In the September 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper* – on international newsstands now – we identified an embrace of the traditional rituals of dressing up which ran through the A/W 2026 season, from the continuing ubiquity of the tie to tuxedo jackets, opera gloves and evening bags. The cufflink was another – once relegated to the annals of sartorial history, the accessory remerged this season as designers reimagined the archetypes of formalwear in imaginative style.

Eight of the best cufflinks, A/W 2026’s unexpected menswear accessory

This was largely down to Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons likened their A/W 2026 collection to ‘archaeology’, excavating the traditional elements of menswear dressing and reinterpreting them for now. Sometimes this was literal – shirts were purposely covered with dirt, as if dug up or retrieved from a long-forgotten wardrobe – though other pieces recalled a time of dressing with refinement and care. ‘We questioned what should remain, from the past – and what can you build, from what you learn?’ said Simons backstage at the show. ‘There is a lot here from the past. If you take the layers away, you always find a kind of beauty.’

This included cufflinks, which hung from the collection’s oversized shirt cuffs in jewellery-like flourishes of carved lapis, malachite and tiger’s eye; strange carved metal faces adorned with chains or beads; or chewing gum-like chunks of moulded resin. They feature here alongside eight of the season’s best cufflinks – from an Hermès classic to Paul Smith’s lucky coins.

Lit by a single strip of cool white, these sharp all-black clothes are staged within scenes from a stark odyssey. They are an exclamation mark. A slash through the disarray of dim biscuit, cloudy nude and wan magnolia.

Across the seasonal collections, designers made a case for the body as a graphic line. At Fendi, a roomy two-button blazer worn over a silk shirt with matching pleated skirt – all in black – hailed Maria Grazia Chiuri as the brand’s new chief creative officer. Chiuri pointed towards her vision: a rigorous, no-nonsense, un-anxious wardrobe. One deftly separated from the gurgling stream of generic, international good taste.

Studies often claim that those who consistently wear all black have more gravitas; they are likely indifferent to the flimsy cycle of trends, considered more reliable, more intelligent, more self-assured. ‘I think we must be pragmatic,’ Chiuri said after her A/W 2026 show, right on cue. ‘Fashion is not entertainment. Fashion is a job. I am that kind of designer.’ Black is potent, seductive and strong. It’s pragmatic.

This season, Rei Kawakubo – a designer as revered for her esoteric sculptural forms as her persuasive retail stores and maverick perfumes – also showed 21 jet-black looks for Comme des Garçons, punctuated by six in sugared pink. Of black, she said: ‘It’s just the strongest, the best for creation, and the colour that embodies the rebellious spirit. And has the biggest meaning: the universe and the black hole.’ Darkness and mourning, daring and chic, depth and solitude. The middle of the eye, the colour of flies, tar and obsidian. Our time calls for serious black. Sensuous black, all-encompassing black. Black as not white. Black that is not vague.

The blueprint of black as shorthand for chic was decided in 1926 when a sketch of Coco Chanel’s calf-length crêpe de Chine dress appeared in Vogue billed as ‘the frock that all the world will wear’. Exactly 100 years later, the four-pocket, five-gold-button trouser suit by the house’s fledgling creative director Matthieu Blazy, photographed here, captures the same kind of clarity. The little black dress with a big new agenda.

In wearing black, one is creating an image. An outline, a silhouette against the world. In 1960, actress Marlene Dietrich arrived for an interview with The Observer wearing a wild mink coat, a black Balenciaga dress, a black tulle hat, black patent leather pumps and a black crocodile handbag. ‘I dress for the image,’ she said. ‘Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men.’ A total black look, unadorned and unencumbered by the melee of prevailing fads was, and still is, a declaration of independence.

We all dress for image, albeit for a much smaller screen than Dietrich’s. Becoming an image dressed in black is an exercise in body language; the clothes cannot speak alone. The late Professor Louise Wilson, who as director of the MA Fashion degree course at Central Saint Martins nurtured the careers of some of fashion’s most influential designers, knew this. She was as notorious for her commanding presence and iron will as she was for her signature uniform of all-black: cashmere in winter and linen in summer. Aged ten, she sewed a black tailored jacket and raw-edge, below-the-knee skirt for her Sindy doll and finished it off with a headscarf, patent belt and bag. Our enduring image of Wilson is fixed – and fixated – with her all in black. Wearing it kept the attention firmly on her glittering alumni.

Wearing black is partly a refusal to respond to the changing moods. It is something safe and understood, at times radical and often deeply personal. It is something that means the wearer doesn’t stand out – unless they want to. Both a protective shield and a clarion call.

Arriving in Paris in 1981, the designer Yohji Yamamoto proffered a harder edge and hue to the prevailing collections of the time, which were happily shaping the decade’s women into either campy sculpted sirens or frothy babushkas. Yamamoto’s collection of menswear tailoring for women in black may have irked journalists, but it delighted the public. He refused to drench women in a riot of patterns or drown them under layers of tulle. With black, he was asking us to strip away the superficial emotions and focus entirely on texture and form. Black, he said, was not an absence of colour, but its conclusion.

Away from the whims of fashion, the wearer is energised by its most ubiquitous shade. A head-to-toe black wardrobe is intense because it asks the wearer to do most of the talking. There’s no hiding behind it. The late couturier Azzedine Alaïa always wore head-to-toe black. ‘I rid myself of colour. I only want black,’ he once said. ‘Black is the most important colour for me. It is what I start with when I create a model: it makes the silhouette appear better.’

Poised here on a foamy leather sofa, or curved onto the edge of a shaft of glass, the nakedness of black – its totality – revels in the absence of somewhere to hide. If the whole world is sopping in quiet luxury’s de facto beige – and telling us about it in maddening Technicolor – it’s time for a look that gets right to the point.

A version of this article appears in the September 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Model: Waleska Gorczevski at Models 1. Set design: Tobias Blackmore at Lalaland. Casting: Franklin Headen. Hair: Christos Bairabas using Oribe. Make-up: Claire Urquhart at Julian Watson Agency using Fenty Beauty. Manicure: Saffron Goddard using Chanel Le Vernis in Coco and Chanel La Crème Main. Digi tech: John Cronin. Photography assistants: Louise Oates, Tamibe Bourdanne, Pete Hargroves. Fashion assistants: Lucy Proctor, Nathan Fox. Set design assistants: Paula Salinas, Aurélie Simon. Production assistants: Archie Thomson, Ady Huq, Indy Davy. Hair assistant: Milita Nagelyte. Shot on location at Studio Wayne McGregor.

As seen in the June 2026 Travel Issue of Wallpaper* – a series of ‘horizon-expanding adventures and voyages of discovery’ – here’s how to stand out this summer with our pick of the season’s most eye-catching accessories, from the fantastical (Prada opera gloves; Givenchy feathered mules) to the functional (Mulberry denim sun hat; Celine oversized sunglasses). Each is primed to make a sartorial statement over the warmer months – a time for dressing with joy and abandon.

Prada opera gloves (above left)

A glove might not immediately call to mind the summer months, though the elongated opera glove was ubiquitous on the S/S 2026 runways, including this pink satin pair at Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons mixed up the working uniform with flourishes of eveningwear (often in a single look). ‘There is the license to combine different elements, to compose,’ said the latter post-show.

Loewe’s ‘Amazona 180’ bag (above right)

A reinterpretation of the archival Amazona bag has become the hallmark accessory of Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s tenure at Loewe so far (they debuted for the S/S 2026 season). The ‘Amazona 180’ – referring to the 180th anniversary of the Spanish house this year – reimagines the boxy shape of the original with a slouchy new structure, designed to hang open when worn. Our favourite? This mini version in bold azure blue.

Celine sunglasses

Celine’s Michael Rider, who formerly worked at the house under Phoebe Philo before heading up Polo Ralph Lauren, marries his American roots – he was born in Washington D.C. and attended Brown University – with the house’s Parisian sensibility. Like these gleefully oversized sunglasses, which are a nod towards the bourgeois-inflected uniform of house founder Céline Vipiana in her 1970s heyday.

Givenchy’s ‘Boudoir’ mules

The summer months are primed for dressing with abandon – particularly this S/S 2026 season, where designers channelled a mood of colour, optimism and joy. These slip-on Givenchy ‘Boudoir Fringe’ mules – designed by creative director Sarah Burton – epitomise this liberated attitude, adorned with fronds of feathers.

Chanel’s resin necklace

Thanks to the stewardship of Belgian designer Matthieu Blazy, Chanel has fast become this year’s most sought-after brand – the arrival of his S/S 2026 collection in stores earlier this year sparked a much-documented shopping frenzy. This necklace, with an enormous resin charm recalling a black oyster shell, is a way to pledge your allegiance.

Fendi’s ‘Lui’ bag

Fendi has long been known for its colourful accessories which marry Made in Italy leathercraft with a sense of humour and play. Case in point: the Lui bag, a slouchy shoulder bag designed to slot neatly onto the body when worn cross-body. This version is finished with supersized leather topstitching.

Dior’s ‘Lady Dior by Sheila Hicks’ bag

At both his eponymous label, JW Anderson, and Loewe, where he was creative director for a decade, northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson has fostered a close relationship with the art world, often through collaboration. This continues with his new role as creative director of Dior, where his S/S 2026 collection featured this Lady Dior tasseled bag, a collaboration with American artist Sheila Hicks.

Limited-edition Hermès lipsticks

A trio of limited-edition Rouge Hermès lipsticks will add a flash of colour to your make-up bag, and not only in their rich pink and mauve shades. Because the real joy of these lipsticks is the Pierre Hardy-designed packaging, adorned with graphic motifs in eye-catching primary hues.

Bottega Veneta’s ‘Baby Veneta’ bag

Bottega Veneta’s intrecciato technique – which sees strands of leather woven together – is the house’s hallmark, eschewing the need for more overt logos and branding. The new ‘Baby Veneta’, a mini hobo bag, is crafted from padded intrecciato leather, here in vivid ‘Cardinal’ red.

Mulberry denim hat

A sun hat is a perennial summertime essential. This one, from British house Mulberry, combines function with flair: crafted from classic blue denim, it comes with a bright-yellow cord-fastening, like those you might find on hiking attire.

Louis Vuitton’s summer scents

This duo of Jacques Cavallier Belletrud-masterminded Louis Vuitton fragrances capture the scent of summer: the first, On The Beach, has citrus fruit yuzu at its centre, married with fresh neroli and woody cyprus (the idea was to capture the ‘ecstasy of sun and the warmth of sand’). The second, Sun Song, is a radiant mix of orange blossom, neroli and petitgrain, finished with a final touch of lemon.

Loro Piana’s ‘Just Bag’

Sometimes the summer months require simplicity: in the heat of the day, the last thing you want is complicated. Loro Piana’s effortless ‘Just’ bag is inspired by the simple proportions of a classic paper bag, though here rendered in the Italian house’s soft and lightweight ‘Silk Calf’ leather.

Fashion/set assistant: Alice Heluin-Afchain

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The winner of the inaugural Fendi Design Prize has been announced, marking the launch of a new initiative by the Roman maison dedicated to discovering and nurturing emerging talent while celebrating design and craftsmanship. This first edition sees young Swedish designer Gustav Craft, a student at Istituto Marangoni in Milan, recognised for his project ‘Via’. ‘We are honoured to introduce the Fendi Design Prize. Fendi has historically nurtured talents, and through this initiative we wish to keep on building on this inspiring path,’ says Ramon Ros, Fendi chairman and CEO.

A specific brief was shared with leading global design schools: participants, both individuals and groups, were invited to present a living environment comprising different elements, including furniture pieces and accessories. Among the key guidelines was the use of upcycled Fendi leather or fur, alongside the integration of signature house elements such as Selleria and the brand’s colour palette, while maintaining a strong connection to Rome and a commitment to exceptional craftsmanship.

The response, with over 70 applications presenting renderings of projects still at prototype stage, surprised the jury itself, chaired by the designer Giulio Cappellini and including several prominent figures from the design world such as Cristina Celestino, Joseph Grima, Neri & Hu, Rossana Orlandi, Josh Owen and Patricia Urquiola. They were tasked with narrowing the field down to six finalists whose proposals drew inspiration from ancient Roman domestic rituals, its colonnades, or the classical elements of its most celebrated monuments.

The winning project, ‘Via’ (‘street’ in Italian), instead stems from the sampietrino, the small basalt block that has paved the streets of Rome for centuries: ‘I love Rome. I've been there way too many and I always see how people look up at the beautiful buildings, the Colosseum, but a lot of people forget to look down at this beautiful road that's been there for 2,000 years,’ says Craft, a 25-year-old Stockholm native who previously worked as a shipyard builder before relocating to Milan.

Leather and aluminium emerged as the defining materials of its project: ‘The choice was quite clear for me, because when I think about Fendi, I think about craftsmanship, I think about their leather. Also, Rome is the leather paradise,’ explains Craft. ‘After that, I knew that I want my pieces to last for generations so stainless steel was my final choice. I always love stainless steel and aluminium, I consider myself quite a minimalistic designer’.

The result? A woven leather seat whose interlacing recalls the sampietrini of Roman roads, paired with a clean steel frame. This is accompanied by a rug evoking the aerial view of the Eternal City, a mirror composed of an extremely thin steel frame resting on a single sampietrino block, and finally a side table in steel.

Designed by the Milan- and Amsterdam-based creative collective Controvento for Fendi Casa, the ‘Peekasit’ seating range, with its leather shell and soft padded cushion, made its debut in 2023, taking its cues from the fashion house's classic ‘Peekaboo’ bag. Two years later, it was joined by the ‘Peekasleep’ bed (also designed by Controvento), an enveloping leather-upholstered structure that oozed comfort and cosiness.

This year's Salone del Mobile sees the series expand further with the launch of the ‘Peekachill’ armchair, which is conceived as a more intimate counterpart to the ‘Peekasit’ collection.

Starting with the original seating concept, Controvento reimagined the ‘Peekasit’ armchair in a smaller, more compact incarnation while still preserving its defining identity, designing an object with sleek, sinuous lines and exceptional snugness, with extensive customisation options available.

Its construction reflects the precise, coherent and sophisticated portfolio of the studio founded by Gabriele Chiave and Verdiana Vannini, who set up the multidisciplinary collective after working together at the Amsterdam HQ of Marcel Wanders for five years.

When Wanders closed his studio in 2022, Chiave and Vannini took some clients with them, including Fendi Casa and Audi. Both found their time working for Wanders to be invaluable in shaping their current design approach.

Through the intersection of storytelling, craftsmanship, innovation and emotion, we create impactful designs that deepen bonds between people, objects and experiences across disciplines,’ they say. ‘At the same time, we maintain a human-centered approach in all our designs, ensuring that innovation is guided by awareness, responsibility and impact.’

In 2008, the Peekaboo handbag first appeared on the Fendi runway, taking its name from its playful construction whereby a front flap can be pushed downwards into a U-shape to reveal a ‘peek’ at the interior (when open, the curved shape has also been likened to a smile). Conceived by Silvia Venturini Fendi – a third-generation scion of the Roman dynasty – the Peekaboo was designed as a playful riff on the ladylike, top-handle styles of the 1940s and 1950s, and has appeared in various iterations in the two decades since.

In Venturini Fendi’s S/S 2026 runway show, held last September, the Peekaboo once again took centre stage, reimagined with a series of bold interior linings, from gleaming sequins and tassel-like paillettes to beaded floral motifs, revealed only when the bag is opened. As such, the series is titled ‘Inner Beauty’, with each embellishment individually handcrafted by the house’s artisans.

They proved a fitting swansong for Venturini Fendi, who has been responsible for some of the most memorable accessories of recent times – including the Baguette, which was introduced in 1997 – and has recently taken on a new role as Fendi’s ‘honorary president’ which will see her step away from her previous creative responsibilities.

She has been replaced by Maria Grazia Chiuri, the former creative director of Dior, who also hails from Rome and presented her debut collection for Fendi in Milan this past February. ‘What a wonderful journey it has been,’ said Venturini Fendi when the news was announced last September.

A version of this story appears in the April 2026 Global Interiors Issue of Wallpaper*, available on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + now. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

And so concludes another Milan Fashion Week, a season marked by its debuts: across the week, Maria Grazia Chiuri presented her opening vision for Fendi as the house’s first sole creative director, young Belgian designer Meryll Rogge made an expressive debut at Marni, and Demna hosted his first runway show for Gucci – a virile mediation on sex and the body which had everybody in fashion talking. Meanwhile at Giorgio Armani, Silvana Armani – the niece of the late eponymous designer – made her ready-to-wear debut at the house. Though true to Mr Armani’s well-established codes, she said this was ‘a new perspective on the Armani style’ – light, fluid and purposely ‘imperfect’.

Alongside, there were standout shows from Prada – in a feat of quick changes and expert layering, 15 models wore 60 looks without pause – and Bottega Veneta, where Louise Trotter conjured Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini in a riot of colour and texture. While at Jil Sander, Simone Bellotti found new freedom in his sophomore runway show after the rigour and restraint of his debut.

Here, reported by Wallpaper* fashion & beauty features director Jack Moss and contributing writer India Jarvis, the 14 standout shows which defined the week.

Fendi

‘Less I, More Us,’ was the mantra Italian designer Maria Grazia Chiuri chose for her debut as sole creative director for Fendi, emblazoning it across the runway which stretched the length of the house’s Milanese HQ on Via Solari. Chiuri is fond of such mission statements: for her debut collection as the first female creative director of Dior in 2016, she printed the title of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book-length essay ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ across a T-shirt. Over the nine years which followed, she would champion numerous women artists and collaborators.

