One of Milan’s most successful designers has found a new home. After nearly doubling business at Tod’s in his four year tenure by establishing a tailor-based signature style with great shoes and bags, Walter Chiapponi has landed at Blumarine in his first full-fledged chief designer position. Blumarine is a label which had its heyday in the 90’s when Juergen Teller or Helmut Newton shot the campaigns using young models like Milla Jovovich or Annie Morton. Let’s not forget, imagery was key for fashion in that period that even a mediocre brand like Guess rose to international prominence by the sheer fact that Ellen von Unwerth captured a young Claudia Schiffer in their campaigns and helped build the brand. Chiapponi was referencing this moment in Blumarine’s history, and he made it clear that he has no part of the already fading Y2K moment that was on Blumarine’s runway recently. An avid collector of photography by Nan Goldin who captures reality, he grounded this collection with a fantastic casting of young men and women who looked like they sat in the audience of a MTV Nirvana Unplugged concert.
Blumarine F/W 2024 under newly appointed chief designer Walter Chiapponi
The clothes?
Chiapponi went for an oversized cheetah print coat over a negligee as opening look, fuzzy wool dresses, leopard leggings, lots of slip silk dresses with lace trimmings and hearts placed over breasts and cut out in the back of dresses. The novelty came by the introduction of men’s wear looks with cool track pants in yellow, oversize logoed shirts and simple suiting.
Oversized cheetah print coat over a negligee as the opening look
Fuzzy wool dresses
Simple suiting for the men’s wear
Coming up roses?
One of Anna Molinari’s signatures were roses, but Chiapponi had the right instinct to make them super minimal and splashed the floral pattern on pajamas which was his closing look and on a fuzzy faux fur coat simply worn with sneakers, the best look of the show.
Minimal floral pattern
Favorite look of the show
Where is the love?
Chiapponi took his bow with a shirt that had Davide emblazoned on the back making reference to recently deceased Davide Renne of Moschino who was one of his best friends while his show notes were from Berlin poetess Juliane Liebert who described a frivolous woman dressed by the night. A good way to sum up where this collection belongs.
Walter Chiapponi after presenting his first collection for Blumarine F/W 2024
