Model Ashleigh Good and her daughter Emily Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com
When I was growing up, Sunday was the one night my family set aside all obligations—work, athletics, and teenage angst—to call my grandmother. It was sacred time, but a practice that fell by the wayside as life became increasingly complicated and I left the nest. Strolling back to my hotel from the Metropol on a sunny afternoon in Milano, I couldn’t help but notice the number of parents walking hand in hand with their toddlers or pushing strollers, as well as adult children interlocked arm in arm with their aging parents. They weren’t distracted by their iPhones, obsessed with capturing the moment for Instagram, or running errands (as many shops and businesses shutter on Sunday) but simply enjoying one another’s company. La famiglia comes first here in Italy, and today’s Dolce & Gabbana show paid tribute to la mamma—perhaps something that none of us do enough.
Photo: Sonny Vandevelde/ Indigitalimages.com
The beauty look was the designers’ woman to be sure—elegant and sexy—but the message conveyed backstage hit deeper than face-value femininity. Pat McGrath pointed out the mood board covered in “iconic mothers” like a pregnant and nude Monica Bellucci, Jackie O and the Kennedy kids, Jane Birkin and her babies, and the house’s eternal muse, Sophia Loren (still depicted as the bodacious bombshell Stefano and Domenico worship, but this time alongside her sons). Though we’ve seen winged liner and bejeweled updos time and again, for Fall ’15 there seemed to be a genuine warmth underneath all that glitz that wasn’t necessarily present in seasons past. “The boys wanted something very clean, easy, and with bits sticking out,” said Guido Palau of the messy chignons crafted with Redken Wind Blown texturizing spray. The result was reminiscent of how a busy mom might quickly pin up her hair in the morning, but the “real star” was the jewelry nestled among models’ strands. “The idea is that you’ve put ’50s brooches and pearls in your hair from your mother’s trinket box,” the pro explained. McGrath pushed the glamour factor even further with burgundy, red, and nude shades from the house’s new Matte Lipstick line.
Photo: Sonny Vandevelde/ Indigitalimages.com
With bags, sweaters, and skirts embroidered with phrases like “Per la mamma più bella del mondo” (which translates to: “For the most beautiful mother in the world”) and splashed with colorful scribbles a mom might frame, it reminded me of an instruction stressed a week prior at the Oscars in J.K. Simmons’ acceptance speech. “And if I may, call your mom,” he said. “Everybody—I’m told there’s like a billion people or so—call your mom, call your dad. If you are lucky enough to have a parent or two alive on this planet, call them. Don’t text, don’t e-mail. Call them on the phone. Tell them you love them and thank them and talk to them for as long as they want to talk to you.” And after watching women like Ashleigh Good and her daughter, Emily, as well as a pregnant Bianca Balti sashay down the runway beaming with pride, the first thing I did was dial my own mamma’s number. It’s safe to say I’m reviving that Sunday ritual. And Mom, if you’re reading, call me back.
Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com
Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com
Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com
—Amber Kallor, Style.com