Her mantra at Fendi is perhaps a feminist one too, despite the fact that Chiuri also showed menswear on the runway (and will be equally in charge of the house’s mens- and womenswear lines). It was, in part, a reference to the collective force of the formidable Fendi sisters: Alda, Carla, Paola, Franca and Anna Fendi, who took over from their parents, house founders Edoardo and Adele Fendi, in 1946. Speaking before the show, she said that people speak too often of Karl Lagerfeld’s influence – the designer was creative director of the house for 54 years – and not enough of the sisters, who employed him and would work alongside him until the company was sold to LVMH in 1999. ‘I would like people to remember all that they created at Fendi,’ she asserted.

Chiuri, who began her career at Fendi in 1989, working with the sisters until her own departure in 1999, said she credits her working ethic to them: ‘They were my mentors. They gave me my career. And I felt part of their teamwork.’ In the show, the idea of collaboration came through projects with women artists SAGG Napoli (colourful football-like scarves were created alongside the Naples-born artist) and the estate of Mirella Bentivoglio, whose slogan-like works appeared across garments. But the idea of a collective ‘us’ stretched to dissolving the divide between mens- and womenswear, too, the designer said: ‘Feminine and masculine cease to be categories of opposition and become adjectives used to describe shared qualities,’ envisioning not two separate collections but ‘one wardrobe’.

As such, the A/W 2026 outing – which eschewed theatrics in favour of a more pragmatic approach – moved between sleek, elongated tailoring and flourishes of romance, from layers of sheer tulle and lace (some evocative of her work at Dior). Meanwhile fur – the founding material of the house – came back to the fore, with Chiuri introducing the ‘Echo of Love’ project whereby clients can have their old furs transformed in an act of circularity. Across vivid two-tone chubby fur coats and patchworked fur handbags, all the materials had been sourced from leftovers in the house’s fur department – another act of practicality over spectacle. ‘Fashion is not entertainment. Fashion is a job. I am that kind of designer,’ she said. Jack Moss

READ: ‘Less I, more us’: Maria Grazia Chiuri lays out her vision for Fendi in Milan

Jil Sander

After a brilliant debut last season, Simone Bellotti continued to cleverly hone his vision for Jil Sander with a sophomore collection which he said was inspired by the idea of ‘home’. Presented in the house’s stark Milanese HQ – this season, warmth was added by the addition of a rust-coloured carpet which had been installed the length of the upper floor – the former Bally designer said he was thinking about home as an ‘an emotional space where one lives, feels safe and belongs to’, leading to a collection which diverted from restraint and rigour of last season towards something freer, more eclectic. Indeed, the designer said this was a collection about ‘flow, flou [and] movement’, with Bellotti imagining garments imbued with a life of their own through an intriguing use of pattern cutting – whether raised shoulder lines, curving seams, folded waistlines, or intentionally puckered tailoring (the slashes through garments also returned from his debut). Meanwhile evocative moments of colour and pattern added visual richness: flashes of electric blue and leopard print met fabrics evocative of interiors – a nod, Bellotti elucidated, to his father’s career as an upholsterer. ‘The question this season is whether abandon can convey restraint,’ he said of this newly liberated approach. Jack Moss

MM6 Maison Margiela

One of life’s great pleasures is watching other people, and what better place to sit and do it than a train terminal? It’s a pleasure that MM6 Maison Margiela tapped into for its A/W 2026 show – one designed around the comings and goings of passengers in an ‘archetypal train station’, in this case Milano Centrale. An archetype is a recurrent, even constant, principle, whereas a station is innately transient – how do the two meet? At MM6 it was with ‘a veritable spectrum of individuality’, and ‘sartorial actions rooted in the genuine appreciation for garments as they are, looking for ways to see them anew, which is where the fun lingers.’

What does that look like? It looks like pea coats with bunched and scrunched hems, loosely tacked to reveal quilted or flannel linings. Clashing stripes with check – something you might serendipitously pair when hurrying to get dressed. Backless khaki trench coats and skirts. And lots of tucking: hair tucked into jumpers, jumpers tucked into jeans, jeans tucked into high-gloss Wellington-style boots.

There was a strong equine theme too – afterall, 2026 is the year of the firehorse, a symbol of forward movement and independence that is characteristically MM6 – from horse motifs printed on oversized T-shirts and teddy fleeces, to full cotton flounced skirts with a decidedly American frontier feel. A train station welcomes all kinds of people going all kinds of places, after all. India Jarvis

Prada

This season, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons played a clever runway trick: instead of the usual 40-or-so models cast in a given season, the pair chose just 15 to walk the A/W 2026 show. In an impressive act of timing, they wore 60 looks in total, walking the runway four times each in quick succession, achieved through removing a layer of clothing during each quick change. When you realised the conceit (for me, I wondered if Bella Hadid had a doppelganger or secret twin after what seemed like an impossibly quick reappearance on the runway), it made for one of the most thrilling Prada shows of recent times – there was a near-breathless energy to the spectacle. (Indeed, chatting to one of the models backstage, she said she had never sweated so much, or walked so far, in a runway show during her career.)

But this was no gimmick: post-show, the co-creative directors said the collection was a reflection of the way that women wear clothing on a given day – the removal of a coat to reveal a cocktail dress, the addition of a scarf. ‘It’s about life, and how you dress each day with the clothes you have,’ said Simons. ‘About real, human people.’ The garments themselves were infused with Prada-isms: purposeful marks of wear (some appeared stained or creased; others saw layers of fabric torn away to reveal another beneath) met an insouciant, bourgeois-inflected glamour in embroidered stockings, feathered and beaded footwear and a use of satin and organza. A feeling of utility, meanwhile, came in uniform-style tailoring and riffs on classic outerwear styles, from the parka jacket to the raincoat. ‘As a woman, your life is layered – each day demands not only a shifting of clothes, but a richness of identities within yourself,’ said Mrs Prada. ‘You make choices, you decide who you want to be.’ Jack Moss

Max Mara

Is a growing interest in the history and aesthetics of the Middle Ages a reaction to the hyper-digitised, blue-lit world of today? An idealised fantasy of a pre-capitalist society? Or perhaps a byproduct of the popularity of the romantasy genre? Whatever the answer, for Max Mara’s Ian Griffiths​, whose unlikely seasonal muse was the 11th-century diplomat and military commander Matilde di Canossa, ‘there is something so strikingly of the now about so-called Dark Age design’.

Griffiths’ interpretation of pre-enlightenment era clothing saw tunics in luxurious, butter-soft suede, ankle-skimming cashmere coats and hooded garments reminiscent of the coif shapes worn by Di Canossa and her contemporaries. Standout pieces included a caramel-coloured bias-cut silk gown with a mohair, funnel-necked yoke; a suede muff worn belted around the waist; and a taupe wool playsuit accessorised with the gathered suede, elbow-length opera gloves that were seen throughout the show. Griffiths has been with the house since graduating from London’s RCA in 1987, and over the four decades which have followed, there is nobody who knows the Max Mara woman better than he. The A/W 2026 collection offered new-yet-medieval twists on the tried and tested house codes, which keep this woman returning to the brand, season after season. India Jarvis

Emporio Armani

Following the death of its eponymous founder in the autumn of 2025, Emporio Armani took an understandable hiatus from showing at menswear week in January, but returned for A/W 2026 with a combined men’s and women’s runway outing. ‘Maestro’, as the collection was titled, was not only a narrative device, but an ode to Mr Armani himself – the eminent composer, conductor, and virtuoso of fashion symphonies for almost 50 years.

The imaginative backdrop for the season was, according to show notes, a music school, and the maestro – and maestra, for this is a co-ed conservatoire – who stepped out in Leo Dell’Orco and Silvana Armani’s first jointly developed collection wore loosely tailored overcoats and baggy denim, and student-y accessories including baker boy caps, backpacks, and ties just visible beneath oversized striped knits. Leg warmers styled over patent leather pumps evoked the chill of a rehearsal auditorium, whereas the show’s second act saw rather more performance-ready pieces in the form of draped velvet, wide-lapelled tuxedo jackets, and starched white collars (a recurring motif in Milan this season: most notably in Maria Grazia Chiuri’s riff on Claudine à l'école at Fendi).

For the finale – the crescendo, if you like – the models turned out in Lydia Tár-esque monochrome. Tight leggings or flowing slacks on the bottom, white dress shirts on top, each with a different button, brooch, pin, collar, or embroidered flourish. ‘A simple and rigorous statement – now more than ever rebellious – of modernity and self-awareness,’ that could only be Armani. India Jarvis

Marni

The Belgian designer Meryll Rogge chose to collaborate with Formafantasma on the runway set for her debut show as creative director of Marni. Transforming the house’s Milanese headquarters with wood-effect panelling and fabric-covered benches – recalling a banal office space, or entranceway to a Milanese apartment block – the space was punctuated with mirrored panels which had been painted with ‘fragments drawn from quotidian life’, from office chairs to cigarette lighters. ‘The structure of the set suggests a bourgeois interior wooden frame, hints of domestic architecture – but fragmented, slightly taken apart. It feels familiar yet unsettled, as if a room has been carefully disassembled and reassembled in another order,’ Formafantasma’s Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin told Wallpaper*.

