Philipp Plein removed his pants halfway through our pre-chat tonight. Even though it was only 34 minutes past the hour—many shows this hectic afternoon started wayyyy later than that—he and his team were admirably keen not to keep the several thousand-strong audience in this Allianz-branded arena waiting overly long: hence Plein needed to change.
Before he did, Plein explained that he’d seen the opening band La Sad in the wildly popular Italian Sanremo festival, and then three weeks ago spotted them in Vanity Fair wearing his designs. He posted the picture, they got in touch, and now here we were. “They are a little bit like Blink 182, just in Italian and really aggressive. I don’t understand a word—they are way too fast for me—but I’m happy that this is the first time I’ve had all-Italian performers after so many years of showing here,” he said. When Plein came out at the end for his bow—having swapped his backstage combats for some top don cream suit pants—he was flanked by the recently reunited Milan hip-hop trio Club Dogo.
The collection we saw in between the performances was typically high-octane, and occasionally high-adrenalin too. The models had to climb four floors of stairs on a rectangular scaffolded runway, and then descend again before circling and standing in situ. Below her silver-on-black hexagon PP monogram cap, jacket, crop top and miniskirt the opener wore a pair of maybe four-inch high heel monogram boots. Trying to keep her eyes to the cameras, she stumbled at the top of the steep descent: it was a heart-in-mouth moment that made you fear we were in for 15 minutes of stiletto Squid Games. Happily she recovered like a pro, and there were no further major stumbles.
The raised fleece skull-and-crossbones on the back of a menswear aviator near the end made an appropriate insignia for this hardy pirate of high fashion’s high seas. Where the grand luxury conglomerate flotillas and the noble smaller privateers generally stick to their own shipping lanes, Plein gleefully raids whatever and whichever aesthetic vessel he fancies might fetch a pretty penny: often enough, his instincts are pretty canny. Among tonight’s booty was the most mob wife fur you’ll see in Milan (with a shaved PP logo at its back and lined in leopard fabric), a frankly amazing white crystal monogram look accessorized with cruiser skateboard, trenches in monogrammed gabardine and python, crystal bikers, a barrage of powerful party dresses, and what looked surprisingly like a handsomely cut peak collar break-leg menswear suit in heavy cotton drill. Clothes are clothes: by branding them with his mark (often very liberally) Plein straightforwardly makes them his own. What’s unique to this adventurer of a designer is a highly accessible outsider spirit—not unlike that of La Sad—that draws many who feel overlooked or discomfited by conventional luxury to sign up to his crew.
