Canali (Q4015)
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Italian luxury menswear company
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Canali |
Italian luxury menswear company |
Statements
“This is the fourth unfolding of a new development for Canali, born with our fall-winter 2023 collection, which aims to provoke evolution on the basis of its founding values: quality of materials, constructions, and a trendy addition that is never the subject but rather a form of completeness.” So said Stefano Canali, third-generation custodian of the family business at a Milan Fashion Week presentation. In the courtyard of Palazzo Bovara, marking its 90th anniversary, the Italian brand presented a menswear collection based on a total look that revolves around the concept of the jacket—dissected from the traditional one to the Sahariana.With Canali, it’s never about revolution: Digging from its heritage, a form of quiet luxury takes shape by going beyond formalwear, reaching a form of leisurewear that intertwines with tailoring, found in the unlined, double-faced garments with invisible seams. The leather construction is named Nuvola (which means “cloud” in Italian) and chimes with the craftsmanship of the brand. When paired with it, trousers become more flowing, and an emphasis is placed on details. As materiality is important at Canali, a sense of touch is captured by the widespread presence of knit in the collection, from punto stoffa, to honeycomb stitches, to the textural intarsia of knit and chenille.“It is a collection conceived for a real person,” Canali stated. “What we present is what will arrive in stores.” The Milan store was recently renovated and is currently showing a capsule collection dedicated to the 90th birthday of the brand. Available for the next six months, it comes up beside spring-summer 2025 and focuses on a nostalgic revival of Canali’s roots. As Canali tells it: “The goal is not to petrify what has been but to evolve the concepts said so far. The company started with a collection of raincoats characterized by the symbol of the swan, which at the time represented the impermeability of the product. We designed a retro-futuristic capsule entirely made from that fabric.”
19 June 2024
This week Canali at its URL launched Anthology, a nicely curated deep dive of content that excavates every aspect of this 86-year-old family business’s ups and downs. During that time Canali has faced three moments of extreme crisis: first when it was founded in 1934 by Giacomo and Giovanni Canali because the closure of a local cotton mill left them and 2,000 others without employment, the second when war left their business and infrastructure destroyed, and the third when the raincoats the business had become based on fell out of favor in the late 1960s and it pivoted to tailoring.So does 2020 represent the fourth crisis in Canali’s history? As third-generation keeper of the flame, president and CEO Stefano Canali characterized this torrid year thus: “COVID-19 and the events of this year have for us only accelerated a change that was already underway.” By that he means a new-gen reprise of crisis three: a shift in menswear taste that is prompting the company, once again, to adapt in order to flourish.Specifically, that has meant the division of Canali’s offer into a three-pronged proposition designed to appeal to menswear’s fractured and shifting demographics. Canali’s Black Edition is effectively hybridized and often tailored high-class sportswear, whose key innovation this season was a jacket cut in a springy linen-cotton-silk-wool mix with an apparently tailored collar that flared at the neck to form a cowl-meets-hood. Like the shacket in its 1934 heritage label offer (the second seasonal Canali innovation, although previously a garment well explored by British workwear firms such as Private White V.C.), this jacket combined both the appearance of construction while affording the full freedom of movement that a yielding fabric and lack of traditional tailoring tricks can afford. Field jackets were part of a traditionally un-Canali emphasis on military tailoring and looked good. Sportswear pieces cut in panels of dark teal suede and panels of meshed technical fabric were yet more previously off-their-grid explorations.Tailoring was not totally relegated to the past (in fact the house’s made-to-measure market has remained robust for those captains of industry and politics who cannot ever change uniform), but the Core capsule was loosened, lightened, and expressed in a novel luxury synthetic blend that those two founding grandfathers of the house would have been astonished by.
Along with retail expansion in rebounding China, these new lines and the Anthology project are key pillars in the house’s unfolding strategy. Stefano Canali said: “We believe that the optimistic message hidden in this story of ours is that if you have a plan, and if you have the courage to pursue your goals, and if you have the means to do so, then you can succeed.”
