Fabulous Furs At Milan Fashion Week

A few surprises came out of Milan Fashion Week, when designers came together to showcase their work for the A/W 15 season. Geek Chic glasses (Geek Chic! In the home of thigh high splits and plunging necklines!), voluminous puffer jackets, and floor skimming skirts all made an appearance, but one of the most unexpected trends to emerge was the abundance of fur covered boots and loafers, seen at Gucci, Fendi, Aigner and Antonio Marras.  

  At Gucci, Michele Alessandro’s tawny, fur covered loafers gave the impression of elaborate slippers or house shoes, with fur so impractically long, thick, and lustrous that models had to schlep down the catwalk in them. As the slightly madcap cherry on top of Michele’s debut collection, they provided an element of thought provoking surrealism within a show that took Gucci in a new direction overall.

Over at Antonio Marras, models’ toes showed through a
miniscule gap in cheekily open-toed fur sandals, whilst at Fendi, chic, fur covered boots featured in a variety of colours, also appearing in a modified design where the fur, legwarmer style, started just above the ankle. Voluminous fur collars, trousers and coats meant that the look wasn’t just confined to footwear.

  Had we consulted them, Freud et al. would’ve had a lot to say about this season’s love affair with furry footwear (and its partner in crime, the yeti coat, which was another fur-friendly Milano trend). Broadly speaking, fur, with its connotations of fetish and seduction, is synonymous in psychiatry with some sort of latent or repressed sexual desire, so that according to Freud, for A/W 15, designers are effectively replacing the overt and obvious sexuality of previous seasons with a more discreetly seductive element. A/W 15, it seems, was still as sexual as its predecessors, just in a way that was more deeply psychological than before.

  Because, bizarre as it was, there was something attractive about the fur that appeared on Milan’s runways: something tactile, and inviting. This was fashion that was crying out to be touched, stroked, petted and loved. But there was also something unruly and dangerous about it. Where it appeared, fur indicated a wilder side to designer’s imaginations, an outlandish and unruly streak that looked to upset conventions and challenge the norm.

Whether or not fur covered slippers will replace the little black dress as a woman’s go to killer seduction item remains to be seen. But in Milan, Michele, Lagerfeld and the rest of them have taken the all important first step, challenging our perceptions of sexuality, and showing that beauty, too, can take on many, sometimes unexpected, forms.

images via http://www.vogue.co.uk/