he fashion ley lines run deep and strong beneath Zona Tortona in Milan. Jerry Lorenzo held the first Fear of God presentation that I can ever remember happening during a Fashion Week this evening, in the rented Superstudio space in that neighborhood, where he said: “about 80 percent of this collection is done. And about 90 per cent of the collection is made in Italy.” Coming after last April’s epic show in California, the transatlantic pivot was rationalized thus: “There’s an honesty to it. The collection is clearly a perspective that’s American. And it’s clearly a hand that’s European—that’s Italian. And so I feel like it’s just as appropriate for us to be here as it would be for us to be in Los Angeles.” Lorenzo added that he and his team have just signed a lease for a more long-term studio space, still in Tortona.
This collection was a fresh chapter of last April’s Hollywood Bowl moment, entitled American Symphony for the fall season ahead. The reintroduction of denim (Japanese) was something Lorenzo especially relished, and under his looks were a series of envisioned cultural archetypes. Fear of God has a great facility for generating garments and silhouettes that look out of time; stripped of logo or momentary motif and instead pieces you could envision being worn both far in the future or far in the past. This tradition was continued here via the epic shearlings, meticulously crafted bonded knit suiting, and deeply textured knit shifts and lambskin coverings.
We were speaking shortly before tonight’s Emporio Armani show at Mr. A’s Teatro 600 feet away. Lorenzo’s consciousness was formed in the 1980s, when Armani’s radical neutrality, wider volumes and beautiful image making—also on show in an Aldo Fallai retrospective in the Silos next door—were at their peak of influence. My theory has for a while been that Armani’s impact had a subconscious cross-generational impact on Lorenzo—and in turn that the recent rise of Fear of God has in turn contributed indirectly to a new generation’s understanding and appreciation of Armani. What comes around goes around.
To this Lorenzo replied: “I think there are things that are similar, like this effortless elegance, the way the suit fits, shapes and proportions. You know, any designer does what’s in their heart. And I’ve never left that late ’80s, early ’90s moment. Everything from shape and proportion to music at that time was just… something magical.” He added: “You know, my kids always ask me why I’m crazy about Willy Wonka. And the answer is it was the first book I read in third grade. That has something: when you’re seeing imagination through words for the first time, that’s pretty powerful.” Enticingly elusive to define—and all the more effective for that—Fear of God is a work of powerful imagination, too.