MILAN, Italy — Stella Jean is Italy's foremost ambassador of fashion as multicultural métissage. Her method is fairly well tested now: demure, sometimes ladylike forms are activated by the quirkiness of far-stretching references. In a way, it's like, season after season, you just see the same collection, expanding and wandering here and there but ultimately staying consistent. To contemporary standards, this is a weakness — repetition is 'round the corner — just as much as it a strength — the brand's codes are made  clearer and clearer at each iteration.

This season, the goings got lighter and giddier — the pyjama rompers were particularly catchy — and there was an amusing football subtext to the whole, but it was Jean's words that sealed the message. "I think that football played on the street is a better connector than wifi." Well said.