Donatella Versace likes to court Hollywood celebrities: getting George Clooney to sit in the front row at your fashion show can be very distracting for audience and models alike. Versace's Versus collection is one of the opening highlights of the Milan spring collections, but it was difficult for the audience to concentrate on the catwalk.
Versus is Versace's second line - the main collection is shown later in the week - but it has a considerable influence on chainstore trends. This means we will be seeing plenty of Donatella's clingy jersey skirts with ruched seams, slashed and cross-over jersey tops and tight foil-print teeshirts come the spring.
Donatella Versace is a rock chick at heart and she has an innate understanding of the sexy, young look her customers expect of her, whether it be the sassy, raspberry suede biker jacket, cropped to reveal a well-toned waist, or a skinny pair of trousers with a sexy bow erotically placed at the base of the spine.
Versace is synonymous with sexy, clingy shapes that get a girl noticed, so it was a surprise to see the puff-ball skirt make a comeback on her catwalk. The look, however, was more 1950s than the bold and brash 1980s version.
The puff-ball made an appearance earlier in the day at Alberta Ferretti's Philosophy collection in gentle gathers of jersey and then was reworked by Versace with stiff frills overlaid like petals.
Philosophy is also a secondline collection. It is a slightly more youthful and marginally cheaper extension of Ferretti's main line but is infused with the same whimsical prettiness. There was a hint of gentle 1950s nostalgia in her catherine-wheel embroidered dresses with ric-rac leather belts and silk shirt-stripe blouses and skirts, which were the highlight of Ferretti's show.
Anna Molinari is another of Milan's romantics, who loves nothing better than viewing fashion through rose-tinted glasses - literally, for she is Italian fashion's queen of the roses.
Her Blumarine spring collection, which was unveiled yesterday, began life as a knitwear label but now embodies all that is pretty and feminine about Molinari's creativity. Echoing the pretty 1950s mood which is sweeping through the city, Molinari showed Grace Kelly-style strapless and v-neck sundresses with big skirts originally inspired by Dior's New Look.
This ballerina silhouette was mirrored by sweet ballerina prints, which appeared on 1950s velour playsuits and bathing costumes, through to more body-conscious cotton jackets and capri-cut trousers.
Even Armani succumbed to a gentle lyrical prettiness for his younger Emporio collection. Armani sent out young couples, who romantically canoodled as they walked along the catwalk, wearing clothes in a palette of misty blues and greys.
The girls looked graceful in single-breasted jackets and wide-legged trousers or fluttery chiffon skirts, while the boys wore singlets, baggy trousers and jackets with a buckled strap fastening on the collar, a feature that also appeared on the girls' jackets. It made a pretty romantic opening to the Italian collections.