NO.21 AUTUMN/WINTER 2015-16 READY-TO-WEAR MILAN FASHION WEEK

Welcome to Alessandro Dell’Acqua’s world of interiors: the gold upholstery fabric matched to herringbone and gray cabled knit; the tropical-pattern wallpaper with birds picked out in glitter. Extreme contrast has always been ADA’s calling card, but this season he nudged his own limits. “Romance and strictness,” he said. Not so much his till-now-defining dialogue between the masculine and the feminine, more a conversation between contrasting notions of womenswear—American sportswear versus a Visconti-styled decadence, black lace gloves and all. New World versus Old World, in other words.

That face-off was embodied more in the soundtrack’s broken-down deconstruction of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” than it was in the clothes. Which wasn’t a plus. Still, Dell’Acqua managed to layer oddness throughout his No. 21 collection: Virginal white poplin, pleated and pristine, was shown with a fur hoodie and flat python boots. A tiered duchesse satin skirt was paired with a black hoodie. A knit-backed mink tank over a knit skirt so pilled it looked like student hell was the very encapsulation of an ethos so peculiar that it defied conventional comprehension. That’s because, for this outing at least, Dell’Acqua was enthralled by Alida Valli in Visconti’s Senso. And it will always be his challenge to isolate what that should mean for us, his audience.