Francesco Scognamiglio Spring 2018 Ready-To-Wear....Fashionweekly...On Fow24news.com

One recurring theme this season is of designers casting around for new ways to move. Tonight, Francesco Scognamiglio added himself to that roster......
This Pompeiian designer has long specialized in volcanically va-va-voomish classicism of an especially Italian dimension, and he has a committed clientele at couture level. Here at RTW, his collections have long mirrored that aesthetic.

For Spring, Scognamiglio pivoted, inserting many elements that seemed alien to his backstory but which sometimes worked—and sometimes didn’t. The didn’ts included a lace sweatshirt lined with hot pink ribbing and featuring panels of palm tree print, the T-shirt that said exposed with more panels, and the fuchsia metallic bomber—surely this was a leap too far into Au Jour Le Jour territory. The lace-trimmed boxers dwelt somewhere between did and didn’t, depending on your appetite for lace-trimmed boxers.

Yet when the designer combined his real understanding of dressmaking with the materials of this new unmastered post-Instagram argot, things began to click. His metallic-fuchsia-sprayed lace dress with its ribbing beltline was loud in a new-for-Scognamiglio way, but worked undeniably admirably as a dress. So too his bustier dresses in perforated silver and more fuchsia, triple-tiered at the hem. Backstage Scognamiglio gamely talked about a fantasy island full of happy women having a beautiful night in outfits of sunset hue, “where love has no sex”—but this was not a sexless collection. Here the designer was doing a job he knows well for a new set of potential clients to whom his usual school of fabrications would seem anachronistic. There’s no shame in adjusting your rigging to take advantage of prevailing winds, and if Scognamiglio has read the weather right, tonight’s adjustment might propel his ready-to-wear business forward. There can be no harm in trying.