It's interesting to have seen Frida Giannini’s Spring/Summer 2015 Gucci collection so soon after Tom Ford riffed on his archive at that label for his own line in London. It reminds you how the Italian house has evolved in the past twenty years.
Namely, it has become a line that prioritises the women who wear it, rather than the men who admire them in it. That isn't as frumpy as it sounds, but it was tangible today in Milan that Giannini increasingly wants to challenge the Gucci legacy.
For a start, she did mostly daywear - there were sequin-dripping dresses at the end, but these were knee-length, not gowns, and for the most part, pieces were practical and pragmatic.
A new cropped sailorpant style of jeans recurred, as did culottes, and they were worn with a host of military-inspired jackets that, while they might have been covered in gold buttons and gilt frogging, were also the sort of thing you could sling on in the daytime without feeling overdressed.
What you might feel like, however, is Kate Moss circa 2004. This collection was unashamedly Boho, with Orientalism references in prints, thick embroidery and patchwork fur filets worn with gauzy blouses.
Doubtless some of this is to do with Gucci's huge far eastern customer base, but it also concerns the emerging trend for a seventies by way of the noughts, an All Saints, maharishi sort of nostalgia twinned with the more organic side of the hippy aesthetic - suitable given we're all gorging on avocados and granola these days.
More than trends though, Giannini played to wardrobes once again, with statement pieces that somehow also felt utilitarian - a leather shift riddled with lace and inlaid broderie, a contrast denim trapeze-line trench. These are clothes that will work hard for you, whether you're a rockstar or not.
