No More Spongebob at Marni

Andrew Lamb/Catwalking.com
Yesterday I popped into a few popular Milan stores on the Via Spiga with some fashionista friends during lunch hour. After clocking the shoes at Miu Miu and the metallic wallets at Prada we headed up to Marni which is tucked into the back of a mini-courtyard and kind of hard to find. One friend admired a cardigan with bright yellow circles on a lavendar ground. "Don't buy that you'll look like Spongebob," my other friend said. She was spot on. In that context, the wacky prints and fabrics hanging around the store seemed deeply unappealing. The good news is, that Marni designer Consuelo Castiglioni has finally broken away from a rut she was in these past few seasons--a kind of cartoon rut. For fall the look is still slightly eccentric, but much more sophisticated, in darker shades of bottle green, mauve, charcoal, and lavendar with flashes of turquoise and some serious gold baubles at the neck. Even the shoes, though still very high, had come down to earth.
Speaking of unwearable shoes, I went to a dinner hosted by Fulvia Ferragamo in her beautiful Via S. Maurilio apartment tonight and had a funny conversation with Wanda Ferragamo who overheard me complaining about my Louboutin shoes and instructed me on the perfect proportion of high heels. "Salvatore, my husband, never went higher than seven [centimeters?] otherwise you lose the balance and all of the weight goes on the arch." She wanted to draw the exact proportion out for me but couldn't find a pen and anyway it was time to move into dinner.