It linked with Rogge’s vision for her tenure at the Italian house: to create something which felt both familiar and contemporary, evoking Marni’s founding principles with her own distinctive twists. ‘I have a very personal connection to Marni,’ she said. ‘It’s a brand that shaped my design sensibility during my formative years, and through the show I wanted to acknowledge that sense of familiarity.’ It made for an astute opening outing: there was the irreverent spirit of founder Consuelo Castiglioni in its eclectic combinations, not only in its amalgam of nostalgic prints, swinging paillettes and boldly graphic jewellery, but also in the way a sweater might be worn with a cocktail dress, or a colourful sporty parka over a suit and tie. Rogge’s own twist on the Marni protagonist was a newfound toughness, figured in some great leather trousers and skirts, some with Western-inspired detailing. In their slung-on sensuality – imbued with a certain 1980s nostalgia – they might well fill a gap for those who are already missing Dario Vitale’s Versace. Jack Moss

READ: Formafantasma created the ‘familiar yet unsettled’ show set for Meryll Rogge’s Marni debut

Sportmax

If there are a few thematic ideas that inevitably crop up and play out in different ways by different brands in any one season, then for A/W 2026 one such example could be travel. At Loro Piana and MM6 Maison Margiela the vehicle of choice was a train; at Sportmax, the journey seemed to be taken by air. ‘Dynamism’ was the word they used, but ‘aerodynamism’ may be just as apt – as the brand itself puts it: ‘There is no clutter weighing the Sportmax woman down.’

Dresses were close-fitting and body-skimming but with movement in the draping, worn with long wraps which fell backwards over the shoulder like wings. Some of the weightier outerwear nodded to aviator-style jackets with their gargantuan lapels and collars, and contrasting textures and fabrics. Clutches were spheroid, almost discus-shaped; one could imagine them flying through the air with ease. Flashes of skin were visible beneath a kind of jumbo mesh effect leather, used for tops which were worn as a base layer beneath more autumn-winter suitable coats and gilets. Speed and movement were the defining characteristics of the collection – even the show itself was a particularly fast-paced affair – as the show notes said, the Sportmax woman has ‘places to go’. India Jarvis

Gucci

Prior to his debut runway show for Gucci, the mononymous Georgian designer Demna said he had been searching for the ‘Gucciness of Gucci’, a trip which took him to the Tuscan city of Florence, where the house was founded as a leather goods company in 1921. There, he visited factories and the archive, though it was stood in front of Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus at the Uffizi Gallery – just a few hundred metres from the Palazzo Gucci on Piazza della Signoria – that Demna had his lightbulb moment. ‘Standing in front of it, I felt overwhelmed,’ he wrote in a letter distributed before the show. ‘The beauty in it was unconditional; it was absolute. It made me realise how deeply the Italian Renaissance shaped everything I understand about art, about proportion, about desire, and about beauty. When I left the museum and stepped into Piazza della Signoria, the first thing I saw was Palazzo Gucci. In that moment, I understood the place Gucci holds within Italian culture.’

It was part of the reason why he staged the A/W 2026 collection amid an imagined museum constructed in Milan’s Palazzo delle Scintille, clad in marble and populated with plaster recreations of ancient sculptures (the vast statues had been 3D-scanned and crafted by Tuscan artisans to appear as if hewn from marble). This was a veneration of Gucci as an expression of Italian style and insouciance: after the show, he said this opening act was simply about capturing a feeling, rather than anything more intellectually overwrought. ‘I hope I made you feel Gucci today,’ he said, expressing a desire for Gucci to become an ‘adjective’. ‘That was my main purpose with this show.’

The essence of ‘Gucci-ness’ that Demna landed on was one of unbridled sensuality, a morning-after-the-night before glamour which borrowed from Tom Ford’s transformative tenure at the house in the 1990s (all the way down to a recreation of his 1997 double-G G-string, which here appeared as an in-built thong in a gown worn by Kate Moss to close the show). Other garments had been constructed without seams or with curved hemlines in order to emphasise the relationship between body and garment, while muscled male models burst out of skin-tight T-shirts and jeans. Slung on jackets, lean tailoring, and a final flurry of shimmering evening gowns completed the look. ‘[I think] it’s because of my relationship with myself, to my own body, to the way I want to see myself,’ he said. ‘I want to feel like that. I want to feel sexy.’ Jack Moss

Tod’s

It takes deft craftsmanship to imbue leather with real lightness – after all, leather is better known as a material of protection and toughness. But Tod’s’ A/W 2026 ready-to-wear was characterised by a levity of touch that could only be the handiwork of a house that makes an art out of leather (and a designer who’s got pedigree when it comes to this particular material).

In Matteo Tamburini’s latest, leather may have been the protagonist, but the plot itself was all about artisanal excellence – a fact reinforced by the real craftspeople stitching, folding, or carving objects in the entryway to the venue at Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea – cherry-picked by the brand for their impressive skill. Amongst these were brothers Vincenzo and Manuel Aucella, coral artisans and cameo carvers who represent the fourth generation of a family tradition that began in 1892 (that’s around 30 years before Filippo Della Valle started the shoe-making business that would later become Tod’s).

As for the clothes themselves, feather-light asymmetrical leather dresses fluttered with all the delicacy of a silk handkerchief, blanket-style outerwear enveloped luxuriously about the shoulders, and saddlery techniques and hand-finishing synthesised tradition and modernity. Overall, the effect was a masterclass in Italian craft and sprezzatura. India Jarvis

Ferragamo

The 1920s were a formative decade for Salvatore Ferragamo: in 1927, he founded his eponymous footwear company in Florence after returning from Los Angeles, where he worked as a shoemaker for the burgeoning film industry in Hollywood. The British designer Maximilian Davis has found fertile creative ground in the decade, with recent collections channelling what he sees as the ‘liberated elegance’ of the era – one in which conventions of dress were interrupted and marginalised groups found new freedoms (last season, Davis evoked the Harlem Renaissance, the proliferation of Black art, culture and intellectual output from the New York neighbourhood in the 1920s).

This season, in one of the curving Giovanni Muzio-designed upper galleries of the Triennale di Milano museum – dimly lit and sheathed with floor-to-ceiling curtains – he evoked the 1920s speakeasy, ‘a locus of liberation; a space where conventions of class and identity are disrupted’. As such, a louche, after-dark mood infused the collection – negligées, molten-gold dresses and vampish stilettos all featured – while riffs on maritime attire were a nod to those who frequented such drinking spots. Though the evocation of the sailor also nodded to the notion of travel which informs the Ferragamo story – the transformative experience of moving away from your home in search of something new.

‘That’s something that both Salvatore and my own family experienced – he left his home in Italy for America before returning home, and my family moved from Trinidad and Jamaica to Manchester,’ said Davis. ‘They all crossed the water to discover new beginnings.’ Jack Moss

Dolce & Gabbana

Dolce & Gabbana’s A/W 2026 collection was an assertion of brand identity, said designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, all the way down to a front-row cameo from Madonna – perhaps the most well-known house muse and the current face of The One fragrance. The musical powerhouse watched on from the front row as the pair performed their own greatest hits: an outing near-entirely in their signature vampish black, replete with house hallmarks – lingerie-inspired silhouettes, hourglass LBDs, and, of course, plenty of lace. Though perhaps most desirable this season was the tailoring: if best known for their body-contouring dresses, the pair have always possessed a strong sartorial prowess, here encapsulated in some brilliant tuxedos which nipped at the waist and flared across the shoulder, inspired by archival silhouettes from the 1990s (they would make a great Oscars look for those wishing to eschew the traditional princess gown). Post show, Domenico and Stefano were keen to make clear that drilling into the archive was not about ‘nostalgia’ but ‘presence’, ‘a language built on roots that are still alive – Sicily as emotion, black as strength, lace as intimacy, tailoring as authority,’ they said. Jack Moss

Bottega Veneta

The particular joy of good fashion is that it’s a work of art you can actually touch – and with Louise Trotter’s sophomore collection for Bottega Veneta, touch is exactly what you want to do. The shaggy, curvaceous shapes she creates out of fibreglass need to be felt to be believed. Great piles of shearling cry out to be fondled. Even less immediately showy pieces, like a tailored grey coat with exaggeratedly round shoulders and cinched waist which was made from a thick, almost foamy looking fabric, was just begging to be squished between the fingers.

