This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free.
On the morning of his Milan Fashion Week show, Marni creative director Francesco Risso greeted his cast of runway models with a bit of instruction: “I was like, ‘This is your room now. Enjoy it. Live it, fully.’”
A gaggle of willowy catwalk veterans would hardly need a briefing. But Risso’s cast was stacked with his personal friends, who were decked out in cocooning moleskin Crombie coats, ponyhair trousers, and fuzzy mohair sweaters from his latest masterclass in tactile, poetic clothesmaking.
Risso called the colorful crew his “pack of wolves,” which included twin sisters Giulia and Camilla Venturini of the handbag line Medea; the Gagosian-repped LA-based painter Lauren Halsey; the American creative director of Italian outerwear brand Aspesi, Lawrence Steele, who also happens to be Risso’s ex-boyfriend; the stylist and Interview fashion director Dara; Soldier, a London-based Nigerian artist and newly-minted Marni collaborator; supermodel Paloma Elsesser; and, last but not least, Tracee Ellis Ross.
A curious thing about fashion week is that while the sets and garments change every time you take your seat, the models wearing them often do not. A consummate Gucci girl one day embodies Jil Sander the next morning before shapeshifting into a Fendi fur that evening. Runway modeling is much harder work than it looks, and every brand wants to book the most elite and professional stars for a reason. With so much money on the line, it’s better not to risk an amateur making a wrong turn and missing the camera pit.
But in recent seasons many casting directors have found a trick to break up the gallery of exquisite cheekbones: celebrities! Which is by no means a new concept. The high-water mark of the form (for menswear, at least) was achieved over 10 years ago when Adrien Brody, Gary Oldman, Willem Dafoe, and Tim Roth made villainous appearances in Prada’s instantly iconic fall-winter 2012 men’s show. But those were the early days of Instagram. Nowadays brands are intent on grabbing the buzziest stars of the moment who will get attendees’ phones whipping out at lightspeed.
This season has already seen its fair share of stunt castings. There was Jason Isaacs (currently starring in The White Lotus season three) in the Burberry lineup, while Doechii followed up her epic Thom Browne-ified Grammy performance by opening DSquared2’s raucous 30th anniversary show. Last month, John Turturro marked the return of Severance by doing a couple laps in a large cashmere coat for Zegna. Looking at the small mountain of standalone press that followed all three moments, you can see why brands keep doing A-list cameos.
To be fair, Ross brought the house down in similar fashion—it was the actor and style demigoddess’s return to the runway for the first time since she appeared alongside her mother Diana in Thierry Mugler’s knockout spring 1991 “Butterfly” show. When she emerged at Marni in an electric-lime silk column dress, smiling as she strode to the beat of Dev Hynes’s rocking live accompaniment, every guest sitting at the cocktail tables arranged around the catwalk put down their spritzes and raised their cameras.
