Milan – Designers such as Fendi, Marni and Jil Sander reworked women’s natural curves into stiff cut-out shapes at this autumn’s Milan Fashion Week, widening waists and remaking silhouettes with a cartoonist’s flair for the expressive power of lines.

Fendi S/S2013 Fendi S/S2013
Fendi S/S2013 Fendi S/S2013
Jil Sander S/S2013 Jil Sander S/S2013
Jil Sander S/S2013 Jil Sander S/S2013
Marni S/S2013 Marni S/S2013

At the Fendi show, skirts featured geometric shapes in bold block colours, broken up into angular panels that resembled sculptural flower petals.

For Marni, designer Consuelo Castiglioni experimented with skirts that flared into stiff triangular silhouettes just above the knee, as well as ruffled accents at the waistline.

Jil Sander, returning to design womenswear under her own name, showed pieces that curved out sharply above the hips or gently along the thighs, with plenty of large polka dots in the style of artist Yayoi Kusama.

A stiffened, paper doll feeling was evident across these collections. We first identified the Cut-Out Caricature trend in our design direction review of the autumn/winter 2012 collections in Paris.

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