23 September 2020
So what you see here, in sections of 15 looks, are the three sub-collections—in order: Black, then Exclusive, then Core (also called 1934)—which, together, make up the output of the house of Canali. It was presented on the floor of Florence’s 1920’s-era Odeon movie house (which, of course, is in a 14th-century palazzo) as a fine crooner gave us Amy Winehouse covers from a gallery above.Canali has subdivided itself to allow exploration of three distinct but not necessarily mutually exclusive subsets of the suit-loving demographic. Each collection was accompanied by a mood video: Black’s featured punchy vistas from Shanghai and guys in Black riding fixies. The collection featured topcoats in scuba-scrunchy material, technically deconstructed jackets with semi-detached hoods, executive harnesses, and cleanly cut puffers. Exclusive was pitched differently: There was a vintage Porsche and close-ups of hands wearing an expensive watch, drafting architectural plans. The collection included a pared-back pale cashmere cape, a steel silk bomber edged in cashmere, high-waist double-secured pants under wide-lapeled double-breasted jackets, and a gorgeous cream shearling overcoat.By the time the core 1934 collection’s movie came, I wasn’t paying attention due to the display of three leather and velvet-accented raincoats, very lovely, that sat in between the three sub-collections. These were a nod to Canali’s very first iteration, as a maker of outerwear. The core collection itself leaned heavily and reliably to the house’s long-honed specialism: beautiful industrially made tailoring in wool and/or cashmere tweeds marked with the traditional checks and stripes that are the visual hieroglyphs of masculine formalwear.Canali has a plan, and it’s coming together.
9 January 2020
If all goes according to plan, Canali should be approaching the end of its period of transition. Today’s presentation at the Palazzo Ximenes in Florence was cut from the traditional cloth of this 1934-founded tailoring brand. A band played peppy soft jazz in the garden while models in pith helmet–shaped white cotton hats lounged within a tableau vivant pretending to mix cocktails, play checkers, and discuss literature as they eyed Canali-branded bikes. The clothes were impeccable,The Talented Mr. Ripleyneat, and subtly mixed the conventionally formal with the conventionally informal. Cream suede jackets sat over knitted polos over sharply tailored pants. Bermuda shorts were worn under jersey tailored jackets under a half-length, drawstring-cinched crispy cotton parka. The color story was a quietly complementary mélange of neutrals.This season, however, the Canali story had a new, second phase. It begins in the lookbook attached to this review when the surface of the ground in the images changes from green to white. This was the first full expression of a new version of Canali with the label Black Edition, which will be unrolled formally at a presentation in Milan next Saturday night but is getting its first airing here. Decidedly less organic and more industrial than Canali’s core fare, this new line seemed titled at a markedly different demographic and region, but was carefully mustered. T-shirts and track jackets with laser-etched, newly fonted logos beneath mesh panels were highlights in a mostly monochrome suite of clothing and accessories that was also especially notable for its lack of a tailored shoulder. This is the brand’s tentative first step in a new direction, and it will be interesting to see where that leads.
12 June 2019
Walking into tonight’s Canali presentation felt not unlike blithely entering the living room of a family whose house you are a weekend guest at immediately after some stormer of a family bust-up. For while there were lots of smiles and assurances that everything was fine, it was clear that something pretty serious had gone down.First of all, Hyun Wook Lee, the design director presented by communications chief Elisabetta Canali last season as the new broom here, had been, well, swept away, gone after three months. (That’s faster than Justin O’Shea at Brioni.) Not only that, but Elisabetta was absent too.Family business is family business—private, even when your family happens to an extremely public and greatly respected fashion company that invites nosy parkers like yours truly to interrogate its wares twice a year. It’s not for us to delve. But of course I delved. Stefano Canali, general manager of the business, stoically characterized the changes as evolution—an excellent byword for revolution.The third, less spectacular, shift evident was that Canali had returned to Pitti, the true home of industrialized Italian sartorial-ism, after its long and mixed bag of shows in Milan. This is probably a good idea. This wonderful company has long been in need of a reset, not due to any great fault of those who run it, but to reflect the shifting tides of taste that have threatened it so profoundly recently.There’s not much point in going into the garments shown tonight in this report. The lustrousness of a lavender cashmere jacket cannot compare with the shift in the fabric of Canali’s operation that became semi-evident this evening. Here’s hoping that any pain that prefaced that shift will be soon be eclipsed by pleasure. Change often hurts at first, but it can be for the best.
