Milan Fashion Week: Fendi

Karl Lagerfeld insisted that the painterly, Dadaist backdrop at Fendi's show today had little or nothing to do with the collection, but his co-conspirator Silvia Venturini Fendi had already described a picture of the woman whose spirit dominated the show: a buttoned-up-to-the-neck art teacher who was still wild enough to wipe her paintbrushes in her hair and unleash the animal within. Nice. If she was the raison d'être of the collection, kudos to her, because this was one of Fendi's strongest showings yet, in an escalating series of convincing fashion performances. Teach's style was strict but lived-in. She wore Mary Janes; her woolen tights bagged slightly at the knee. A decorous yet bold frill was pinned to the front of her blouse. She had incredible taste in cloth coats, one of which was appealingly detailed with a bow in the back. She valued comfort, as in the elasticated waist and cuffs of a skirt and pants. And her highly developed color sense was obvious in her layering of a rich blue coat over a teal skirt and yellow tights.