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MILAN - Italian designer team Dolce & Gabbana took a military theme to kit out men next summer, ranging from fatigues with tiny lights that glowed in the dark to camouflage patterned swim trunks.
On the first day of Milan's spring/summer 2008 menswear collections on Saturday, Dolce &
Gabbana's signature line show was colored in army-inspired khakis, navy, black and white.
Models had tattoos and military-style haircuts, and wore baseball caps or square-crowned peaked soldiers' hats.
Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce loaded fatigue-style trousers with pockets and webbing holders for phones or hip flasks, adding a kit bag in black leather and mud-tone canvas to carry any extras.
They stretched and squared classic camouflage print and used it on T-shirts and mini swimming trunks - a style of beachwear the duo are currently using in a white version for eye-catching adverts for men's perfume range Light Blue.
Dolce & Gabbana suggested bermuda shorts in prints of blue and white florals with beige and maroon broad striped shirts.
Formal wear focused on single-button single-breasted black suits and white shirts, with ties trim and uniformly black -- reining in from Dolce & Gabbana's penchant for gold which sparkled through their winter men's collections in January.
Waistcoats were back, while shoes were pointed crocodile lace ups for formal wear or black patent wide-strapped sandals.
Waistcoats were on show at Versace as well, as Donatella Versace pared them down to a T shape.
Trench coat shapes stopped short at the waist, shirts were long enough to double up as jackets and there were silky pastel colored cowls on T shirts.
The collection, which had no shorts, no beachwear and no swimwear, stuck to a formal, tailored theme in single-breasted suits and pleat-front trousers.
Versace, known for her glitzy designs for womenswear, fished for fabrics worn by oystercatchers 70 years ago to dress her men, painting silk protein on cotton for a waterproof shine.
The platinum-haired designer, who took on design for Versace after the death of her brother Gianni 10 years ago, has just brought Russian Alexandre Plokhov onto the menswear design team.
Plokhov, who has said he prefers working on menswear because "there's less of a disposable factor," designed for Cloak before it shut down earlier this year.
Milan's menswear season runs until June 27 and 47 designers are holding catwalk shows. The show of Gianfranco Ferre, who died on June 17 after a brain hemorrhage, was yesterday.
- REUTERS