9 January 2019
Hyun Wook Li’s design pedigree is impressive: Before joining Canali at the end of last year he spent six years at Berluti. Before that he was at Zegna. Before that he was at Gianfranco Ferre. And prior to Ferre there was a cameo at Max Mara. His very first gig out of fashion school was a stint at Versace men’s, in 2000.For his first headlining presentation chez Canali, Wook applied the sum of his experience by dividing the collection into parts. There were four rooms, entitled Equilibrium, Dynamism, Steadiness, and Inspiration, all of which were furnished with carefully made suits and semiformal pieces in colors overwhelmingly designed (that fiery orange look apart) neither to pop nor to fade into the background: a faded pink short-sleeved guernsey above some powdery green tailored pants was one sounds-wrong-worked-well outfit combination. Wool silk linen blends were used to fashion light but strongly formed jackets with minimal shoulder construction and minimal bomber jackets that looked excellent with their matching pants, that bomber-suit idea again. There were plenty of shirt/jacket hybrids, the horribly named “shacket” that is an interesting third way for men’s mid-weight outerwear, that looked very good. These were sometimes constructed in the house “Impeccable” fabric whose creaseless USP Elisabetta Canali enthusiastically demonstrated by scrunching and twisting.Wook has has also been working on Canali’s brand language. Shirts and ties and sneaker soles came in a matching abstracted print of the house’s name. Belt buckles and back fastenings were fashioned as functional, claw-shaped Cs. Knitted ties and the leather heel piece on some really want-able sneakers in tweed featured yet more of them. But while there were plenty of Cs to see, they never imposed themselves over the clothes they adorned: This was less logomania than logo-whispering.“For me classic is timeless and contemporary is ageless,” said Wook of his design philosophy at Canali. This was a confident and hopeful debut for a house that has been in need of direction.
17 June 2018
Next season Canali will show the first collection from newly appointed designer Hyun-Wook Lee. As Elisabetta Canali explained at this presentation, Lee has been recruited not as a creative director charged with some highfalutin artistic vision for the house, but as a firmly focused collections designer “because we are very concrete.”The clothes scattered around her proved the South Korean alum of Berluti will have an impressive pool of industrial tailoring expertise to draw on. Highlights here included long overcoats made in materials that should pique the interest of plutocrats everywhere, including a fifty-fifty wool-chinchilla and wool-mink mix. Add to that the house’s “Super Light” jacket delivered in super gentle irregular checks and herringbones, a peacoat in finely waffled cashmere with an unorthodox asymmetrical cut, and wool coats whose finely flecked constellations of lilac, teal, green, and blue were almost monotone at first sight yet became hypnotically kaleidoscopic with proper attention.Canali is remaining true to itself—and has suffered as a consequence—at a time when it might easily have joined the rush to incorporate elasticized waistbands and track tops into the vernacular of tailoring. The strength of its product and the imminent arrival of Lee, a seasoned designer with a fresh eye, hints at better times ahead for a company whose authenticity certainly merits them.