It’s the mark of a talented designer that to describe their work as ‘wearable’ doesn’t just mean ‘commercial’, or, worse ‘boring’. The Sunderland-born designer, whose previous creative director roles were at Lacoste, Joseph, and Carven, makes clothes that are infinitely wearable, but here the word might mean things that feel really wonderful to actually wear. On the practical side: pieces have pockets, shoes are flat, and bags are roomy. The more flamboyant garments are countered by easy tank tops and shirts. But more than that, there is a sensuality and tactility that sets Trotter’s work apart. Is this the byproduct of being one of the few women making womenswear at the head of a luxury house? Whatever the case, there’s no doubt that she is one of the most credible designers working today.

The A/W 2026 collection carried what Trotter described as a ‘suggestion’ of Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini – two of 20th-century Italy’s most erudite and subversive exports, and unlikely friends. Both figures have been brought back to the forefront of the cultural conversation in recent years – operatic prima donna Callas was played by Angelina Jolie in a 2024 biopic, and before that her life and lonely, premature death was dramatised on stage in an opera project conceived by Marina Abramović and co-starring Willem Dafoe. Dafoe, in turn, has played Pasolini, the poet and filmmaker whose brutal murder, presumably at the hands of far-right thugs, was commemorated on its 50th anniversary in the autumn of 2025 through a series of cultural programming and new publications. If these sound like unlikely characters to influence a ready-to-wear collection, consider that Callas and Pasolini had more in common than just tragic ends: formidable artistic talent, potent sexuality, and confident personal style amongst them. For Trotter’s debut last year she described her use of intrecciato as a conceptual device as well as a literal braiding technique – by citing these two artists she is articulating a continuation of that weaving principle, but also making a bold declaration of what Bottega Veneta, under her stewardship, is going to be. India Jarvis

Giorgio Armani

The Armani Privé show in Paris marked the debut collection from Silvana Armani, the late Giorgio Armani’s niece, who worked closely with the designer in his lifetime and was a fitting successor to uphold his legacy. On Sunday in Milan, she made her ready-to-wear debut at Armani, selecting the house’s headquarters on Brera’s Via Borgonuovo to show the A/W 2026 collection (the address was also the site of Mr Armani’s personal Milan home). At the time of the Privé show, we wrote that she had presented a collection ‘not of divergence but of continuance’, and the same could be said of this collection – it felt recognisably Armani in its louche, unstructured tailoring and interplay between Eastern and Western tropes of dress – though there was a greater feeling of softness and ease. Indeed, Silvana Armani said she was looking for lightness in both construction and spirit: jackets were assembled without padding, wrapped silhouettes appeared thrown on, and the slouchier, pleated trousers – held in place with wide belts – felt contemporary in proportion. She called it ‘a new perspective on the Armani style,’ one which she said was informed by being a woman, designing for women. ‘It is fluid, enveloping, perfectly imperfect.’ Jack Moss

It might have been Maria Grazia Chiuri’s moment – this was, after all, her debut collection for Fendi, one of fashion’s major houses – but the Italian designer was adamant that this opening act was ‘less I, more us’.

So adamant, the message was stamped in alternating Italian and English along the runway, which stretched the length of Fendi’s vast Milanese headquarters on Via Solari earlier this afternoon (the address, which also played host to runway shows by Chiuri’s forebears Silvia Venturini Fendi, Kim Jones and Karl Lagerfeld, has been recently renovated to expand its footprint).

‘Less I, more us’: Maria Grazia Chiuri debuts at Fendi

An echo of her statement-marking debut as creative director at Dior in 2016, in which T-shirts were printed with ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ (the title of the 2014 book-length essay by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie), the fresh mantra proved her knack for honing a succinct mission statement.

Chiuri said it had emerged from an exploration of Fendi’s collaborative roots: after being founded in Rome by Edoardo Fendi and Adele in 1925, it was under their daughters, the five sisters Alda, Carla, Paola, Franca and Anna Fendi, that the house would find international success. Hiring Karl Lagerfeld in 1965, the sisters continued to hold roles at the house until 1999, when Fendi became part of LVMH; in the last ten years of their tenure, they would work alongside a young Chiuri, who was a designer in the accessories department in her first major fashion role. ‘They were my mentors. They gave me my career. And I felt part of their teamwork,‘ said Chiuri.

In the show, a football scarf printed with ‘5 Sisters’ was a nod to the quintet, whose influence on the house, Chiuri says, often feels overlooked, particularly in comparison to Karl Lagerfeld. ‘I would like people to remember all that they created at Fendi,’ she continued, seeking to topple the idea that to be a successful creative director you must be a monolith.

But Chiuri also used the slogan to encapsulate her approach to menswear and womenswear, which were shown on the runway together (she has not designed menswear since her time at Valentino alongside Pierpaolo Piccioli). ‘Feminine and masculine cease to be categories of opposition and become adjectives used to describe shared qualities,’ she elucidated in the collection notes, envisioning not two separate collections but ‘one wardrobe’.

As such, the collection moved between sinuous, streamlined tailoring and more romantic flourishes, from layers of sheer tulle and lace to plunging V-necklines and bias-cut silk. Meanwhile, fur, which in recent seasons has been largely absent from the Fendi runway (despite the house’s beginnings as a furrier) reappeared here in vivid patchwork coats, part of a new Echo of Love project, whereby clients can bring in their old furs to be remade into new garments (Chiuri hopes that this act of circularity preserves the preciousness of the material). Artistic collaborations with SAGG Napoli and the estate of Mirella Bentivoglio also featured, a nod to her longstanding support of women artists during her time at Dior.

What was perhaps surprising was Chiuri’s use of black, which made up the majority of the collection. Typically, Fendi is known for a more vivid palette, whether poppy hues of yellow, pink and blue, or the richer tones of deep brown and tobacco, which are used in the house’s signature double-F monogram canvas (the double-F emblem also appeared sparingly, and only on handbags).

Backstage, Chiuri explained that these choices emerged from her view that fashion shows are increasingly being used as a means of entertainment, particularly on social media – the more attention-grabbing you can be, the better. In its restraint, this collection was her riposte. ‘I think we must be pragmatic,’ she said. ‘Fashion is not entertainment. Fashion is a job. I am that kind of designer.’

Our live coverage of Milan Fashion Week A/W 2026 is here.

2026 might be the year when the dust begins to settle in fashion – after a year of reset and refresh in 2025, where over 15 creative directors began their tenures at the industry’s major houses, the next 12 months will see them settle in and hone their creative visions. This will begin in January, when Jonathan Anderson and Matthieu Blazy, at Dior and Chanel respectively, will show their first haute couture collections after critically lauded debuts in 2025 (and, perhaps more importantly, their initial offerings will land in stores).

But that’s not to say that we are in a moment of stasis: the debuts will continue into 2026, with Maria Grazia Chiuri showing her first collection for Fendi; Demna holding his first runway show for Gucci; and the presumed debut of the (as yet unnamed) new creative director of Versace. And elsewhere, there will be plenty more notable style moments, from a slew of blockbuster exhibitions (including the biggest ever Costume Institute exhibition at The Met in New York) to some fashionable on-screen moments.

Here, as the new year begins, everything to look forward to in fashion in 2026.

The fashion exhibition renaissance will continue

Following what felt like an unprecedented number of fashion exhibitions in 2025 – even in the usually sleepy summer months, we highlighted 11 to choose from – the renaissance of the medium looks set to continue into 2026. Highlighted by Belle Hutton in her guide to the unmissable fashion exhibitions to add to your calendar in 2026, these will span the blockbuster – an Edward Enninful-curated exhibition on the 1990s at Tate Britain; a vast Schiaparelli retrospective at the V&A – and more introspective displays, like a poetic exhibition of works by photographer Rafael Pavarotti at Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris or the first major exhibition on the ‘Antwerp Six’, an iconoclastic group of designers, who, in the late 1980s, would alter fashion’s trajectory forever. Fittingly, it will take place at MoMu, Antwerp’s brilliant fashion museum.

Valentino will head back to its roots in Rome

In a notable schedule shift, Alessandro Michele has chosen to show his next collection for Valentino in Rome, the city where the house was founded by Valentino Garavani in 1960 (the house has said this is a one-off, returning to its usual spot on the Paris fashion schedule the season after). Other travelling shows in 2026 will include the usual Cruise circuit in late spring – notable this season for the first Cruise shows from Jonathan Anderson at Dior, Matthieu Blazy at Chanel and Demna at Gucci – which this year, whether through serendipity or good planning, are largely set to take place in the United States. Gucci and Louis Vuitton will both show in New York, while Dior will show in Los Angeles; elsewhere, Chanel has chosen Biarritz, France and Max Mara Shanghai, China.

Véronique Nichanian will say goodbye to Hermès after a landmark tend

In October, it was announced that Véronique Nichanian was to step down from her role as artistic director of Hermès’ men’s universe, a tenure which has lasted 37 years – the longest-running of a serving creative director. Known for a mood of quiet beauty – whereby archetypal menswear garments are endlessly evolved and perfected – she has achieved both commercial and critical success. ‘I still love this job. However, I believe that to practice it the way I like to, it now requires more and more time – and today, I want to devote that time to other things,’ she said. ‘Hermès has, above all, shown great elegance by allowing me to choose the moment that felt right to step down. I’ve been thinking about it and discussing it with Axel and Pierre-Alexis Dumas for a year or two now. It’s time to pass the baton.’ That baton will pass to Grace Wales Bonner – an appointment which garnered unanimous praise from critics and online commentators – though the British designer will not show until January 2027. Meanwhile, this January, Nichanian will hold her swansong at Paris Fashion Week Men’s – a no doubt emotional ending to an extraordinary career.

