Mood board: For A/W 2018, artistic director Simon Holloway looked to noir-inspired images of the label’s archive pieces found in an old Agnona magazine between 1972 and 1982. This was a collection of soft shapes in nudes, plum, bold orange and kohl, with great success in the outerwear department. This meant a fluid cashmere duster coat layered with a padded down under jacket, or a long alpaca coat its grey degradé colour palette emboldened with a bright strip of orange, or a plastic poncho. This was a collection of beautiful fluid silhouettes that swathed and enveloped the body in mohair, double face century cashmere, shearling and silk satin.
Scene setting: Agnona is renowned for developing astonishingly high quality fabrics in its mills – Holloway developed Shetland wool and speckled tweed for his A/W 2018 offering. As guests entered the window lined show space at Sala d’Onore, La Triennale di Milano, they were each greeted with a thistle on their seat, which are used to brush the signature pile of Agnona’s alpaca cloth.
Best in show: Holloway also looked to the work of Njideka Akunyili Crosby, the Nigerian-born LA-based artist who creates photo-transfer and collage paintings that negotiate the identities of her birthplace and American home. Crosby’s approach inspired the grainy découpage prints in the collection, which portrayed archive editorials from the Agnona magazine, and featured across bomber jackets and loose playsuits.