15 January 2018
Canali’s Spring splash came, almost literally, with the introduction of a new textile: “Impeccabile 2.0,” a fabric designed with “a global commuter” in mind. For this peripatetic man, movement is key, as is a level of weatherproofness. To achieve these not-always-easy-to-satisfy ergonomic demands, Canali’s specialists came up with a hyperfine wool that they then twisted with twice the normal amount of torque. The result is a crisp-but-breathable weave, which is finished with a water- and stain-resistant sort of shellac. And it looked good whether on proper sportswear, like a hooded checked raincoat, or in regular suit form. (How many times have you been caught in a downpour without an umbrella and wished your clothes were just a little less absorbent?)Canali also had athletic-looking sneaker-wingtip footwear in its lineup (again, mobility) and stylishly simple jumpers and oxfords to boot. But while the technicality of Impeccabile is interesting, the fashion here didn’t really make any needles jump—the overall palette erred toward the slightly drab, and the silhouettes weren't anything new. Canali certainly doesn’t need to fix anything—it has hundreds of standalone stores globally and is in a 1,000-plus more doors—but in presentation format it could benefit from a bit more excitement and experimentation. Complementary dance performances today—demonstrating the new fabric’s properties—didn’t quite spark that flint.
17 June 2017
If theCanalipresentation was meant to give a sense of the offering to come, it was also about how it came to be. Thanks to a short film by Italian director Ivan Cotroneo, guests could watch the construction of a suit, only in reverse, backtracking through the various stages so that the end yielded the beginning: a hand sketching on a blank page. Set to music by Oscar-winning composer Dario Marianelli (film-score geeks like this reviewer will think ofAtonementandEat Pray Love), the touching concept gave an accessible narrative to a brand that people revere whether or not they have ever worn the clothes. But for those who are themselves customers, you already know that this collection felt exceptional to the touch. The switch from a runway show to a tableau vivant allowed guests to glide their fingers along suits and coats in double-faced cashmere that often also contained vicuna, silk, or chinchilla, and better understand the signature Kei deconstructed design, which eschews an inner structure. Newness appeared less in the realm of silhouette—each look respectfully slim and sharp—than in a nuanced tilt of a Prince of Wales check, or turning a versatile field jacket into an object of desire thanks to pure cashmere treated like sheered sable fur. A ticket pocket sized for mobile phones in contrast fabric will speak to men incentivized by practicality over indulgence (see the velvety alpaca robe coat in a rich shade of rosy Barolo).“We have been doing this for over 80 years, but the challenge every time is to send the same message in a different way,” noted Elisabetta Canali, who represents the third generation of the family business. Asked to reiterate that message in words, she replied, “Craftsmanship, excellence, made in Italy.” The launch of design workshops for students from select fashion schools, part of a new heritage initiative, seems like a noble pay-it-forward.
14 January 2017
“Tailoring, tailoring, tailoring, everywhere. That is what we do. It has to be tailoring. It’s us; what we are and what we want to be.” Pre-show, Elisabetta Canali wasn’t reining back her 1900-employee family company’s dedication to the sartorial. And the collection itself, the first post Andrea Pompilio’s exit after a two-year tenure, was also deeply invested in the traditional attire of alpha man. The models emerged from a cat’s cradle of rope meant to evoke weaving, which was also reminiscent of the wonderful poster for Hitchcock’sVertigo. The show opened and closed with jackets of a fil-on-fil fabric—malfilei, Canali called it—in which you could see the competing and pleasingly organic jumble of warp versus weft. There was a mighty series of softly colored suits (dusty blues, terracotta ochres) that gently stretched the house Kei jacket by inserting secondary pocket-square pockets at the hip. These suits were worn over double-layered knits rucked half up at one side, and there was plentiful use of the sub-collar neckerchief.So that was the tailoring, and it was lovely. But there was plenty of more diverse luxury attire too: bombers with bodies of perforated leather and knit arms, long light trenches, leather M65s, and double-hemmed Bermuda shorts. The narrative of tailoring has always been one of minor navigational adjustments on a long-range journey to match the changing tastes of the men it outfits. Today there is also demand for a counterbalance of that which isn’t tailored at all. It’s a brave new world, and Canali is adapting.
18 June 2016
Presidents Obama and Putin both wearCanali—but not quite like this. Under the creative direction of Andrea Pompilio, Canali continues to use the language of fashion as a gentle exploration of the boundaries of the sartorial.This afternoon’s collection was dominated by suiting in check double-faced gabardine presented in various combinations of green, blue, and eggplant. From afar—this was a long runway—the pieces looked to be in block color, then up close the square pixelations delineated themselves upon the eye. Three-button jackets were sometimes fly fronted for only the bottom two attachments, meaning the top two buttons could be fastened—as is customary—with the illusion of engaging only one. On quite tight pants that sometimes hugged the thigh a little intimately, belt loops either extended over the left quad above a flapped flat pocket, or tubed entirely around the waist to leave room only for the no-profile popper belt buckles. The effect of this was to smooth the silhouette at the midriff, and move the emphasis down to meatily buckled monk straps. Similarly buckled were elephant-wrinkly soft suit carriers and cutely dimpled black napa portfolios.A ponyskin greatcoat looked black from a distance. On approach, it declared itself as midnight blue with double-faced black napa only at the collar and trim. There was a cuddly beast of an alpaca overcoat. Against the suiting, any flash of brightness in this dark collection came at the neck: contra-color collars in ocher, mustard, and bottle green surrounded narrow scarves corralled via unruly knots into ties. There was some pop in the fitted knitwear, too. Backstage Elisabetta Canali said: “There is a lot to see in this collection, but there is a lot more behind it that is invisible, too.” Canali might not be the shoutiest sartorial brand on Milan’s schedule, but what it says is expressed with care, seriousness, and focus.
18 January 2016
"When I think about Canali, the '50s immediately come to mind," said creative consultant Andrea Pompilio of his new Canali collection, a decidedly Mr. Ripley affair of lean tailored suits, toweling polo shirts, impalpable duster coats, and precious colors. "That is such an iconic era for masculine style," he added. "I paid homage, no nostalgia needed."Weightlessness and a blur of the masculine/feminine boundaries are current preoccupations in Milanese menswear. Pompilio's Canali collection took part in this widespread game, in its own exquisitely sartorial way. Silk organza, for instance, was used profusely for airy outerwear, while tailoring came in gemlike tones. To make the sartorial work subtly apparent, most pieces came with a painstaking inside-out construction. Function was another big theme: Blousons sported inner shoulder straps, "for those sudden spring heats," Pompilio explained.Since his appointment, Pompilio has been providing Canali with a contemporary point of view on the classicism the house is known for. So far, the marriage has proven a good one, and this collection was a further step forward. It might not have reset the fashion clock anew, but it was a well-balanced, considered outing.
22 June 2015
Immediately upon entering the labyrinthine venue for the Canali show today, you could feel that something had changed since the arrival last season of Andrea Pompilio as creative consultant. The straight lines and intimidating solemnity of the past had given way to, well, air. The set looked spacious and luminous. So did the collection.The match between Canali's faultless classicism and Pompilio's quirky personality is actually a perfect one, despite looking odd on paper. Pompilio has a deft way of twisting and turning the codes of well-behaved elegance, while Canali has the industrial/artisanal ability to transform every idea into a well-made product worth the Made in Italy label.This season, Pompilio delivered an eclectic wardrobe inspired by Milanese modernism: the ’50s, a time when the city was bursting with ideas and innovation. He took the pureness, the graphic appeal, the architectural textures, and even the sense of nonchalance of the era to create pieces that felt weightless, easy, and precious. Double-face, the most Milanese of crafts, was featured abundantly on coats and blousons with big rounded volumes. Color peppered a clean palette of whites, grays, and blacks, while graphic stripes mounted horizontally on suits and pencil coats felt fresh and desirable. The show went along smoothly, with no real peak or explosive moment. It felt like a breeze of fresh air.
