Milan Fashion Week opens with Federico Cina

Milan's men's fashion season kicked off on Friday with Federico Cina and a genuine fashion event inside the Fondazione Sozzani on the northern edge of the Italian fashion capital.

Held on a cold but sunny winter afternoon, the presentation looked more like an art installation by Marina Abramović than a clothing exhibition.

It seemed an ideal setting for the collection, made from dense, almost industrial wools and cut with authority by Cina, a distinctive new designer born in Bologna.

Models/characters that represent daily mini rituals inside plywood boxes, or small scenarios that give the clothes a certain elegant seriousness.

A gentleman-rocker figure in a perfectly tailored midnight blue jacket stood in the middle of a circle of eight microphones, occasionally sliding over to one of them to say just one solemn word.

While a hirsute young man dressed in white denim overalls was sitting in a corner peeling a hundred oranges painted white. Nearby, a professional girl dressed in a backless, pleated scarf dress paraded endlessly around an office chair in a white skim. In a sense, trapped as an extra in Orson Welles' “The Trial”; in another, a proud woman who goes about her business with precision and pride.

Federico named the collection “Assunta and Giacomo”, in honor of his two grandparents who passed away last year.

“It's a fashion memory, remembering how they dressed for work, special occasions or family events,” Cina explained.

A collection of great poise and a clever introduction to the growing Fondazione Sozzani, where founder Carla and her daughter Sara Maino, Europe's best young fashion talent digger, are turning a former ceramics factory into an attractive cultural magnet.

Dozens of young hipsters crowded around the event. Milan, once the economic and industrial heart of Italy's post-war renaissance, is today the new Eldorado of design innovation. Where European youth arrive en masse to discover themselves and suggest a new vision of their roots.

Like Federico China.