(MENAFN- Arab Times) Mary J Blige feted designing twins Dean and Dan Caten on their DSquared2 label's 20th anniversary and Snoop Dogg brought down German designer Philipp Plein's house as Milan Fashion Week opened four days of menswear previews Saturday with a musical bang.
The first day of the festivities also featured preview collections by Dolce & Gabbana, Jil Sander and Versace, who all stand ready to capitalize on a strong 2014 that saw Italian menswear revenues grow by 1.2 percent to 8.6 billion euros ($10 billion).
In coming days Frida Gianni will roll out her last menswear collection for Gucci, which she leaves after a decade, while Italian design newcomer Stella Jean, who claims singer Rihanna among her followers, will preview her first men's collection.
Here are some highlights from the first full day of the fashion extravaganza:
Snoop Dogg came out singing, and urged the crowd to raise their hands in the air: In the smart phone era that was a cue for everyone to raise their phones and start snapping away. And that included Paris Hilton, in the front row at the Philipp Plein show wearing a rich crystal-studded black and silver jacket.
Hilton, who was on hand for the DSquared festivities and was due later to play DJ at Just Cavalli, joined the crowd in moving to Snoop Dogg 's beat as she recorded images of Snoop Dogg performing inside a mock boxing ring. Snoop wore some Philipp Plein originals, a quilted hoodie and sweat pants with a 78 across the front for the designer's birth year.
Philipp Plein knows how to create a spectacle within a spectacle within a spectacle.
His runway show Saturday night featured a faux boxing match inside a metal cage that was surrounded by tribal musicians with painted faces banging metal drums pacing models who walked the perimeter of a concentric metal fence in dark rocker/urban warrior looks.
Revolution
Here's a word you don't often use to describe Versace: Cozy. Donatella Versace's collection for men had an unapologetically warm and cuddly core, with cashmere knitwear in long, lean ribbed tops, fitted knit leggings or bulky cable-knit cardigans.
And the revolution didn't stop there. Gone were the usual heavy application Versace accents. Instead, the new Versace jacket, distinguished by its constructed shoulders and shorter cut, closed in one variation on one side with a plain horizontal clasp.
Viva la famiglia. Dolce & Gabbana kept the family close at heart during the menswear preview for next winter, featuring real-life families on stage, and even childhood snapshots of the designers' own families on the scrapbook-style invitations.
Eight Italian families posed in the labels' finery to create a tableau vivant background for the runway show - with a 2-year-old boy clad in gray short pants squirming charmingly in his father's arms.
Family portraits adorned many of the looks: from rich sepia photographs of the assembled families to reproductions of Renaissance-era paintings of the Holy Family reproduced on velvet tops adorned with golden brocade stitching. The final look: a textured sweatshirt reading: "Ti Voglio Tanto Bene," Italian for "I love you very much."
In a tribute to real life, designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana featured not just the usual casting of young models but also more distinguished gray-haired gentlemen in formal business suits, eveningwear and big shearling coats.
Celebrate
Belting out U2's "One," pop diva Mary J. Blige celebrated the designing twins Dean and Dan Caten on Friday evening, ahead of Milan Fashion Week's official opening, to mark the 20th anniversary of their DSquared2 fashion label.
The Caten twins, decked out in matching celebratory tuxedos, showed their tribute collection to 1,300 guests amid towering sculptures by German artist Anselm Kiefer at Pirelli's capacious Hangar Bicocca on the outskirts of Milan.
"We want to look ahead," Dan Caten said. "In these years, we brought the brand exactly to the level that we always dreamed, we learned the tricks of the trade and now we have again found the same enthusiasm as when we started out."
White shoes for winter, oh my!
Roldolfo Paglialunga, Jil Sander's new designer, played with color and form for his first menswear collection ever, not just at his new label, and made clear he meant to adhere to no fashion rule book in particular.
Footwear epitomized the playfulness of the collection, whose lines and colors were as easy to read as the Sunday morning comics. Shoes were monochromatic and chunky, ranging from rubbery white to equally un-wintery orange, to more classic leather shoes in black and tan.
He's wowing fashionistas at Milan Men's Fashion Week, and rising star designer Andrea Pompilio says this is just the beginning, with a host of young labels like his ready to revitalise the menswear industry.
Italian-born Pompilio, who showed off a Fall-Winter 2015 runway collection on Saturday inspired by his grandfather's military uniforms, is one of the "new generation" of designers admitted to the prestigious week of catwalk shows.
"I've probably been lucky, I ended up here automatically. It's true I've worked 20 years for big fashion houses, so I know exactly how to move and how to approach the world of fashion," he told AFP in an interview.
After experience at houses including Calvin Klein and Yves Saint Laurent, and with a master's degree from Italy's fashion and design school Istituto Marangoni under his belt, Pompilio launched his first men's collection in 2010.
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