Walter Chiappoini’s take on Tod’s Spring/Summer 2022 picks up the conversation of a lighter, more current, more durable heritage house – one apt for our times, poised on clothes made for the open air.

The runway, scene to some elevated sportswear – turned bourgeois by house code – saw something of a 1960s-redux. Walked to the metronome of 20th Century Fox’s Valley of the Dolls, we saw truncated, trapeze dresses swing above creeper-soled sandals, the supple roundness of nylon gazar take shape on Gigi Hadid, and spots of house leather make a foray on Tod’s own iteration of lounge. It was a stage set for Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, and Sharon Tate; Chiappoini all but making his own cinematic debut alongside Fellini and Mark Robson. 

“Everything at Tod’s is firmly anchored around sportswear,” he said at a preview. “I certainly don’t think about red carpets. I just want to hybridize it with some stylish gentleness.”

And so, shapes of sport took hold on the catwalk, albeit hyper-glamorized and sharply tailored for the occasion. Anoraks, toned in a colorful rotation of citrine, carnelian, amethyst, larimar, walked amongst A-line cuts, trimmed up-to-there for a leggy verve countering all the neatness. Elsewhere, raw wool found sartorial elegance as fringed micro dresses and woven tunics. And amidst the goings of Milan’s reemergence at Fashion Week, it all seemed a bit tame. Holding true to his design ethos, Tod’s latest is built on the back of “real life, not much glamour,” Chiappoini told Business of Fashion’s Tim Blanks last winter. “I love people as they are.”

It’s that unfussy retro energy that marketed Chiappoini’s official arrival of Spring/Summer 2022 – a reinvention moved with the enigmatic joie de vivre of a new era. 

Explore every look from Tod’s S/S 2022 below: