David Koma has been clear about his feelings for Venice since Blumarine’s last Pre-Fall collection. Dig deep enough into the archives, and you might find yourself face-to-face with a 1992 Albert Watson campaign in a floating city, with Helmut Newton’s signature eye hovering right next to it. “It brings out the artist in me,” he told Vogue back then, good thing that artist sticks around longer than a single collection.
The Blumarine woman used to be easy to picture on a gondola, romantic, soft, delicate. Now, she’s the one to blind the gondolier and let the soft one drown. Still, the brand’s DNA is easy to spot. Roses, for starters, haven’t gone anywhere, though someone forgot to clip the thorns this season. Petals crawl over minis and capes, bloom across vinyl and chiffon, and even show up in metallic or chainmail when it feels fancy. Knit, crochet, lace, nothing escapes the thorny takeover. Femininity is alive and well, just darker and a little sharper. In this case, “darker” means pitch black, with just enough red, white, and gold to prove she’s not completely evil.
Koma went full Venetian theater. Ballooning, oversized boas, and floor-grazing goat hair coats gave volume that walked in ahead of the models. Lions peeked from baroque buttons, while cinched waists locked shapes in place. And when shapes weren’t locked in, they were exaggerated, some ruffled, some tied into oversized bows, some completely unexpected. At one point I saw a napoleon-style jacket romanticized with our favorite florals and a fuzzy corset shaped like the brand’s spirit animal, a butterfly that seemed to flutter with every step. Someone book this man a ticket to Teatro La Fenice and send a pigeon before the next collection storms a runway.
