Salvatore Ferragamo Pre-Fall 2012

As a season, it sort of feels pre-fall happens without borders, almost anytime, anywhere, from November to January, in Ny, Paris, London, Florence, you name it. This week, it popped up in Milan Central Train Station-the monumental piece of architecture built by Mussolini-owing to Salvatore Ferragamo and its creative director Massimiliano Giornetti. Because it turned out, Giornetti had chosen a fantastic setting for a set that played to all of the innate strengths of Italian classicism-a throwback to the Milanese haute bourgeoisie conservative sartorial values so well-outlined in i’m Love, the movie starring Tilda Swinton. Immaculately groomed younger girls were perched stiffly, legs demurely crossed, inside the lavishly pompous, marble-columned, parquet-floored private waiting room inbuilt the 1920s for the Italian royal family. “I liked the concept that they’re strolling back from a journey, or looking ahead to one,” said Giornetti, as he conducted spectators around a room which have been furnished with period banquettes and sixties coffee tables from a vintage store in Florence. “In my mind, it’s a concept about strict and rational dressing, but with a dash of eccentricity, very Milanese bourgeoisie, with the skirts slightly above the knee in that sixties way.”

Giornetti had it right from the period standpoint-from the 5.5 cm. pointy kitten-heeled pumps and slingbacks, up in the course of the fishnet tights, pleated suede A-line skirts, to the matching blazers, buttoned-up shirts, and felt wide-brimmed hats. The effect of that slightly snobbish, chilly form of put-together luxe only Italians can achieve discovered inside the quality of each of the details: skirt pleats picked out in strips of python, leather-bound edges on brushed pony-skin coats, the manner the diamond-pattern on an argyle sweater was produced from a patchwork of python, suede, and cashmere. If models might be credited with acting while sitting down they did it well, assuming the distant gaze of aristocratically entitled girls, hands crossed on knees in glacé-leather gloves, their suede beauty-box bags at their sides, ready for his or her journey to-where? Swiss finishing school, maybe.

Fashion-wise, Giornetti’s living tableau had all of the right colors of the instant-burgundy, deep purple, loden green, and a play on all-over print within the diagonal checks matched in, say, a cape and pants, or a collection of shorts, shirt, and tie. In accessories, belt buckles in addition to bags came with the famous Ferragamo horseshoe-shaped Giancino lock (perhaps most directionally at the new, flat envelope-shaped document case, a growing trend in pre-fall). Still, as picture-perfect because the presentation was, Giornetti concluded his introduction to the season with the observation that it’s really there to be broken down. “I don’t think in uniforms. What you notice listed here are mostly daywear separates. i suspect the thrill of dressing is that each day you’re getting up and reinventing yourself.”