With a Bustle, Milan Turns Somber February 23, 2012, 11:03 am Before the Fendi show today, I ran into the stylist Charlotte Stockdale in the jammed backstage area. We were surrounded by models with braided hair, furry shoulders and eyelids streaked white with powder. "Snow on branches," Ms. Stockdale explained. The allusion was to Karl Lagerfeld's winter forest colors. Or, as he wrote in the press notes of the deep greens, soft browns and wine reds: "The sparkle of the dark, miles away from classic black..." Shoes also had a dash of white. You might say the mood of the Milan fall collections, which began on Wednesday, is rarefied and rationale rather than conservative or classic. Bauhaus architecture and the movies of Fritz Lang were inspirations for MaxMara's relatively clean shapes punctuated by a single sharp detail or contrast, like a wool coat with a skirt of sheared fur or wool jersey tops banded in crocodile-stamped leather. There were also good-looking wool dresses and jackets with draped backs that recalled a classic couture shape, and a terrific update of the jumpsuit, now as an illusion of a cropped wool jacket with slim trousers. Shoes were silver heels and outfits included gaiters. At Fendi, while I was chatting with Ms. Stockdale, a dresser was buffing a model's wide patent leather belt, the oval front piece about the size of a small serving tray. Fendi was an engaging mixture of textures and modern shapes that nonetheless hinted of the past, or what Mr. Lagerfeld imagines from the past. You can't connect anything he does to a specific reference, though. He sees a forest - maybe in France, maybe in Germany - and out comes an ivory sweater with a front covered in long brown and cream fur. Or it's a shapely black leather shift with puffed cotton sleeves, or a sleek gray wool coat with fur sleeves worn over leggings in a pattern that mimicked a stingray's skin. Some skirts had a bustle effect, with a pleated panel. Round shapes played off hard-edged ones, and shoes and laced-up booties were usually a composite of materials, including flannel and crocodile. A long-haired fur coat in chromium yellow, with a brown striped fur down the front, could be a nod to early abstract painters or just a light in the Lagerfeld forest.