19 January 2015
From look one, Andrea Pompilio made it clear that this wasn't going to be just another Canali collection. What followed was a clinic on how a house with such history can update (a buzzword for historically entrenched brands) without compromising.That first outfit—white sneakers, narrow checked pants with exaggerated cuffs, and a sculptural linen-silk trench—wasn't what we've come to expect from the eighty-year-old label. And that's exactly why Pompilio, the newly appointed creative consultant, is there. This debut offering from him is a capsule collection that will coexist with Canali's main line. "I introduced what is Andrea Pompilio to the brand," said the designer backstage after the show. "For me, this is like an homage to Canali. This is Canali through my eyes."Cashmere T-shirts gave suiting a dressed-down look, made distinctive by Pompilio's keen sense of color—blue and burgundy paired with dusty teal; pale pink and white calfskin sneakers. Details borrowed from sportswear lent a casualness to the clothes. Bermuda shorts with fifties prints, cut above the knee and paired with slouchy socks and sneakers, appeared retro and cool. Calfskin suede dyed molten orange made sharp looks unexpectedly buoyant.As exciting as this presentation was, it was still just a capsule, suggesting that Canali isn't quite ready to hand over the reins to a young star just yet. But as with any octogenarian, we can't expect the brand to move too fast. For now, let's just hope Pompilio sticks around.
22 June 2014
Canali uses its runway collections to travel. Recent outings have taken it to Paris and St. Petersburg, but for Fall the label stayed closer to home: Venice. "I suppose all Italians love Venice," said Elisabetta Canali backstage. "It is a city of art, full of tradition."Venetian traditions infused the collection with a romantic spirit slightly incongruous for an 80-year-old suit label. But what's the good of a vacation if you can't get away from yourself for a little while? The delicate colors of mist and the watery blues and greens of canals provided the palette. Venetian velvet took center stage as a material for wafer-colored jackets and trousers; wallpaper motifs borrowed from the walls of palazzi were jacquard-ed into the suits.There were pieces of such exaggerated loveliness—all rounded-down shawl collars, robelike coats, and shimmering silk shirts—that they threatened to send the elegant lot spinning toward pure fantasy. But then there's a school of thought that says that's what a runway is for. If the collection felt less contemporary than it might have, that's because, Elisabetta insisted, "Elegance must be timeless." Anyway, as a concession to the present moment, she mentioned that she'd just relaunched the label's Web site, as a portal to its globe-trotting world.
12 January 2014
Whose Canali is it anyway? That seems to be the question the Italian suit-maker is out to debate. On one hand, there is the high-end business-suit specialist, who recently opened a tony Madison Avenue flagship; on the other, the would-be fashion player with inclinations in a looser, lighter direction. The Spring show comprised both. The rough theme was Paris—a city caught, Elisabetta Canali said, "between dream and reality." Or between shadows and light. The show opened with a kind of shadow-puppet play, complete with the Eiffel Tower. And the opening looks were the kind of conservative gray suiting and topcoats that longtime Canali fans would recognize. But the collection broke quickly into saturated color—Yves Klein blue, honey yellow, cherry red—and its Paris wasn't of bankers and lawyers, but artists and demimondaines. Suddenly there were tiepins worn as broaches, jackets inspired by painters' smocks, espadrilles, polka dots, stripes, and—for the seaside holiday—mermaid-print chinos.The defining trait of the Canali universe is the craftsmanship, right down to the proprietary fabrics. Arguably, it's a small percentage of its older, more business-minded customers who will even see a fashion show, so the runway becomes a puppet theater of its own: space to play. It's hard to fault that. "A bit of irony is what we need," Elisabetta Canali said backstage before the show. "We'd like to show that we can play."