Maria Grazia Chiuri will show her first collection for Fendi

Just when you thought the dust had settled, the creative director reshuffle is set to continue into 2026. Most notably, the arrival of Maria Grazia Chiuri at Fendi – a long-rumoured appointment since her exit from Dior in May, confirmed by the Roman house in October. Hailing herself from Rome – and having started her career at Fendi in the late 1980s – it will be something of a homecoming. She will show as part of Milan Fashion Week in February. Elsewhere, after launching his first collection with a starry Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn-shot film in September, Demna will hold his first runway show for Gucci – also in Milan in February – while in New York, Rachel Scott will make her catwalk debut for Proenza Schouler, having hosted an intimate presentation last September.

While Matthieu Blazy and Jonathan Anderson will make their haute couture debuts

Haute couture remains the heady pinnacle of Parisian style: a medium which is meticulously defined Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM) to retain the traditional craft of bespoke dressmaking (one stipulation is that every gown must be made-to-order to the exact contours of the client’s body). Couture week in January looks set to be the most-watched in years, down to two notable debuts: Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, and Jonathan Anderson at Dior (their ready-to-wear debuts came in 2025). With both designers’ careers defined by imaginative flights of craft and imagination, their first couture shows in January will no doubt inject new energy to Haute Couture Week – a period of the fashion calendar which has felt in flux in recent seasons.

Style will have its moment on screen in 2026

‘2026 is shaping up to be a year to remember for style on screen,’ writes Orla Brennan in her rundown of the fashionable films to look out for in 2026. This of course includes the return of Devil Wears Prada, with the much-anticipated sequel no doubt becoming a cultural lightning rod when it reaches screens in May (as Brennan writes, ‘[it] promises to be the most fashionable film of 2026 – or at least, its wardrobe is bound to be the most closely scrutinised by industry platforms and devoted style fans’). But there is plenty more aside: from Emerald Fennell’s bold retelling of Wuthering Heights to A24’s Mother Mary, in which Anne Hathaway plays a fictional pop star opposite Michaela Coel as a fashion designer, there will be plenty of style moments to look out for. Plus, there’s the return of former fashion designer Tom Ford as director after A Single Man and Nocturnal Animals – he’s set to start filming his adaption of Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven early this year, which currently has a tentative 2026 release.

The Met Gala will be bigger than ever

The Met Gala – which celebrates the opening of the New York institution’s blockbuster spring Costume Institute exhibition – remains one of the fashion calendar’s notable moments (not least for its starry red carpet, which is unfurled each year on the first Monday of May). For 2026, that exhibition is titled ‘Costume Art’, weaving a thread between the Costume Institute’s archive of fashion garments and the depictions of clothing across The Met’s wider collection, from paintings to ancient artefacts. And this year, it looks set to be bigger than ever: ‘Costume Art’ inaugurates the Costume Institute’s new 12,000 sq ft gallery, adjacent to the Met’s Great Hall (designed by Brooklyn-based architecture firm Paterson Rich Office, it will be named after Condé Montrose Nast, founder of the eponymous publishing empire). Add to this a high-wattage line-up of co-chairs for the opening – Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams – and the event is sure to dominate the news cycle come May.

This has been a watershed year in fashion. A quarter of the way through the 21st century, 2025 saw the industry hit refresh: in September alone, 15 designers made their debuts as creative directors of fashion’s major houses, ushering in a bold new era in style (and, as with any such change, prompting passionate – and oftentimes divided – online commentary).

Here, as selected by the Wallpaper* style team, are the 25 fashion moments that defined the zeitgeist in 2025 – from a viral Marty Supreme track jacket and Saint Laurent’s thigh-high wader boots, to big-name buyouts, runway returns and, of course, all those debuts.

Willy Chavarria made his mark in Paris with a powerful duo of shows

In January, CFDA Award-winning designer Willy Chavarria chose to shift his runway show from New York, where he lives and works, to Paris. A striking first show, held at the American Church on Quai d’Orsay, came just a few days after Trump’s inauguration, with Chavarria – whose runway shows have long been a clarion call for the rights of immigrants and the queer community – soundtracking the show with Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon imploring the incoming president to ‘have mercy’ towards marginalised communities. ‘It was so beautiful, and it fell exactly in line with what we were doing,’ he told Wallpaper* of the speech. ‘I wanted to show that everyone is welcome, and to do that in a church seemed like the most pronounced way of showing queer people, trans people, in this environment where they were the saints’. His sophomore Paris show, this summer, was similarly impactful: it opened with 35 kneeling men wearing white T-shirts made in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a reference to those being unlawfully detained by ICE in the United States.

READ: Willy Chavarria: ‘We’re still so stuck in fashion’s old guard’

Faux fur and shearling took over the runway

Not a moment, per se, though the proliferation of faux fur and shearling on the runway – spanning both the men’s and women’s collections – was one of the year’s undeniable style takeaways (so much so, we even spotted it on the spring/summer runways). ‘When worn, it becomes a heady meeting place of signifiers – luxury, wealth, power, but also protection, armour against the elements, an ancient and primal urge to be swaddled in the spoils of the hunt,’ we wrote earlier this year of the renaissance of fur – albeit in imitation fabrics – which seemed to a response to the tumult of contemporary living. Indeed, at Prada, where co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a collection of ‘Raw Glamour’, ‘fur’ coats – constructed from cleverly manipulated shearling – had strange protusions at the collar or were trapped under plastic. ‘We asked ourselves, what is femininity today? It is a constant questioning,’ said Mrs Prada. ‘It is not my job to be political, but when you open a newspaper – oh my God! Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

READ: Faux fur and shearling dominated the A/W 2025 runways – these pieces capture the material’s ‘raw glamour’

Alessandro Michele entertained with a showstopping haute couture debut for Valentino

Haute couture was always going to be a medium which suited Alessandro Michele, the former Gucci creative director who now heads up Valentino. For his first couture collection for the house – presented this past February – the Italian designer, known for theatrical runway shows and richly imaginative collections, hit new heights, employing the ‘petits mains’ of the Valentino atelier to create a series of showstopping gowns. In a style typical to the deep-thinking designer, they were explained in the book-length collection notes through the language of philosophy and semiotics – Homer, James Joyce and Italo Calvino were all mentioned – with each gown representing a ‘list’ of words and influences (‘[lists] confine the infinite extension of the existing within a meaningful framework… to bring some order to the chaos of the universe,’ Michele wrote, quoting Umberto Eco). These surreal lists scrolled across the show’s set on a series of ticker-tape screens as the dramatic looks wandered across the stage, a millefeuille of satin, lace and tulle – eclectic, intricate and, as fashion sleuths showed after the show, rooted in the Valentino archive. ‘To attempt to describe each look – and its multitude of elements – would require a pages-long list of its own,’ we wrote at the time. ‘It was best to simply let yourself be entertained.’

READ: Inside Alessandro Michele’s showstopping debut haute couture show for Valentino

Martine Rose held her first gallery show – an ode to Bronski Beat’s radical energy

During London Fashion Week in February, Martine Rose hosted her first gallery show at Sadie Coles HQ, revisiting her 2016 film Everything Must Change – a Sharna Osbourne-shot short starring Bronski Beat frontman Jimmy Somerville. ‘Pop charts at the time I was introduced to Jimmy Somerville’s voice were dominated by gay musicians: Erasure, Bronski Beat, Marc Almond,’ Rose told Wallpaper*. ‘Mainstream pop by out and proud gay men making serious, respected pop music – not tokenistic – which can never be replicated. It was a radical time for music, all about individuality, no stylists, all genuine expression.’ It’s a statement that captures the radical, subculture-infused energy of Rose’s own work: later that year, in June, she staged a one-off show in an abandoned west London job centre, adorned for the occasion in boudoir-style ruffled curtains. ‘I was exploring this new shrunken silhouette,’ she said after the show. ‘Everything feels a bit cinched, a bit too tight, slightly awkward, but somehow still sexy, I hope.’ It is this idiosyncratic approach – at once strange, sexy and real – which has made Martine Rose one of London’s defining voices, doing things her own way for close to two decades.

