Posts Tagged ‘missoni’


 

“Seduta in mezzo al letto lei promette: cosa non farà più. Cosa farà di nuovo, cosa farà di meno. Con un prudente margine d’incerto.”   Lucio Battisti, Cosa farà di nuovo.

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You think what she wears doesn’t matter. It could be American Apparel. It could be vintage. It could be a high luxe brand; it could secretly be made in China. She admits right away that she’s obsessed with fashion, but not in that slavish, trend follower way. “It’s more like refusing to go even to the corner store without a bit of Missoni”, she explains so matter-of-fact to my face. I’ve read about people like her before. Anna Wintour, in her bleakest bouts of unemployment, wore head-to-toe Yves Saint Laurent. A pink slip didn’t preclude her attendance at Paris Fashion Week, front row. “It’s because fashion, for some people, has absolutely nothing to do with money – but for everybody else, it has everything to do with money”, she snickers. For her, fashion has everything to do with Missoni.

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Missoni mules available at Net-a-Porter; $660.

Hey there, sunshine. Looking for something to brighten up your un-pedicured toes? Of course you are. I bet you wanna Eurotrash yourself, too. You know, mules & clogs tend to be the most underrated category of footwear. Sure, blame it on their perversions: the jewish camp girl clog or brrrrrr, crocs. Not all mules are clogs, but all clogs are mules – and crocs should just not exist, period. But these Missoni mules get an A+ in my books. I have a pair of Gucci clogs that I revere more than life. While other girls wear pumps and sandals, the wooden heel clog is just that extra WTF in any outfit. Skinny jeans, cut-off shorts, a sundress; they all beg clogs. These Missoni clogs, with their pastel crochet and wood heel give me shoe goosebumps. Whip out the VISA – Mama’s got feet!

Bianca Balti illustration by Lisa Nishimura for Whatever Eurotrash.

Another one of my favourite Missoni ladies, Bianca Balti, is also one of those Eurotrash muses I like to talk about. So much so that Lisa Nishimura sketched and pixeled her up for me! Why is Balti eurotrash? First of all, she isn’t Britney Spears famous. Eurotrash prefers a small, but astute following. If you catch a glimpse of her, she always looks perfect – none of this stars are just like us bullshit hiding under a baseball cap without spanx. Secondly, she can make jeans and a tank work fucking miracles on a Fendi peek-a-boo bag that costs more than your last 2 mortgage payments. Bianca Balti. Remember her name because chances are, she won’t remind you.

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Hotel Missoni Kuwait. Image: highsnobeity.com 

Kuwait a minute, is that a Missoni hotel?

Maybe you haven’t noticed that the impulse to conquer the world didn’t die with Queen Cleopatra’s last snake bite, sending her to the realm of the dead – her hopes of Caesarion’s ascendence over both Western and Easter empires, last night’s dream. Families like the Rothschilds and probably to a lesser, more commercial degree, The Missonis, still propagate their wealth and power by dipping their hands into anything and everything. I mean, just look at Trump. The toupee on his head, which is most likely held in place by tiny gold threads to give it that rootstock appearance, would probably sell for a couple hundred thou just because it hovers oh-so-close enough to whatever that thing we call Trump is.

Why the world needs a Missoni hotel is hard to explain. But there it is, standing tall in Kuwait – and not so tall in Edinburgh, and soon in Brazil, Mauritius and Oman. The height of these latter edifices is still unknown. How tall will they be? Nobody knows!

I’ve always heard whispers about these s0-called Missoni hotels but never really thought that anybody actually stayed in them. For $365.00/night you can stay at the Hotel Missoni Kuwait this weekend. I got the price on hotwire.com, yo. But would you stay there? Or shudder at the risk of looking tacky? Like the woman decked out head-to-toe in the LV monogram – yes, including her fingernail art. I mean these concept hotels are great to blog about and visit on tours and stuff but after the novelty wears off wouldn’t you rather be at The Ritz?