23 June 2013
The runway's love affair with Russia continues. Its latest paramour is Canali. But as Elisabetta Canali explained backstage after the show, that made a kind of meet-me-in-Saint Petersburg sense. "It's the most Italian city in Eastern Europe," she said. "It was designed by Italian architects." Russian style, Canali style—they've got at least a love of luxe in common. For years, Canali has been bolder than some of the other lines in its Italian-suiting age bracket, parading deep colors and pastels, but Fall added texture and skin to the mix. You could curtain a decadent's villa with the collection's total velvet order, cut into suits and a show-closing series of jewel-toned trenches lined in silk. Astrakhan was only one level down: It came in tucked scarves or coat collars, the most lavish on a full-length shaved black mink. Wretched excess may have been occasionally skirted, but the colors—jewel tones of petrol blue, plum, and brick; Rothko colors, Canali explained—were lovely, and the suits, under all those coats, sharp. The more-is-more crowd may well eat up the rest. Canali does a brisk business in Russia, Elisabetta revealed. All signs point to it getting even better now.
13 January 2013
Canali tends to put everything it's got on the catwalk. The results can feel a little episodic, and its Spring 2013 collection was no exception. The through line was, as always, tailoring, tailoring, tailoring. The show consisted of several subsections. A dandy group favored sorbet colors and bits of punctiliousness, like matching a model's evening scarf to his pocket square to his hatband, while a retro series hit the thirties moment that's been an undercurrent of the season, with pinstriped suiting and fedoras. One section felt links-appropriate, with flat caps and more scarves, and another looked younger—think chinos is vibrant colors and side-zip high-top sneakers. A trio of evening jackets in metallic botanical prints ended things on a high, if daring, note.
24 June 2012
The transformation happened before your eyes. There were hints of the Canali man's burgeoning decadence at the opening of the show, in the boldness of black and white striped suiting and the velvet collar on his double-breasted Chesterfield, but it could hardly have prepared you for the peacocking to come. Striped velvet suiting, full-floral pants, and teal velvet Chelsea boots came down the line. What happened? London called. Sixties swinging tempted Canali into the far reaches of yow. The Italian suiting label has long had a taste for a statement-making tweak, but here it was better when sparingly indulged. Creating impeccable tailoring, as Canali does, is a statement in and of itself.
15 January 2012
As an inspiration for a luxury suitmaker like Canali, India serves a useful dual purpose: It addresses an important growing market and gives the design team a chance to play with color and pattern. Things started conventionally enough with a series of suits, one in a dusty rose tone-on-tone stripe, others in checks or seersucker. Traditional silk scarves peeked out from under lapels. Then the perspective shifted eastward. Those scarves exploded into ever more extravagant pattern, Nehru collars replaced notch lapels, and one model toted a canvas bag printed with an image of Ganesh. It culminated in a parade of orange and pink, turquoise and emerald green, as well as a tableau of embroidered and beaded alterna-tuxes. Everything was finished with the Canali precision and attention to detail, even if this kind of Western embrace of Eastern motifs already feels slightly rote by now.
19 June 2011
Canaliis one of Italy's finest suitmakers, and for its full-scale runway show this season, it took the opportunity to show what it does best: No jeans crept into the mix here. But the show was also unabashedly a play for the younger customer. The cut and styling on display smartly drew on the growing interest of the under-forties in suits these past few years, but also the sharpened-up way in which they like to have them tailored. Trousers were shortened and tightened—Canali calls them cigarette pants now—and given a hearty cuff (something that's winding its slow way back into the repertoire of the younger men's editors, and used here to show off a variety of colorful socks). Accessories, from those socks to the oversized scarves that opened the show, livened up the offering, too. These are still suits that are eminently business-friendly and totally appropriate for even the stodgiest CEO, but the dandified strain that ran through kept things interesting. Even a schlub could be a seducer in looks like these. And then there were those—like a series of velvet suits in pastel, sherbet tones—that were unapologetically sensual. Caveat emptor: experts only.
16 January 2011
Style.com did not review the Fall 2010 menswear collections. Please enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for our complete coverage of the Spring 2011 collections, including reviews of each show by Tim Blanks.
17 January 2010