There was a late surge at today's Calvin Klein Collection show. After many exits of tailoring pieces - many distinguishable only for the subtly different shade of grey they came rendered in - Italo Zucchelli turned things fetishistic. Patent black leather, vinyl, rubber turned pieces that were classically masculine - even at points cartoonishly masculine if you consider they way those cropped bombers emphasised the waist, therefore bulking out the torso - into something subversive and sexual. There's an irony there. Perhaps given his futurist aesthetic interests and passion for fabric innovation, Zucchelli's men can look a little like future beings, an army of alphas from a brave new world. There's something untouchable about them each and every season. Despite all that erotic shiny black they remained strangely sexless - humourless, removed from reality. With Zucchelli there's none of that wit, suggestion, and insolence that underpinned the CK of yesteryear, there's something more complex. His work is tirelessly modern in its innovation but nostalgic in its elevation of man to a strong, robotic creature. It's something that builds on minimalism but toys with it also.
But then maybe he'd had enough of looking back. After the success of those perfume-homage Obsession and Eternity sweatshirts from S/S - so heavily copied they're now ubiquitous - you can forgive him for wanting to explore something less casual, and all together less straight-forward. Zucchelli likes to be one step ahead; he’s a committed forward-thinker and won't pander to trends. So while neutral grey tailoring - or at the other end of the spectrum shiny black trews - are harder to love, and indeed harder to understand, than sweaters plastered with slogans, they're fitting for that new CK man who has no interest in mixing.