(Quebec City’s Ice Hotel is an example par excellence. I took a tour of the hotel. It’s cool to visit for about 30 minutes. Then it gets really, really  cold. And completely uncomfortable. Plus you have to go OUTSIDE to a not-close-enough heated chalet, which has the interior decor of grade 8 overnight camp,  should you need to pee in the middle of the night. With my loosey-goosey bladder I might as well sleep in the goddamn cafeteria – also reminiscent of high school. There’s a vending machine. Lays chips and stuff).

Don’t get me wrong, I love Missoni. I probably wouldn’t stay in their hotels, though. If you’re an expert at knit sweaters and caftans then what the heck are you doing trying to design a bathtub!? (169 of them, to be exact). That’s just me. I’m a firm believer in going to the expert for every single thing you need. I’m not a fan of the Walmart mentality. The one-stop shop. Or a brand name that stamps its trademark onto all kinds of products. And I don’t think luxury brands fare too well adopting this said approach. They lose that rare cachet of specialization. Kinda like a cheesemonger selling iphone cases and cigarettes, I think.

 

 Eurotrash in Montreal (2007) and in Milan (2005) clad in Missoni. 

 Some people grow up with a silver spoon, or several, as I learned last night watching The Jazz Baroness – the story of Pannonica Rothschild’s departure from her silver spoons into the then-subversive American jazz scene of the 1950s. Sure, if I was Justine Rothschild I’d have many silver spoons. But would I have Missoni?

Something about money that just can’t buy you good taste. In fact, the Rothschilds who made appearances in the throwaway documentary were far from fashionable – far from presentable, if you ask me. First of all, none of them had ever heard of botox. Or dentists. A clan of billionaires with bad teeth and probably, bad breath. Gosh. Can you believe the Royal Family asked the Rothschilds for A LOAN? You would never know by looking at them, that’s for certain.

What’s all this got to do with the Missoni stripes that haven’t left my margins yet? Nothing really. Except that if I were a billionaire with the choice of duck milk, goose milk or half-sweetened lizard jizz for breakfast I’d certainly take the time to at least PAY someone to make me look presentable – and if we’re talking about me, personally, I’d want to look like an aristocratic version of Anna dello Russo minus her face.

 

My Missoni hat and scarf! OK, so they don’t match per se, but isn’t that the point of Missoni? 

So I’ve become quite content (ok, satiated for the time being) with my paltry collection of Missoni fare. I’ve got a knit scarf and I used to own a Missoni sport knit cardigan, which I bought in Florence when there used to be a Missoni Sport. (I sold the cardigan. Cacat!).
This Christmas I added a Missoni cashmere hat to my collection thanks to Mr. Eurotrash, who has recently added the ability to stop women in the street to compliment them on their Missoni pieces to his many talents. Eurotrash like me.

Perfect. So “I don’t give a fuck”. Just slipping on my $1400 sweater to hitch a ride on the back of a motorino. um, eurotrash?

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Gisele in Missoni ads – my all-time favourite campaign.

Missoni started as a small knitwear business run by Ottavio and Rosita Missoni in the 1950s. A baby brand but as Emilia points out, one that flourished in the image of a prosperous post-war Italy. Missoni goes hand in hand with that silly, quasi-cartoon aesthetic that brought the likes of Swatch watch and Pino Daniele, coloured reading glasses and Levi jeans to the token Italian look. Since then the brand has grown in the hands of first-generation Missoni children into a world class luxury fashion house – but overall, Angela Missoni (creative director) has stayed true to her parents’ kaleidoscopic vision – colouring outside the lines whenever need be.

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This is a love story. This is the story of how my soul mate and I finally came together after years of struggle. This is the story of Missoni and me.

I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. My immigrant parents are italophiles who brought my siblings and I back to Italy every summer. We’d spend two months on the Argentario, the Amalfi Coast, the Italian Riviera. We’d listen to Lucio Battisti and Claudio Baglioni singing about summer love affairs at the seaside. I would see women on the lungomare in cork sandals, billowing kaftans and headscarves, bright colours in squiggles, zigzags and stripes evoking the bliss and freedom of summertime. These were the prints of Missoni, bold colours and patterns that spoke to Italy’s new-found place in modern Europe, an Italy still reveling in the prosperity of its miracle decade, the pains of the Euro yet years away.

