March of the Robots at Philipp Plein

MILAN, Italy — Philipp Plein's backstage checklist for models featured a first: "Don't touch the Robot." Worth remembering, when the girls had to share a catwalk with Hercules, Hugo and Hector — who perform as Compressorhead — all controlled by The Master, Hanna, named for Plein's mum. Yes, he may have a sense of self so unshakeable that he has his own name tattooed on his arm, but underneath all those muscles and all that ink beats the heart of a Mama's Boy.

Also surprising was Plein’s admission of pre-show nerves. “I’m never afraid, but this time I was,” he said, as he furiously necked Red Bull. “The robots didn’t do what I wanted.” It took two weeks to programme Compressorhead for their performance with Courtney Love (how long it took to programme her was never disclosed), and, come performance time, they were still a little temperamental — hence the instruction about physical contact.

The robots were there for a reason. “The fashion industry is a machine,” Plein opined. “Like a robot.” Such a spiky subtext was just what you might expect from a designer who has rained all manner of destruction down on his catwalk. As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing new in fashion. Or in music, his other grand passion. Except, of course, his own proposition: #pleinpunk. Hiprock, he calls it.  The hybrid that forms when hip-hop and rap meet rock and metal. We can only assume that his new show was a celebration of the hybrid.

The robots helped to dress the girls. Sort of. There was a conveyor belt along which the humans travelled, Courtney included. You hung on for dear life on her behalf. Pyper America, sister of Lucky Blue Smith, scion of a family whose blondness is master race incarnate, opened the show in a chainmail tank dress so heavy that, if she wasn't a warrior when she put it on, she most definitely was by the time she took it off. Metal in the music made by the robots, metal in the clothes that passed them by. There was a biker with sleeves dangerously pierced,  a silver metallic pouf skirt, tutus moulded from black coq feathers, which made for a kind of glamorous spin on the kinderwhore look that defined Love in her glory days.

Never let it be said that Philipp Plein doesn’t have the courage of his convictions. We’d simply love to see his rap sheet.