Milan last week was in a state of anarchy - and not just because of yet another Italian political crisis or fashion week's customary hopeless organisation. Just as importantly, any sense of cohesion or shared sensibility between the city's different designers appeared to have been abandoned. This is the true state of fashion globally in the 1990s: fractured, eclectic and devoid of a common goal. In its show notes, Dolce & Gabbana commented on today's "absolute lack of rules", which effectively sums up the current reality. Laurel was just one of many houses speaking of "freedom of expression and individuality", clearly a euphemism for diversity. Giorgio Armani, meanwhile, summarised his Emporio line as being a navigation "between the extremes of exaggerated `pauperism' on the one hand, and overdone exhibitionism on the other".
The consensus was that there can no longer be a consensus. You want a long skirt? It can be made available. So too can any other length, from mid-calf to buttock-skimming. Flesh may be lavishly exposed or as thoroughly covered as in the most fundamentalist Islamic state. Jackets are fitted and loose, cropped and to the knee. Even the old ideas about certain fabrics or colours being suited to a particular season have been relinquished. Black looks likely to be the favourite colour for next spring/summer and latex - hardly a material suited to warm weather - turned up in collections throughout the week. In Milan's no-rules world, if a woman wishes to wear five-inch stilettos with a trouser suit, she may - just as lurex is no longer restricted to evening, nor fur to winter.
Whatever the consumer's wishes, they can be met. The day of the fashion designer as absolute dictator is gone; even benevolent despotism now has little chance of survival in the industry. For the moment, anything goes.
Nevertheless, certain characteristics, however vague, did tend to emerge repeatedly during the week and none more so than the abiding influence of American sportswear. Europe may be the more important centre of design, but the requirements of the powerful US market cannot be overlooked. American style at its best is casual but luxurious. Italian designers understand luxury extremely well, although at times they have problems with how to interpret this in a relaxed and sporty way. However, with an eye to sales, they are clearly trying hard and it showed in repeated details such as drawstring waistbands for trousers and tops alike, and unstructured jackets with hoods. Imagine the track suit deconstructed and then reinterpreted in the finest fabrics and you will have an idea of how these pieces looked.
Some of the best examples were shown in the Salvatore Ferragamo collection where pure woven silk was employed for hooded, drawstring jackets in camel; stone-coloured fatigue pants came in jersey, and soft black nappa leather biker jackets were teamed with honey-hued short skirts. The casual nature of the designs was counterbalanced by the quality of fabrics and finish. Superficially, these were clothes for the sports club; in fact, they would have been perfectly acceptable in Milan's grandest restaurants.
The reason for casualwear's enormous popularity lies in its undemanding nature and this has now carried over into every area of fashion. Easiness and understatement - in an overtly expensive way, of course - have long been the hallmarks of Italian designers such as Giorgio Armani and where he led, many others have followed. This is particularly true of tailoring, a field in which Milan cannot be surpassed. The trouser suit, in particular, continues to occupy a pivotal position in every woman's wardrobe.
But it is yet another measure of Italian fashion's inability to reach unanimity of opinion that last week there was no single style of trouser suit clearly coming through. Everyone showed them, and everywhere they were somewhat different.
Max Mara, for example, went big and slouchy for purple wool suits which appeared to owe more than a little inspiration to Jil Sander. But then again, later in the same collection came black trouser suits in which, while jackets may have lacked clear shoulder definition, the pants were narrow and fitted all the way down the leg. That narrow form popped up intermittently among trouser suits in which the pants were of pedal-pusher length. Dolce & Gabbana produced black pinstripe fitted jackets with matching knee-breeches, and Alessandro dell'Aqua came up with midnight blue wool jacket and pants cut to the top of the calf. Pedal pushers - or clam diggers as they are called by Americans - thankfully can never hope to achieve widespread appeal and accordingly they were more a novelty act than a major trend at the shows.
Linen, which did at least manage to turn up fairly frequently throughout all the shows, was employed at Erreuno for white frock coats and matching pants, while a similar style of trouser suit was shown by Alberto Biani in bright red leather. Armani, naturally enough, showed lots of suits in both his collections, all of them sharing a certain relaxed ease. By contrast, Gucci's trouser suits were intensely structured. In a collection which was something of a re-run of former greatest hits, Tom Ford of Gucci offered single-breasted, one-button jackets with straight, square shoulders and defined waists paired with bootleg pants. His was by far the hardest-edged approach to the trouser suit, matched by pencil-line skirts to on the knee and very fitted, semi-sheer sweaters. This was Milan at its cleanest and meanest, but just to underline how consistently inconsistent the city's fashion could be, many other designers opted to go in an entirely different direction. So, for every mannish trouser suit shown, there was a skimpy slip or shift dress.
BACK at Gucci, the choice was a squarenecked sleeveless shift to the knee in black silk taffeta, again the sharpest look about because in the majority of other collections, an altogether softer style prevailed.
Laura Biagiotti, for example, as ever produced a line designed to appeal to women who want almost old-fashioned prettiness; gauzy white linen shirt dresses and cafecoloured, light wool slip dresses with flowers scattered around the hem. Marina Spadafora's amusing invitation - a miniature silk-knit slip dress on a cardboard mannequin - indicated what was to come in her show while Rebecca Moses, a rising star in Milan, produced lots of jersey halter-neck and column dresses in delicious shades inspired by India, such as turquoise and shocking pink.
In a great many instances, femininity was shown in a sheer way. Silk georgette will be the most common fabric seen among Italian labels next year, along with chiffon, the latter used to enchanting effect and in wonderful colours by Etro. Sheer was a feature of the Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti show where a black georgette knee-length dress was embroidered with a fine grid pattern of silver. e georgette for suggestive slip dresses in tones of grey and moss green. A slip dress, a trouser suit, or a sporty hooded sweatshirt and drawstring pants - in a dauntingly diverse range of styles, they will all be available from Italy next year. The choice is yours.