Pit5 Music News Cache

Godfrey Deeny Fri Sep 28, 7:09 PM ET

Milan - Got to hand it to Gucci designer Frida Giannini, when she likes something, she thoroughly likes it.

Her big obsession this season is posh punk clothing, the sort of clothes fans of The Clash donned when they went to hear Joe Strummer sing "The Whiteman in the Hammersmith Palais."

So we got check rockabilly shirts, tight bubble pink schoolgirl jackets, and taut wee black, and rather brilliantly cut, scrawny punkette jodhpurs. Admittedly the savvy casting - from Natasha Poly and Raquel Zimmerman to new gals Masha and Marina L - who wore this Spring/Summer 2008 collection looked like they were thoroughly scrubbed and showered, unlike the scruffy punky lasses one used to run across at CBGBs, back in the day

Italian designers always mix up youth cultures in a way a Brit or Yank would never dare. Giannini, for instance, teamed her New Wavers with 1950s rocker influences, so there were the long hair extensions and a Goodie Gal Next Door mood that recalled "Grease" and Olivia Newton John. One would never have imagined, watching this show, that back in the Seventies the punks and the rockers were sworn enemies.

The New Wavers were a striking juxtaposition to the show opening, which featured a short, yet rambling, reportage movie on the new David Lynch directed ad for the house's latest perfume Gucci by Gucci, shot in a colonial museum in Paris with establishing shots of LA. For the record, the ad looked like a real winner.

But while the guts of the collection were very fine and highly flattering clothes - the jodhpurs made the models look, if anything, too thin, meaning they will be very flattering for "normal women" - the beginning and finale were both more problematic.

Odd, and not terribly alluring floral prints whose petals seemed more like IED explosions failed to flatter. Plus whatever gave Giannini the idea of pairing some huge grand ball gowns with suede faux Lonsdale belts - a seriously dumb stylistic move - mystified us.

That said, one revealing fact about a designer's skill and commercial appeal is whether they wear their own season's clothes when they take their finale bow. Surprisingly few do it better than Frida Giannini, who looked, hang it all, better than most of the models when she took her bow like the poshest of punkettes, wearing the best items in her own collection.