Give a fashion designer 10 patterns and he or she is likely to cancel a few. Marco De Vincenzo is more likely to try and make them all work together.
Now more than a year into his role as creative director of Etro, he’s fully embraced the brand’s exotic prints — and its wanderlust, spending his summer vacation visiting places he’s never been throughout Africa and Asia.
This was reflected in the soundtrack — a mix of Arabic strings, African percussion, choirs and electric guitar — and a collection that had tinges of Texas cowboy, Seattle grunge and Grecian goddess, yet wholly committed to “Nowhere,” the offbeat title for the show.
Not being bound to a particular theme or place seemed to embolden De Vincenzo to carve printed shirting cotton into long, fishtail shirtdresses; fancy Etro terrycloth into regal evening coats, and flocked velvets into Millennial-friendly crop tops.
There were some iridescent and metallic elements that winked to his namesake collection, and his knack with luxury handbags — here handsome satchels with whipstitched edges and gleaming gold hardware — reflect years working on accessories as a consultant for Fendi.
The fishtail silhouette was the biggest takeaway from this ambitious show, which included runway moments for Maggie Rizer, Tasha Tilberg and Guinevere Van Seenus, who made a loop around hulking columns down the center of the runway.
De Vincenzo also experimented with cropped jeans jackets, racerback gowns, giant rave pants and supersized varsity jackets, which could be praised as eclectic, or derided as all over the place.
But in his view, “if you are an Etro woman, that means that you are never scared of colors and imagination.”
