David Koma’s Blumarine resort begins not with clothes, but with a mood swing. “Summer changes who we are,” he mused. Indeed, this collection feels designed for that vacation-fantasy phase between booking the ticket and boarding the plane, or the yacht, to a beach destination. The Blumarine woman is technically in the city, but psychologically already halfway down the Amalfi Coast, a delicious plate of linguine waiting for her at Nerano’s Lo Scoglio.
Rather than delivering a parade of resort clichés, Koma “dissected the psychology of summer”: the heightened sensuality, the seductive illusion that linen trousers or a skimpy bikini can solve (almost) all of life’s problems. His proposition was less holiday wardrobe and more cinematic, glamorous metamorphosis.
Classic codes of femininity were filtered through Koma’s sharper, architectural lens. There were slip dresses and floral motifs, but nothing felt sentimental or girly. A tuxedo jacket, tied nonchalantly with a silk scarf, suggested Helmut Newton’s imperious heroine on summer break. A dramatic cape unraveled into cascading fringe, moving with a kind of languid motion, a visual representation of the feeling you get after a lazy day spent sipping spritzes under the expensive capanno at Venice’s Excelsior Lido.
In the meantime, bougainvillea bloomed throughout. For Koma, still in the honeymoon phase with the Italian lifestyle, the flower symbolizes the Mediterranean coast in all its overheated romance: salt on tanned skin, and summer flirtations under the ombrelloni best left undocumented. Yet even at its softest, the collection retained an undercurrent of discipline. Koma’s Blumarine runs hot and sultry, but tightly reined.
Then there was Irina Shayk, who embodies the collection with the kind of grown-woman glamour that Koma appreciates. Shayk exudes sex appeal that doesn’t beg for validation. If Newton had ever encountered her, she probably would’ve ended up immortalized in black-and-white in a Blumarine campaign, draped across a banquette somewhere in Monte Carlo.
“I think women want to dress up again,” Koma said, pointing to that phenomenon where the first heatwave transforms cities into open-air catwalks, all bare skin and high drama. Dressing for summer is never merely practical; it’s instinctive, occasionally delusional. When the temperature rises, emotionally or meteorologically, Koma is betting that the wannabe Shayks of the world will turn to Blumarine to get (un)dressed in style.
