While making the rounds of shows during New York Fashion Week in September, I decided to shake up my wardrobe: Gone were the sweatpants I’d been cocooning in for what seemed like forever, and gone was my all-black, shiva-sitting uniform of the era before that—I wanted to bloom into a butterfly, and I wanted Blumarine to be my rhinestone-embellished wings. In its tiny, faux-fur-collared yellow shrug above low-slung cargos, I was suddenly transformed into a Y2K principessa with a little slice of midriff and a whole lot of attitude, whether on my way uptown to Batsheva or riding a Citi Bike over the Williamsburg Bridge to Eckhaus Latta in Bushwick.
There’s just something about Blumarine that makes a woman radiate saucy confidence. The Italian label, founded by Carpi native Anna Molinari and her late husband, Gianpaolo Tarabini, in 1977, has always seemed to have a secret ingredient that makes men sweat. Molinari’s body-skimming dresses and itty-bitty cardigans were sensual and bold, and when Nicola Brognano, 31, was appointed creative director in 2019, he injected some modern sass to the storied glam, which has been catnip for TikTok and Instagram. Blumarine’s teeny cardigans were now tinier than ever, belt buckles came with a fat, gaudy-chic B, and peel-them-off pants sported trippy floral prints.
“I want the women to feel sexy, seductive, playful, and not so serious,” Brognano told me over Zoom in his charming Italian lilt. “When she enters a room, everyone can see this girl—because she is fabulous.”
Model Liya Kebede, also in Blumarine.
Photographed by Steven Klein, Vogue, 2005No doubt. Having been cooped up for months, I’ve wanted to live on a midriff-exposing, bust-revealing, Rico Suave–glazed edge. No one wants to move through life in dull sweats (or even tired-looking cashmere sweaters)—especially not me. Brognano’s Blumarine revival was the perfect post-pandemic sartorial recipe for those who wanted to reenter this world with a bejeweled finish. (We’re seeing more flash like this elsewhere on the runway, too, from high-octane monograms at Fendace to Polly Pocket miniskirts at Miu Miu.) These are clothes in sync with those of us who had spent the pandemic sifting through the archives of the early aughts and thinking about literally brighter days—when we were teenagers, feasting our eyes on low-rise Britney and bedazzled Paris Hilton.
