The upcoming Michael Mann movie Ferrari, starring San Diego native Adam Driver as Modena’s eldest son, Enzo Ferrari, is bound to be gripping: it’s also raised some fascinating questions about double standards when it comes to who should or shouldn’t be on their cultural alley to stay. Like the great Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino (view Nostalgia) recently noted about Driver’s perfectly appointed casting: “There is an issue of cultural appropriation…the roles are given to foreign actors who are far removed from the real protagonists of the story, starting with the exotic accents. ” As with everything else at Milan Fashion Week, there’s a Gucci angle to this debate.
Two years after Ferrari’s clothing project, the question remains: why is Italy’s largest car brand trying to behave like a fashion house? Creating a collection that encapsulates the answer is the difficult task faced by Rocco Iannone, who continued his work this morning to find the answer. In part, a drastic reduction in the number of logos (although the house horse pranced on several workwear items and underwear emblazoned with the house name in metal) suggested that Iannone is trying to soften the line of questioning.
The most exhilarating and transporting moment of this show, however, came when Iannone stopped idling through a stop-and-start sequence of entirely pleasant themes – white leather, ribbed knits, perforated leather, rusty metallics and more – and simply turned back the throttle . Delivering its carefully ergonomic shapes in Rosso Corsa leather created an immediate connection between the car brand’s core iconography and its clothing, while maintaining the collection’s identity that was more than merchandise. As Iannone astutely noted in a prechat, “power and eroticism” are the fuel of Ferrari’s legend. Today’s explosion of speed at the finish caused an explosion of both.