READ: Martine Rose’s first gallery show celebrates the radical queer energy of Bronski Beat

Calvin Klein returned to the runway with a new ‘sexitude’

In February, Calvin Klein hosted its first runway show since the departure of Raf Simons in 2018 (under him, the runway collections went under the moniker Calvin Klein 205W39NYC; now, they are back to being called Calvin Klein Collection). In one of the year’s first notable debuts, it was former The Row designer Veronica Leoni who took the helm, seeking a mood of sensual minimalism she dubbed ‘sexitude’ – a nod to the pulsing undercurrent of eroticism which ran through the brand’s advertising campaigns and collections in the 1990s. ‘When it comes to sexiness, it’s more like an attitude,’ the Italian designer said backstage. ‘You own it in the way you wear the clothes. I think it’s really intimate being sexy – regardless of the silhouette, the amount of skin, it’s about the confidence.’ The collection came with the blessing of Mr Klein himself, who watched on from the front row. ‘He told me he was happy he had found a new coat to buy,’ she said. ‘I’m really proud for him to feel at home again.’

READ: For her Calvin Klein debut, Veronica Leoni stripped it all back

Fendi celebrated its centenary with a blockbuster show in Milan

2025 was a definitive year for Fendi: not only did it mark a century since the fashion house was founded in Rome, but, after the departure of artistic director of womenswear and couture Kim Jones in October 2024, the beginning of its new chapter. As such, in February, Fendi opened the doors to its newly renovated Milanese headquarters for a celebratory runway show, seeing house scion Silvia Venturini Fendi take the reins for the blockbuster spectacle which included a cast of Fendi muses, past and present. The granddaughter of house founders Adele and Edoardo Fendi, Venturini Fendi started at the house in the 1990s under Karl Lagerfeld, and would go on to head up menswear and accessories, though this was just the second time she had also designed the womenswear line (the first was after Lagerfeld’s death in 2019). Talking to Wallpaper*, she said that it was an honour to head up such a definitive show for both her family and the house – but was adamant this was not about living in the past: ‘I tried to avoid any precise reference because, to me, anniversaries are beautiful, but you don’t want it to be a retrospective or nostalgic’. After presenting a second co-ed collecti on in September, she stepped down from the creative role to become ‘honorary president’. Her successor will be former Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri in a much-rumoured move.

READ: Silvia Venturini Fendi on luxury, lineage and looking to the future: ‘If it reminds me of something we’ve already done, we move on’

Prada agreed to purchase Versace for $1.375 billion

The subject of much speculation and rumour after Donatella Versace stepped down from her role as creative director the month prior, in April, it was confirmed that the Prada Group reached an agreement to purchase Versace after the Italian house was put on sale by former owner Capri Holdings earlier in the year. Agreeing to a deal of $1.375 billion for 100 per cent of the company – well below the initial $2 billion asking price – it marked a definitive move from the Prada Group to establish an Italian luxury conglomerate (The Prada Group comprises Miu Miu, Church's and Car Shoe; in 1999, it purchased controlling stakes in Jil Sander and Helmut Lang, though they were later sold). ‘We are delighted to welcome Versace to the Prada Group and to build a new chapter for a brand with which we share a strong commitment to creativity, craftmanship and heritage,’ said Patrizio Bertelli, Prada Group chairman and executive director, at the time (the deal was completed in December). ‘We aim to continue Versace’s legacy, celebrating and re-interpreting its bold and timeless aesthetic; at the same time, we will provide it with a strong platform.’

READ: Donatella Versace is stepping down as creative director

The Met’s Costume Institute explored the figure of the Black Dandy

In a year which was notable for its slew of fashion exhibitions – from the confection-like gowns of ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ at London’s V&A to a Rick Owens retrospective featuring a lifelike sculpture of the designer ‘urinating’ water into a trough below – the Metropolitan Museum’s annual Costume Institute exhibition in May still demands the most attention. This is largely because of the accompanying Met Gala – the starry event heralds the exhibition’s opening – though it is also down to the Costume Institute’s head curator Andrew Bolton’s eye for finding intriguing subject matter in the Met’s extensive archive. This year, he drafted Monica L Miller, author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, to help curate the exhibition, which traced the sartorial history of the Black Dandy from the 18th century to the present day. Titled ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’, alongside historical garments, it featured the work – or personal wardrobes – of Virgil Abloh, Andre Leon Talley and Grace Wales Bonner, among others, with set design for the arresting exhibition courtesy of artist Torkwase Dyson. ‘I clocked into how people have fashioned themselves as a manipulation of autonomy and ownership in which clothing is a resistance,’ she told Wallpaper* of the design, which riffed on her signature trapezoid sculptures.

READ: Torkwase Dyson’s set design for ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ at The Met meditates on ownership, charisma and histories

Saint Laurent’s viral knee-high boots heralded menswear’s dark, sensual mood

At Cannes film festival, while promoting queer ‘dom-com’ Pillion – a film which explores a dom/sub relationship between a shy parking attendant and a biker – Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård donned a thigh-high leather wader boot by Anthony Vaccarrello for Saint Laurent. Shown at the house’s runway show earlier that year, it became one of the viral accessories of the year, worn by everyone from Pedro Pascal to Marc Jacobs, and ubiquitous in magazine spreads. Inspired by an imagined meeting between two men who designed the aesthetic of the 1980s – Yves Saint Laurent and Robert Mapplethorpe – the collection captured a mood of dangerous sensuality which ran throughout the season, from Prada’s patchworked leathers to Maximilian Davis’s S/S 2026 Ferragamo collection, inspired by the languid sensuality of Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Vaccarello dubbed it a ‘menacing, seductive elegance’ – classic menswear with an inflection of kink.

READ: Inspired by Robert Mapplethorpe, Saint Laurent’s surprise menswear show captured ‘a menacing, seductive elegance’

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake channelled la dolce vita in Florence

It would prove one of the most memorable show locations of the year: unfolding against a painterly Florentine sky at sunset, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake staged its S/S 2026 show at Medicea della Petraia, a former Medici residence on Monte Morello in the rolling Tuscan countryside. A guest of Pitti Uomo menswear fair, the Issey Miyake offshoot used the occasion to introduce a new roving format of runway show: eschewing its usual place on the Paris Fashion Week schedule (its position has been taken by IM Men, another brand in the Issey Miyake family), it will show in a series of locations around the world in the coming seasons. As such, collections will draw inspiration from local landscapes: here, it was done via an evocative use of colour, utilising hues sourced through trips the design team had taken around Italy (from ’Cinque Terre Yellow’ to ‘Zucchini Flower Orange’). The result was a collection which fused Italian charm with Homme Plissé’s pioneering fabrications: played out in the villa’s winding, maze-like gardens, it was impossible not to be seduced.

READ: With an ode to Italy, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake brings its brand of fashion magic to Florence’s Pitti Uomo

Rick Owens spread the love with a Paris retrospective

‘I’m surprised I got so far,’ Rick Owens told Wallpaper* in a wide-ranging conversation to mark the opening of ‘Temple of Love’, a career-spanning retrospective at Paris’ Palais Galliera. A celebration of the American designer’s singular approach – one laced with both subversion and wit – the exhibition took attendees on a trip from his early years on Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990s (a recreation of his Los Angeles bedroom of the time appears in the exhibition) towards his blockbuster spectacles at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo (indeed, in June, an opening party took place just after his S/S 2026 menswear show, with guests simply having to cross the road from one institution to another). ‘Michèle [Lamy, Owens’ wife] kept telling me, ‘You gotta stop calling it a retrospective!’ She doesn't like the finality – I'm leaning into it,’ he said. ‘A retrospective implies a decline, it makes you think about legacy and mortality and ageing, and how long do you stay relevant, and how important is that? I don't have the answers to any of those things, but I am thinking about them and addressing them publicly.’

READ: ‘I’m surprised that I got this far’: Rick Owens on his bombastic Paris retrospective, ‘Temple of Love’

Jonathan Anderson rebooted his brand – and debuted at Dior

It was a busy June for Jonathan Anderson. Alongside his much-anticipated debut show at Dior – a menswear offering for S/S 2026 presented at Paris’ Hôtel National des Invalides, which astutely reworked formal dress codes – the Northern Irish designer also revealed a rebooted vision for his eponymous, London-based label JW Anderson, which propelled him to renown after it was established in 2008. Doing away with the label’s usual seasonal runway shows, the new vision centres on the idea of the shop: in Paris, during haute couture week, he constructed a simulacrum of a new store concept by architects Sanchez Benton which included not only a fashion collection (a greatest hits of sorts, seeing signature pieces imbued with a greater commitment to craft) but a curation of intriguing objects and curiosities, from ceramics and vintage gardening tools to furniture, art, even honey. 'I like change. I have wanted to change things around for two years now, and finally I feel at one with who I am today and what the brand means,’ he told Wallpaper*. ‘It’s things that I either want to wear or want to live with.’

