Fendi and Diesel Doubled Down on Y2K at Milan Fashion Week

2022-09-25 14:13:11 By : Ms. Sarah Chen

You'll finally have Fendi logo cargo pants for your next rave.

We’ve all been reading the same headlines for weeks, maybe even months: What Comes After Y2K? According to Milan Fashion Week, so far, it’s more Y2K. A lot more Y2K.

After kicking off New York Fashion Week with a show celebrating the Baguette bag, Kim Jones headed back to Milan to showcase the SS23 collection, and it felt like that same Fendi girl boarded the plane with him. She got out of line at the club, took off the fluffy hat that covered almost the entirety of her face and the metallic blue jumpsuit zipped all the way down to her belly button!, and slipped into something more comfortable for work. But she’s still clearly planning on going out afterwards, because why else would she style an asymmetrical wool coat, with a satin Fendi belt tied into a bow at the back, over her sheer organza dress and vivid apple-green platform boots?

“The Fendi women are strong women with full, busy lives,” Jones said in a statement about the show, which was meant to be all about functional, practical luxury. It appears the woman he’s designing for has a long to-do list with a social calendar booked weeks in advance, but just like the rest of us right now, all she really wants is to be teleported to a time that isn’t 2022. Jones’s inspiration for the collection was Karl Lagerfeld’s work for the brand from 1996 to 2002. He even reimagined in neon a floral print from the Fendi archives along with an old 2000 logo, and splashed it on silken dresses—some with matching bright undergarments peeking out underneath.

The collection had all the Y2K hits that have dominated the trend cycle for the past year or so: silky raver pants, mini bags so small they look like they could be chunky bangles worn tightly around the wrist, wedge platforms so tall you feel the need to take them off almost instantly (which a model did indeed do, halfway through their walk).

If Fendi’s show envisioned a Y2K aesthetic so luxe you maybe wouldn’t want to sweat in it at a club, Diesel’s show, which took place immediately after, felt more on par with what you would see at Brooklyn Mirage (the massive, bi-level, open-air Bushwick music venue where the brand held a party during NYFW to celebrate its FW22 capsule collection with The Webster.) Actually, it kinda was a rave. The show was open to the public and attended by nearly 5,000 people, 70% of whom Diesel said were under 25 years old.

And while Silvia Venturini Fendi said in Fendi’s show notes, “Everything comes from the conversation around the double F which makes us see things in couples,” Diesel’s show took duality one step further with a runway set of two enormous couples engaged in a foursome, depicted in what is, according to Guinness World Records, the world's largest inflatable sculpture. In a press release following the show, Glenn Martens said the people “deserve a spectacle,” and a spectacle they got—along with a hand blown glass butt plug that came with every invite. Julia Fox even sat front row in a bright blue denim PVC micro mini and dyed her hair to match.

In the democracy of Diesel, citizens wear denim. Lots of denim. Denim spliced with lace, denim layered in tulle, denim overlaid with croc-print. For anyone who can't wrap their head around the early-aughts low-rise denim trend, Diesel provided some alternative— though equally divisive—favorites from the same era: tight acid-wash spaghetti strap mini-dresses, logo-printed boob tubes, fringed boucle coats. Everything looked distressed and imperfect; it’s the type of worn-in fashion Gen Z spends hours looking for at the thrift so they can dress the part of someone who grew up before hashtags.

In Marten’s world, though, “Everybody can be part of Diesel.” And if everyone is a part of Diesel, that means we all have to get used to the Y2K look sticking around. Maybe that's fine. It's still 2022, but the pandemic is at least slowing down after a couple of years, which means we'll finally be able to wear silk raver pants to an actual rave and then in-person at the office after.

Tara Gonzalez is the Senior Fashion Editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Previously, she was the style writer at InStyle, founding commerce editor at Glamour, and fashion editor at Coveteur.

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