So bountiful was the casting and production eye candy at this splashy Boss show—Pamela Anderson! Law Roach! DJ Khaled! The fateful combination of a brisk offshore breeze and a fountain backdrop!—that your attention was at times blown beyond its reason to be. Beneath all the expertly executed social-facing amplification, however, Marco Falcioni’s collection, fittingly presented outside the old Miami Herald office, was newsworthy in itself.
Only a few seasons ago Boss, seeking a generational reset, dropped the Hugo and rejected the tailoring heritage upon which it was built. Now, having reconfigured its reach through a dynamically inclusive approach to its models and storytelling, it has called that break-up to an end. But while the tailoring Boss returned to last night was very much archive informed—the brand was a big part of the Miami Vice wardrobe, and Falcioni was inspired by vintage L’Uomo Vogue ads to reconnect with the artisanal Italian fabric suppliers Boss once co-labeled on its garments—it was also kinkily disruptive. By employing transparency and cut-outs plus re-employing fustily anachronistic accessories such as ties, cummerbunds, sock garters, and barrel cuffs as suggestive physical punctuation marks, Falcioni transformed what was once dadcore into something much more stimulatingly subversive. Non tailoring-based womenswear looks shared the satirically sartorial accessory details and countered minimalist silhouettes with subtle surface accents like layered crinkled finishings. Aluminum-bonded denim workwear bleached off-white was another element.
Through the sturm und drang of Etienne Russo’s inadvertently and invigoratingly hilarious staging—the Boss team had worried all day it would rain during this show, then ended up drenching both cast and audience without a drop falling from the heavens—the collection became sheerer than intended. Pamela Anderson, who said she had walked for Vivienne Westwood in the past but was excited to hit the runway on home shores (alongside her son Brandon), had the audience whooping from the off. At one point Amber Valletta received a faceful of squally spray whooshed via a Boss-logo water feature from Biscayne Bay: she raised her arms to fend it off as if caught in a gale on some wave-battered fishing smack. Naomi Campbell, closing alongside DJ Khaled, raised her face towards the artificial tempest and laughed. Law Roach, making his modeling debut, had a blast.