s been implemented, so I wear this to have fun, to show off, to go to parties and dances. I have nothing to do with working the fields.”
Most of the girls parading onstage Friday, in the show organized by the Viacha municipality, grew up during the tenure of former leftist President Evo Morales (2006-2019), the country’s first-ever Indigenous president whose championing of Bolivia's Indigenous majority earned him fervent support across the cinderblock and adobe homes of the Altiplano.
Morales instituted a new constitution, which, among other things, expanded recognition for Bolivia’s 36 ethnic groups. He promoted the teaching of Indigenous languages and boosted state funding for folkloric arts. More Chola runway shows and beauty contests cropped up, widening the reach of Bolivia's native highland culture.
But fashion fanfare was largely limited to La Paz, the seat of the government. Before Friday, the town of Viacha, like most of the other villages across these austere mountain-rimmed plains, had never taken its turn on the runway.
“I was really nervous but I realized this is the first time for all of us,” said 15-year-old Tomasa Ramirez. “I feel so pretty. Now I know it’s my dream to be a Cholita model.”
With Bolivia's economic crisis closing like a vise on families whose money has diminished in value while the cost of food has doubled, many girls said walking the show was no easy feat.
Top-notch velvet hats and shawls made from vicuña wool with silk fringes can fetch thousands of dollars. Polleras cost a few hundred dollars. Then there's the jewelry — ideally made of real gold, pearls and diamonds when worn to these kinds of formal events.
“This year there was no way I could have real ones,” said Julieta Mamani, 16, pointing to her gold-colored earrings. “I hope things will be different next year.”
Watching her 24-year-old daughter pose for selfies in her elaborate skirt, Canaviri, the dairy farmer, has another hope.
“I hope she doesn't like wearing pants,” she said of her daughter. “I tried on pants once in my life, and I felt naked. Never again.”