The Maglie Opera are a series of hand knitted one-of-a-kind jumpers, waistcoats, and slim fitted top-and-skirt combos of which Carolina Cucinelli, Brunello’s daughter and the label’s co-president and co-creative director, is rightly proud. “They’re almost couture pieces,” she said at today’s presentation. Made in alpaca, cashmere, and mohair and mixing different knitting techniques like crochet, embroidery, and hand-knit intarsia, they were the visual highlights of a slender, chic collection, loosely inspired by the clean, essential look of the 1990s.
As always at Cucinelli, the tailored jacket was the pièce de résistance, playing on the assonance between the men’s and women’s lines. This season, there was a shift in the proportions of the shoulders (less oversized), in the length (slightly shorter), and in the cut of the torso (shapely and more feminine).
“I’m afraid that the boyfriend look is over,” said Carolina with a laugh. The fit was kept soft and comfortable but closer to the body; the preciousness of the fabrications and the delicate palette of neutrals gave the blazers the luxurious yet relaxed quality so inherent to the Cucinelli look. They were paired with slender midi skirts or elegant straight-cut pants, or worn under loose-fitting featherlight overcoats.
Brunello Cucinelli acknowledged the collection’s ’90s flavor. “I believe it resonates with today’s desire for simplicity, for a stripped down aesthetic, not only in fashion, but also in intellectual and spiritual values. We need simpler, more meaningful lives, less redundant, more in equilibrium, with more equity and tranquility. We need peace,” he concluded. “Political peace, inner peace—peace is ‘the new’ we need.”