Ferragamo Finds a New Kind of Sensuality

There’s an undercurrent—or, well, a certain charge—at Milan Fashion Week this season. Today at the Triennale Museum, Ferragamo leaned into it tenfold as designer Maximilian Davis presented one of his most sensual collections to date.

Inspired by the workwear of the ’40s, Davis reimagined the decade’s silhouettes, from pantsuits to mix-and-match blouses, but turned the temperature considerably up. The past served as a springboard for clothes that were anything but stuck in it.

“It was a period when clothing, and its structure, created a certain posture and propriety: the placement of a pocket could dictate how you would stand and behave,” he said in his show notes. “I wanted to take elements of that silhouette and modernize it for today.”

The opening look, a double-breasted coatdress cinched into an hourglass with two stark belts, set out the collection’s utilitarian influences. Strong outerwear followed, from a green, croc-embossed midi to flared men’s car coats. Then, between the tailored looks, sheer layers brought a flash of skin and a slyer edge.

The collection’s sensuality came through in sheer, underwear-baring pencil skirts, a body-skimming technical minidress, and a generous dose of latex. Anok Yai, who closed the show in a glittering paillette-covered evening dress, wore a ’40s-inspired trench rendered entirely in blue latex, offering a knowing, fetish-tinged charge.

“I was inspired by the women of the era who were taking ownership of their own narrative: who were subjects of imagery but also traveled the world to create their own,” Davis continued, citing a Lee Miller exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.

Davis has a sure hand with fabric, and his textural creations have become something of a signature—just ask Rihanna, who wore one of his pleated looks in Paris earlier this week. Here, that instinct extended into a hard-and-soft mix of translucent rubber, tough leathers, and ethereally draped sheer silks.

The material contrasts gave a surreal quality to the collection, drawing on the art movement, he explained.

Davis’s Ferragamo is getting more personal. And, here, a little more daring. There was a knowing wink in the fetish-coded materials, from their shine to their touch. But the collection’s sex appeal belonged to the woman wearing them. There was room for her to reveal, conceal, and decide what the clothes meant. The fantasy was hers to direct.