When I became conscious of fashion years later, I coveted Missoni. Its multicoloured prints spoke to me like no other, and I yearned to pile print on print on print. I promised myself that when I “grew up”, I would wear only Missoni. The problem was, of course, the price. Missoni’s knits (and we are talking Missoni, not M Missoni, or Missoni for Target, or any other unfortunate lapse into democratic fashion, though Mare is fair game) come at a pretty penny. As a result, I was all grown-up (or so they keep telling me) and didn’t have ONE Missoni piece. Like other premier designer labels, Missoni just seemed so unattainable.

That is, until last November. In the brief valley between Fall and Resort collections, I experienced a revelation. Here I was. 26 years old, certainly trendy but not fashionable. I have some amazing accessories and several great pairs of shoes, but a Chanel bag doesn’t make you Anna Dello Russo. Far from it. Moreover, I found myself very much caught up in trends. Coloured jeans Fall 2011? Check. Jumpsuit and marine stripes summer 2009? Check. Leopard print Cruise 2011/2012? Check. It suddenly occurred to me that I was spending so much money on so many pieces that I would inevitably shy away from the next season. My wardrobe wasn’t getting bigger or better with all the money I was spending. Instead, I had to start from scratch, essentially, every new season.

I decided that I wanted to make the transition into that small group of real fashionistas, that tiny circle represented by Anna, Garance Doré et aliae who you see sprinting between shows at Paris fashion week or posing for pictures with André Leon Talley. I mean, no pap will snap my picture as I walk into Yorkdale. But you see what I’m getting at (I hope). I wanted to turn fashion into less of a trend-oriented activity towards something more permanent. Of course, although my creative capital is boundless, my actual capital is not. Thus, I do not expect to blossom into Chiara Ferragni tomorrow, or even next year. But I’m on my way, which leads me back to where I began.

In November 2011, then, I decided to dedicate myself to Missoni, my true love. Gone are the days of spending several thousands dollars a season on ephemeral trends. Instead, I have begun to buy only Missoni (besides the strictly necessary, like jeans and white t-shirts). Since Toronto is a terrible place to buy Missoni (stores in the city only get a few of the most conservative pieces and I find the prices something like 20% higher than elsewhere), I spend my free moments monitoring online stores for zigzags in size 38. Admittedly, it’s feast or famine. Once I splurge on a good piece, that’s it for me for the next little while. Nevertheless, the pain and sacrifices are worth it, as I know I’m working towards a greater goal.

I’m at 5 pieces so far, and I have another piece arriving any day now. I really do feel as if this is it for me. I see myself in 30 years old piling print upon print upon print like in my dreams (I’ll have to remain a 38 for life!), channeling the carefree days in Italy of my youth. When I wear my stripes and zigzags, I just know this is love. And let me tell you, I never knew there was a love like this before.

Eurotrash and friends! Emilia is the lady on the far right wearing her Missoni tank and red Chanel lips. 

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Emilia Barbiero is a PhD candidate at University of Toronto. She writes about ancient poetry, you know Latin and Greek stuff? And is in general, a fountain of knowledge. But you wouldn’t know all this by looking at her. No, instead this long-haired, stunning, size 0 beauty is on first glance the girl of your fashion dreams. Emilia and I are the original founders of this blog – you see we made a pledge back in grade 9 to adhere to the eurotrash aesthetic. And we kept it. She, in dressing like a runway model every time I see her, spending summers in the medi on a yacht and winters in Paris – me, in writing about it and sharing Eurotrash with the rest of the world. I’m so honoured to have her guest post here on Eurotrash today. I hope you all enjoyed her piece. 

Bianca Balti and Margherita Missoni. Two european women who are style inspirations for this little lady. Balti, the sexpot. Margherita, the nouveau hippie. Balti, the bad girl. Margherita, the ostensibly not-so-bad-girl. If there’s something I try to incorporate in my style, it’s precisely a mixture of sex appeal and innocence.

A pair of vintage glasses, which are almost always on my face, add a touch of nerd to any outfit – wear them with a low cut shirt, exposing a questionable amount of cleavage, perhaps even a pop of lace and now you’re going places. Remember: skin is an accessory – added to the look rather than covered up by clothing.

Here are some random photos of both eurotrash girls:

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