John Mullan, senior lecturer in English at University College London, is telling me that the show notes we have given him to analyse could be seen as "found poetry". "You know, the concept that poetry might be something not invented by poets but inadvertently created by people doing something else," he explains.
"These show notes are a genre completely unknown to me. They deserve promulgation." I agree, but then have to look up promulgation to see what I have agreed to. The Oxford dictionary says that to promulgate is "to make known to the wider public".
The notes in Milan are always a peculiar highlight of the month spent following fashion around. Designers in New York, Paris and London don't bother with them that much, but in Milan the explanatory notes left on seats or handed out by PRs are always a joy to behold.
When asked about their show, Dolce & Gabbana were succinct with their random influences. "Astronauts, sailors, ancient Rome, the Sex Pistols," they said. The notes at Etro were even more audacious. "The 50s of Elvis and rockabilly hotrod culture, Andy Warhol's Big Apple of the early 80s, alongside celestial thoughts of heavenly tropical islands," they read, "all suggesting a planet-wide wave of confidence in the triumph of good over evil, buoyed by a sense of physical and mental wellbeing". All this for a bulky collection of fluoro-cuffed trousers and bags inspired by bits of fruit.
Roberto Cavalli produced a typically nonchalant list of terrifying themes, "iridescent turtle prints, but also 1700s prints with tapestries, decorations and trompe l'oeil settings", as well as "disturbingly sexy Turandots walk by on stunning, golden, stiletto heels, modern geishas are seductively squeezed into provocative bustier-dresses". This for a show of hooker skirts with corsets so tight and heels so high the models looked on the verge of tears. At Christian Lacroix's debut at Pucci, the notes were enigmatic. "The collection was conceived thanks to a detail: the coat of arms of the Pucci family. Or could it be Africa?" How are we supposed to know? It is not just in the translation - although this does give them a finishing touch of awkwardness. Attached to the English version is the Italian original and, even with no knowledge of the language, you can see that this weird mood and meaning was there in the first place. For some reason, Italian designers feel the need for portentousness.
Mullan thinks it points to a yearning for fashion to be more than it is. "The implication is that the people who design and watch cutting-edge fashion are actually participating in some sort of postmodern activity," he says. "But to be postmodern you have to be witty, and these are irony-free zones. Not even my students would talk about 'a planet-wide wave of confidence in the triumph of good over evil'. It's like they wanted to put something high-minded here, and so they put down the most high-minded thing they can think of."
The blur of these notes - which can go on for a good 500 words - is meant to invoke a healthily chaotic mood. "These things are a mad pile-up of words, because it's a poetic celebration of the pleasure of it all," he says. "There's a grammatical carelessness about it, as if it were mood music. You chuck in some abstract idealistic words and chuck in some lipsmackingly sensual words, give them a stir, and we are meant to be a bit excited."
Unfortunately, we are more often entertained for all the wrong reasons, with a few exceptions. Mullan finds the lines that describe the Fendi show ("Don't be avaricious/ Sunglass tiaras are delicious", "Materials wave in an/ Immaterial way/ Night-time blue takes on a purple hue") are more appealing. "Fendi is the only one that isn't self-important," he says. "It's a cross between nonsense verse and what talented kids in primary school write when they discover the joys of odd words rhyming. There's a sense that the person was having a laugh." Tellingly, it was also the most useless to work from during the shows.
But it gets worse. The notes for the Giorgio Armani show are very long, they mix random influences with sweeping statements. "Living in the here and now, without any trace of extraneous nostalgia," they read. ("Extraneous nostalgia?" says Mullan. "What does that mean? It can't mean anything, can it?"). Armani continues: "Recovering that deep and inner poetry which refutes those prevalent and commercialised images, that strident exploitation of femininity, transformed into exhibitionism."
Mullan asks if I write mostly about fashion; it sounds as if he thinks he might offend me. I tell him I do, but he still says: "It must be difficult for people to be involved in fashion and admit that it's pandering to people's pleasures. They must persuade themselves that there's something intellectual about it," he says. "Probably fashion people have always presumed they have to believe their own bullshit."
