This summer we will dress ourselves in thorns From music to fashion, a dangerous game

«A crown of thorns will be the dress code for my party» sings Angelina Mango in La Noia, the song with which she won the latest Sanremo festival. The pop star from Lagonegro had foresight, as during the recent Fashion Weeks some fashion designers, either clearly or implicitly, were actually inspired by thorns. The fashion industry has always seemed fascinated by this dangerous and controversial organism, which has been depicted, both in sacred and profane contexts, as an element where protection and danger, nature and magic coexist. Even Emma Chamberlain, presenter of this year's Met Gala with the theme “The Garden of Time”, chose a Jean-Paul Gaultier dress inspired by the lace corset worn by Suzanne Von Aichinger in the 2009 Couture show, Morphing. The dress reproduced tangled branches and thorns climbing up the body of the creator, evoking that sense of uncontrollability and darkness of nature: a gothic garden of climbers reminiscent of the indestructible and bewitched barriers of thorns created by Maleficent in Disney's live-action, to protect the moor from mortal violence. But Chamberlain and Mango are not the only ones to have referenced thorns in their recent artistic appearances.

Roberto Cavalli (FW2000), Daniel Roseberry from Schiaparelli (Couture 2024), and Shaun Leane himself for McQueen (SS98) interpreted the concept of thorns by creating metal sculptures on the back of dresses, to faithfully reproduce the bones of a spine, perhaps implying that we are internally “made of thorns”. The reference is also linked to the erotic imagery of BDSM: think of the leather whips with handles made of thin pointed studs featured alongside the “Diana Bag” in Gucci's Aria collection in 2021 under the creative direction of Alessandro Michele, or the spiked chokers and fetish masks made of sharp nails in the house's FW19. Returning to Angelina Mango, in the latest music video for the single "Melodrama", the singer wears armor made of three-dimensional thorns, taken directly from the SS24 collection of the brand Annakiki, which in the latest show proposed dresses and crop jackets covered in relief thorns. With so many thorny looks, between Fashion Week and music videos, it becomes clear that fashion's fascination with the cruelest aspects of nature continues to rage. Perhaps it is a veiled reference to the fears that grip designers' minds regarding the future, or simply a suggestive image that takes us back in time.