Soft as a blanket

While for Y2K lovers the cold weather is a bad component for low-waisted jeans and micro tops, designers - perhaps in order to get away from this ultra-saturated aesthetic - are now looking forward to wrapping up their customers' busts in cashmere and leather. Geometric and pointy capes were numerous, as at Balmain, Celine and Prada, but even more so were shawls and real blankets. Evoking at times the image of the fantastic Milanese "sciura", and at times that of a poor castaway rescued from the sea, this past fashion month seemed like even the most diverse designers had the same idea: to wrap models in metres and metres of fabric. 

Perhaps taking a little too much inspiration from emergency kits, Undercover sent their models down the catwalk in what looked like thermal blankets complete with silver and gold inner paddings to accompany looks of checkered shorts and o-ring chokers. At Coperni, Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant took up the "rescue" imagery enlarging shirts, coats and furs, wrapping the models' slender bodies and encasing their arms in sleeves that were tied together, a concept that was later elevated by Jonathan Anderson for Loewe through the use of shiny silk. 

Although experimenting with capes and fringes could very easily relegate an entire collection to the boho chic imagery that had us quickly bored at the beginning of the last decade, at Saint Laurent and Etro the brands' sophisticated touch confirmed the elegance of the look. Anthony Vaccarello did this designing tweed shawls - one was in total leather - supported by structured blazers and fastened with gold clips, Marco de Vincenzo by combining Scottish plaids with the modernity of acid green and studs. And while Rick Owens declined this trend in an alien version, inflating strange shrugs and turning them into armours, Giorgio Armani and Kim Jones at Fendi brought it back to Earth, rediscovering the classic elegance of a wool cape and beaded Charleston-style fringes. Closing this future winter trend was The Row's Resort 2024 show, which, with its usual heightened sense of composure, knotted voluminous bows on clean-cut coats, imitating the natural curves of flower petals with layers and overlays.