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Saturday 22 November 2008

Fashion’s hidden secret

Fashion’s hidden secret

Dylan Jones discovers the Milan that exists behind closed doors

Judging by the way Italian men relentlessly adopt an American idea of what we Brits used to dress like, it would be easy to say that while they aspire to authenticity they never get beyond verisimilitude.

Personally I am never in the mood to buy anyway. I come for business twice a year, once in January, when it is so cold I wear every item of clothing I own, and once in June, when it is impossible to wear anything other than a T-shirt or a seersucker suit. In fact, my one piece of advice when visiting Milan for pleasure is to hire a luxury, air-conditioned chauffeured car. Forgo any thoughts of buying that socially ambitious suit you’re hankering after, and go for the S-Class instead.

But while I rarely buy clothes in Milan (when I do, I go to Aspesi, on Via Mon­tenapoleone), I spend a small fortune on books, and the city has half a dozen places that sell English-language art, architect­ure, design and photography books, including 10 Corso Como (the second-most fashionable shop in Europe) and the new Mon­dadori Multicenter.

The city obviously has its fair share of grand, if slightly utilitarian, hotels like the Principe, the Palace and the Hyatt, but it also has oddities like the Grand and luxury liners like the Four Seasons and the Bulgari. The Four Seasons is where the scene likes to be seen, but the Principe has the best pool.

By turns ugly and imposing, the fashion capital of the world is anything but fashionable. But while it will never be a tourist destination like Florence, Rome, Sorrento or Lucca, it certainly has some of the country’s best restaurants — most of which have had some sort of sartorial co-dependence in their time. There’s Le Langhe (Tom Ford’s favourite when he worked in town); Baguta (where it’s still possible to see Valentino’s backstage army wolfing down the buffet); Bice (where Armani has been known to go, when he isn’t entertaining at the Nobu in his retail monolith a few streets away); and my favourite, the Torre di Pisa. Along with football and religion, eating (a lot) is still the Italian way of communicating with your maker and here you can do it with excessive ease.

More articles from: Dylan Jones | this section

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