Skirts, Made in Italy and Other Things Worth Keeping

On what stays with us after Fashion Week, Miuccia Prada’s skirts and what we really mean when we say Made in Italy.

I know I promised you a newsletter dedicated to the autumn wardrobe.

And yes, I wrote it down. I have my diary right here in front of me.

But Fashion Week happened in the meantime and, before we move on to coats and knitwear that the weather keeps convincing us we don’t need just yet, I thought it was worth pausing for a moment on what stayed with me.

Two things.

Miuccia Prada’s skirts.

And Made in Italy.

Which, when you think about it, have quite a lot to do with each other.

Let’s start with the latter.

Made in Italy is one of those expressions we use so often that we almost risk forgetting what it actually means.

Sooner or later, someone always says it means “made with love”.

Which, to be fair, is also very nice.

But Made in Italy is something far more tangible than that.

It’s made of people who can understand a fabric simply by touching it. Hands that know when a seam isn’t sitting quite right before the rest of us can even work out why. Pattern makers, seamstresses, manufacturers and businesses that have spent years, often generations, learning their craft.

The problem is that we’ve become rather impatient.

We want more clothes, faster and preferably for less.

Except that, somewhere along the way, someone has to pay for that “less”.

Many Italian manufacturers are finding it increasingly difficult to compete with certain prices and, in the meantime, we’re slowly forgetting how to recognise quality.

The quality of a jacket that falls exactly where it should. A dress that follows the body without constraining it. A skirt that looks incredibly simple until you try to work out exactly why it fits you so well.

And, speaking of skirts.

Milan Fashion Week has just come to an end, and Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons decided to put the skirt right at the centre of the collection.

A decision that, for anyone who knows me, I could hardly disagree with.

Miuccia says she finds skirts more interesting than pants.

I’d say we’re very much on the same page.

But what stayed with me most was the way she talks about them: the skirt as a simple object, easy to wear even when it becomes eccentric. You can completely change what happens from the waist down without changing everything else.

Waist down, precisely.

And yet, for something so simple, the skirt has told us quite a lot about ourselves.

In 1947, Dior gave it enormous volume with the New Look. In the Sixties, the miniskirt became the symbol of a generation with a rather strong desire to change the rules. Then came the Nineties, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and, not long after, Carrie Bradshaw, who taught us that a tulle skirt and a tank top could be a perfectly reasonable outfit for crossing Manhattan.

For a piece of fabric that starts at the waist, it has caused a considerable amount of trouble.

Which, naturally, only makes me like it more.

Miuccia Prada has been thinking about skirts for quite some time. In 2004, she even dedicated an exhibition to them, Waist Down, looking at skirts almost as objects before considering them as clothes.

Perhaps that’s what I like about fashion when it’s done well.

It doesn’t always have to invent something we’ve never seen before. Sometimes it can take something we’ve known forever and make us want to look at it again.

And this is where the two things I started this newsletter with finally meet.

Because behind an apparently simple skirt lies everything we don’t see.

The construction. The proportion. The fabric. The way it falls when we walk.

That almost invisible difference between something that has simply been produced and something that has been considered, constructed, fitted and corrected.

The Sloane is entirely Made in Italy.

From the first to the last stage of production.

And to me, it isn’t simply something to put on a label.

It’s a choice.

It means working with people who know their craft, doing our small part to keep that knowledge alive and accepting that some things simply take more time.

Because beautiful things, at least in my opinion, are meant to be used.

A beautiful jacket should end up draped over the back of a chair at a restaurant. A skirt should be worn so many times that it becomes instantly recognisable as yours. A coat should follow you around for years and, preferably, see a few interesting places along the way.

The value isn’t in keeping them perfect.

It’s in the fact that they’re worth keeping.

And perhaps that’s what really interests me about Made in Italy.

Not only what we produce, but what we know how to make.

Because when an artisanal business disappears, part of that knowledge risks disappearing with it: techniques, gestures and skills that have taken generations to develop.

An important part of what has made Italy recognisable around the world was born precisely there: in workshops, ateliers and small businesses, and in the hands of people who have continued to perfect their craft.

Today, perhaps more than ever, that knowledge is one of the most precious things we have.

And at a time when we can have practically anything, immediately and in quantities we probably don’t need, preserving it feels almost revolutionary.

A bit like a skirt.

Next week, I promise: the autumn wardrobe.

This time, it’s written in the right diary.