Ground control

Project Planet: Designers tell us to get back to nature, dishing the dirt on epic eco-charged runways for FW15
Fashion | 31 January 2015
Above:

Ermenegildo Zegna Couture FW15 set

This article is part of Fashion Week – London, Milan, Paris, NYC

Above leading image: Ermenegildo Zegna Couture FW15 set

With the new season at a wrap, we’re bringing you Fashion Week Takeaways – everything you need to know about FW15 menswear in our definitive take on the season…

Between London, Milan and Paris, the menswear schedule this season was choked to the throat with shows and presentations, and the meetings and re-sees inbetween. It’s a twice yearly program that makes up just one cog of the fashion industry’s congested mechanics, a flashy ride at 200mph-plus that leaves you feeling inspired, invigorated – and a tad motion sick.

Designers know the lifestyle all too well. Heck, it’s a reflection of society in general, wrapped up in our iPhones and iMacs like we’re the stars of our own iLives. This season, the message was clear: Get back to nature. From sets to the clothes themselves we were blasted with green energy. And it felt good.

Take off your shoes, feel the breeze and embrace the wild – if just for a minute.

In Milan, Ermenegildo Zegna set an epic example. 20ft walls of dirt framing a cavernous forest set complete with a soil floor. And trees? You got ’em. The show notes included the species used in the set design: we lost count at 19. Let’s just say the list clocked a good three lines and familiars like Azalea and Rhodedendron jumped out amongst the hairier literary likes of Cupressuscyparis Leylandii and Taxus Media Hicksii. Jurassic Park’s got nothing on this.

Ermenegildo Zegna FW15 set

It’s well known that Stefano Pilati is fond of his environments. In recent seasons we’ve seen the designer explore architecture, space, the city, nature and science, and here it was about ‘eco-solidarity’. The new Zegna man found himself an eco-leader (a dapperly dressed one, no less) sporting an urban uniform for the exploration ahead, all to the grooving guitar strains of ultimate wild thing Jimi Hendrix. Here was a modern meditation on sustainability. Oh, and those trees? They’re being replanted at Oasis Zegna, the house’s own public nature park, as you read. Eco. Efficiency.

At Salvatore Ferragamo, we were faced with a digital take on nature: multiple 3m square screens were cast with imagery of forests and birds in flight. Here we got another earthy runway – and not the last: models walked on autumn leaves at both Kris Van Assche and John Varvatos – which set the scene for a sentimental take leaning towards fauna over flora. A vino tinted flock of birds scattered across a grey overcoat. Elsewhere, a baboon featured on a coat, the outline of a bison took to a sweatshirt and flamingos flit across long-line outerwear. The upshot being that all of these species are categorically endangered. Here, the eco bent was palpable – and if that didn’t hammer it home, the trail of dirt left behind on your way out did.

Salvatore Ferragamo FW15 Look 30

Now, you may be hard beat to find a moment of IRL solitude in our fast-paced concrete jungle but tear your eyes away from your smartphone screen for a sec and you’ll be confronted with nature amongst the brickwork. Here was an urban-nature clash, Silvia Venturini Fendi inspired by the lunch-in-the-park habit she’s formed with her daughter – who recently began studying in London. Beside the teacher-referencing swathes of green and tan corduroy (bark and leaves, no?) we caught glimpse of shearling bursting from seams like grass, and numerous Bag Bug apple adornments, should your virtual-visual self get hungry in the quest for earthly connection. And fear not that your techno-break should be too potent: Fendi’s new scarf boasted pockets big enough to swallow an iPad whole.

Fendi FW15 Look 25

Finally, Dior Homme. By now you will have heard about Kris Van Assche’s “techno-sartorial” collection, his spin on classically tailored suiting and outerwear splintered with a hefty dose of future-sport. But it’s something else that’s still got us reeling – the floral bent that ran subtly through the collection, pinned as pressed flower badges to lapels in a reference to Monsieur Dior as an Homme Fleur: ‘flower man’ (definitely not to be confused with Dior’s Femme-Fleur tint of eyeshadow). Dior counted flowers as personal totems. The Lily of the Valley was his best-loved and frequently appeared on his designs. Here, we got Van Assche’s menswear take. Surged forward into this century, an element of nature as classical as that serves as a reworked reminder of the stories preceding us.

Backstage at Dior Homme FW15. Photography Raffaele Cariou

Altogether, it’s not a lesson in ecology as much as it is life full stop. We can’t switch off – from fashion, music, internet culture – it’s what makes us tick. But when you get designers coming together in favour of a simple, green idea like this, it makes you stop and think.

If a fashion show make us think with such a base gesture, who knows what else is possible. And if its as ground-level as thinking about our environment, maybe we’ll start to give a bigger damn about that same environment’s welfare.

It’s fleeting moments of clarity like this that make the mad rush worth it.

Check out our entire FW15 coverage, featuring catwalk, backstage and collection reports




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