Fashion report

''Melanie Ward, a stylist who worked closely with Helmut Lang in the 1990s and then Karl Lagerfeld on his short-lived New York label, was backstage here at Versace. As Donatella Versacestood nearby explaining why her collection looked so skimpy, Ms. Ward, her new stylist, offered some practical wisdom.

It’s always a good sign, she said, when the models say during fittings that they want to own the clothes, and the vote for Versace’s cheeky lace hot pants and dresses had apparently been unanimous.

Let’s concede that a skinny girl who wears clothes for a living knows what she likes. And after seeing some of Milan’s stuffier creations, like the harlequin-checked satin dresses at Aquilano.Rimondi, which featured dimples of fabric over the tummy, or the number of components in Ferragamo’s summer looks (leather coats, crocodile dresses, knee-high boots with spaghetti lacing), Ms. Versace’s flaky fashion began to seem brilliant.''

more this way:

''Milan likes to make a big show of its tailoring and handcraft. It’s like a guy with his gorgeous red Ferrari, but unlike the Ferrari, what’s “under the hood” doesn’t necessarily make the garment fun to wear. Ferragamo is a case in point. Massimiliano Giornetti threw everything at the clothes. For the show notes, the P.R. staff used “hyper-constructed” to describe a trench coat. But it was obvious that Mr. Giornetti didn’t give himself enough to work with. Where were summer-weight fabrics? Why so many hard little jackets?

Giorgio Armani often catches grief for doing things, well, the Armani way: putting models in silly hats, say, or trying to arouse interest in balloon shorts. But at least Mr. Armani isn’t trying to trick anybody with his tailoring. One or two of his cropped jackets on Sunday looked woven from leather or silk cord. They were extremely light, like all his jackets, and underneath were fluid tops and wide-leg pants in silvery gray and pale blue silk or organza.

Were it not for the luminous fabrics and the Armani daytime polish of a jacket, the outfits could have passed for pajamas. In a fairly simple way, Mr. Armani has updated his modern uniform. Except for a few shorts and long skirts, every outfit was shown with pants, for a consistently relaxed and mobile silhouette. And the models were free enough to run backstage to get in place for the finale, though they still had to hold on to their hats.

A number of designers were interested in uniformity, as well as lightening things up: Peter Dundas with his stark white, layered cling dresses for Pucci; Angela Missoni with sheer trapeze dresses over knitwear. Ms. Missoni liked the idea of affecting waiflike figures with her floating dresses, which created shadings of coral and green with the underlayer. But it was also a nice way to highlight Missoni’s knits without completely shrouding them.

Two influences loomed over the Milan shows: the minimalism of Raf Simons (from Dior couture, as well as his last collections for Jil Sander) and the extreme volumes of Rei Kawakubo’s fall Comme des Garçons show. Consuelo Castiglioni’s clothes for Marni were conspicuously cleaner than usual, with peplums or folded pieces of fabric giving shape to full-skirted dresses in black or white cotton. She also showed simple tops with matching shorts.

On Sunday, I stopped by the Jil Sander showroom to see the collection up close. Also there were editors from InStyle and buyers from Harvey Nichols in London. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, as an editor, reaching for a loose white cotton twill dress, said, “I want to wear these clothes now.”

Does that comment carry more weight than a model’s?

This was Ms. Sander’s return collection after an eight-year absence. She told Sarah Mower of Vogue that she wants her company’s motto to be “excellence in manufacturing.” On the runway, Ms. Sander’s clothes looked plenty appealing for their simple, rounded shapes — the way a masculine vest in mulberry cotton morphed into a knee-length feminine dress over a white cotton middy blouse with a bit of swing in the hem. A slim navy skirt in cotton with a matching, somewhat cropped jacket caught everyone’s eye, as did deep-pocketed blazers with shorts and all the loose summery dresses.

But when I saw the clothes up close, I appreciated Ms. Sander’s motto. If somebody couldn’t manufacture these clothes, then they shouldn’t be in business, because the construction wasn’t at all complicated. Clearly Ms. Sander picked up some ideas when she was working with Uniqlo. Also, while she has good people around her at Sander, she is a different designer today: much less doctrinaire, judging by this collection. The complaint 10 years ago was that her designs weren’t feminine enough. Minimalist and modern, sure. Well, that’s a big change.

Karl Lagerfeld’s mind is a vast store of references, handled with a sense of play in his Fendi collection, where black-framed color-blocked skirts and dresses seemed folded like construction paper. Colors are Lagerfeldian — that telling drop of turquoise — and the furs often blend magically into fabrics. Bags come as colorful dangling cubes, while the baguette makes a joke of its status by having its own viewing pouch on the side of a tote.

At Bottega Veneta, Tomas Maier’s floral print dresses with neat waists and sharp shoulders had a nice ’40s slant, heightened by imposing platform pumps. At their best, his clothes suggest a cool indifference to fashion. This collection had that feeling, with a dash of eccentricity in silver-fringed cocktail dresses, but the excessive amount of embroidery seemed old hat.'' all via here.