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut: ‘bringing joy to the art of dressing’

Craig Green returned to the runway – and to Paris

After just over a decade in business, Craig Green remains one of British fashion’s definitive voices – a singular creative force whose imaginative collections transform humble menswear archetypes (workwear, uniforms, biker jackets) through imaginative construction and unusual fabrications, oftentimes evoking sculpture. This year, he made his return to Paris Fashion Week, having shown a year prior in his London studio, and elsewhere via lookbook (Green is one of a handful of designers who seem to be flourishing outside of the typical fashion calendar). The show was one of our highlights of the year: a poetic, free-thinking collection inspired by The Beatles, psychedelics and 1960s bed sheets – albeit in his typically inventive style. ‘Creativity how everything moves forward,’ Green told us in the October 2025 ‘Long View’ issue of Wallpaper*, in which we documented the process behind the collection. ‘You need creative thought for things to progress, and for new things to happen. You have to have the freedom to make mistakes, to create work and not live in fear.’

READ: ‘You have to be fearless’: inside the free-thinking world of Craig Green

Glenn Martens unveiled his vision for Maison Margiela

The task was unenviable: as the new creative director of Maison Margiela, Belgian designer Glenn Martens would not only have to follow the house’s namesake – arguably the most influential designer of recent times – but also John Galliano, his predecessor, whose final collection, which conjured a troupe of contorted dolls on the drizzly moonlit banks of the Seine, was a true fashion epic. But Martens, who comes with a pedigree of his own after zeitgeist-defining stints at Y/Project and Diesel, was more than up for a challenge. His own creatures were sheathed in masks (a nod to a Margiela hallmark, that of anonymity) and appeared pulled through the the walls of history – quite literally, with a melange of jacquards, Renaissance motifs and embossed leather (inspired by 16th-century Flemish wallpaper), evoking the faded grandeur of abandoned stately homes (indeed, the show set was a series of ‘palatial interiors’ printed on crumpled and crased paper). We called it a ‘thrilling’ debut, a task of ‘reinvention and reconstruction – a precarious balance of what to take and what to leave behind’.

READ: Glenn Martens’ thrilling Maison Margiela debut was a balancing act between past, present and future

Fashion East celebrated a ‘rowdy and raw’ 25 years of nurturing emerging talent

In September, Fashion East’s S/S 2026 runway show doubled as a celebration: 2025 marked 25 years of the Brick Lane-based talent incubator, which was founded by Lulu Kennedy to help forge the careers of London’s rising stars. The roll call of names which have passed through its doors is proof of its success: Jonathan Anderson, Martine Rose, Kim Jones, Craig Green and Grace Wales Bonner are all alumni of the unique scheme, which has long encapsulated London’s unique brand of young talent – defiantly creative, ‘rowdy and raw’ (as Kennedy herself described in a letter distributed to guests at the show). Taking place at the ICA, this season’s show – comprising collections by Nuba, Jacek Gleba and Mayhew – doubled as a Nike-sponsored exhibition tracing Fashion East’s impressive quarter century through its memorable clothing and ephemera, from Green’s ‘broken-fence’ chestplates to a leopard-print cake by Mowalola. Later in the year, in December, Kennedy and her creative partner Raphaelle Moore collected a Special Recognition Award at the 2025 Fashion Awards. ‘We’re proud to have created a unique space where designers have both the freedom to create fearlessly, and a family unit to uplift them,’ they said.

September’s fashion week saw almost too many debuts to count

2025 was fashion’s big reshuffle, seeing an unprecedented number of designers making their debuts at fashion’s biggest houses – from Dior to Chanel, Gucci to Celine. It was September fashion month, though, that was a true changing of the guard moment, with over 15 designers presenting their first collections as newly installed creative leads. These spanned an energetic and playful debut from Nicholas Aburn at Area in New York (the former Balenciaga designer riffed on the figure of the party girl in irreverent style), Simone Bellotti’s masterful first outing at Jil Sander, which saw him astutely explore ideas of modernity and lightness (staged in the brand’s white-walled Milan headquarters, it was a true clean slate momet), or Pierpaolo Piccioli’s typically heartfelt first collection for Balenciaga (an appearance from the Duchess of Sussex ensured column inches).

Elsewhere, notable debuts included Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe and Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier. And, while these debuts were largely lauded – particularly by critics – fiercer debates broke out online in the depths of Instagram comment sections. ‘I have read some really heinous comments about the work of many designers in these last few days,’ wrote Perfect magazine’s Edward Buchanan, former design director of Bottega Veneta, in a much-shared post. ‘It is not always perfect, and it is not always what you personally imagined it to be. You don’t have to like everything… but why not celebrate and talk about what you love?’

Though in Paris, it was Chanel and Dior which commanded the most attention

There were two debuts, though, which commanded the most attention: Jonathan Anderson’s womenswear debut for Dior (he had previously shown his first menswear collection in June) and Matthieu Blazy’s opening act for Chanel. Shrugging off the weight of expectation, both collections provided an astute and contemporary viewpoint on the future of two of fashion’s most storied houses – Anderson through a fearless ‘recoding’ of the house’s archive in his idosyncratic style (we said it was a collection of ‘bravery, vision and instinct’), Blazy through a collection of unbridled freedom and optimism (a twirling Awar Odhiang in a gown of kaleidoscopic feathers, the model who memorably closed the show, encapsulated the ‘triumphant’ mood). After Chanel, which marked the end of fashion month, we said that after all of the debuts, it finally felt like a ‘weight had been lifted’. ‘There will be no more anticipation or speculation, no more guessing games or gossip. The designers are in place, and a new chapter of fashion has begun – from there, the hard work begins.’

While Demna marked his Gucci debut with a Demi Moore-starring film

In what proved an astute move, the Georgian designer Demna – previously of Balenciaga – got ahead of the season’s other debuts by presenting his first collection as creative director of Gucci on the first day of Milan Fashion Week, allowing him a moment in which he dominated the narrative (and, of course, social media). Revealed first through a lookbook of Gucci ‘archetypes’, rewritten in his typically irreverent and subversive style (he called it a ‘bold, sexy new chapter’ for the house), it was followed up by a Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn-directed short, premiered at Milan’s Palazzo Mezzanotte. Titled The Tiger, it starred Demi Moore as the fictional ’head of Gucci international and chairman of California’ whose world begins to unravel at a family gathering. Even cleverer? Demna will get another ‘debut’ in 2026 when he holds his first runway for the house during Milan Fashion Week, in February.

READ: Gucci reveals its ‘bold, unapologetically sexy’ new era under Demna

The fashion world mourned the death of Giorgio Armani

In early September, the fashion world mourned the death of Giorgio Armani, an arbiter of Italian style who founded his eponymous house half a century ago, in 1975. One of fashion’s great success stories, Mr Armani began the label using funds made from selling his old Volkswagen Beetle; on his death, he left behind a multi-billion dollar empire spanning not only fashion but homeware, hotels, restaurants, fragrances and cosmetics. To mark his death, after a private funeral held earlier in the month, well-wishers gathered at Milan Fashion Week in September for his final Giorgio Armani show. Originally intended to celebrate 50 years in business, it took place at Brera’s Pinacoteca di Brera, where an accompanying exhibition unfolded in the galleries above. As ever, the S/S 2026 collection – modelled on a cast of Armani models past and present and watched on by muses Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton and Cate Blanchett – encapsulated Mr Armani’s brand of soft elegance, culminating with model Agnes Zogla in a glimmering gown adorned with his face. Afterwards, guests milled the galleries, where the designer’s work took its fitting place amid the great Italian masters – from Bellini to Raphael.

READ: In Milan, the fashion world gathers to say goodbye to Giorgio Armani at his final show

A Virgil Abloh exhibition celebrated his landmark legacy

Just over four years since his death, American designer Virgil Abloh leaves behind a towering legacy – one which was celebrated this September in Paris with the opening of an exhibition at the Grand Palais. Open for just a few days (cue a sold out booking system and snaking queues around the block), the exhibition opened the doors to his prolific archive of objects, clothing, ephemera, furniture and art, displayed across sprawling tables and shelves as if stepping into his headquarters. Indeed, one senses the polymathic designer – who made history as the first Black creative director of Louis Vuitton – would enjoy the exhibition’s approach, which eshewed the behind-glass formality of the traditional museum (only self-restraint stopped you from picking up the objects on display). Titled ‘Virgil Abloh: The Codes’, the idea is for it to go on display around the world. ‘This is a true celebration of Virgil's vision and ethos,’ said the late designer’s wife, Shannon Abloh. ‘This offers an invitation to the world to engage and to build upon his ideas.’

READ: Inside the Paris exhibition cataloguing Virgil Abloh’s extraordinary archive

Grace Wales Bonner is appointed at Hermès

In late October, Hermès announced the appointment of Grace Wales Bonner as the house’s head of menswear, replacing Véronique Nichanian who made the choice to step down from the role after a record-breaking 37-year tenure (the longest of any working creative director at a fashion house). It felt long overdue for the British designer. An LVMH Prize-winning designer whose deeply felt collections for her eponymous label Wales Bonner – exploring themes of Black masculinity, migration and luxury – have consistently won plaudits for rich storytelling and meticulous craftsmanship, leading many to question why she hadn’t been chosen for a creative director role sooner (she had been rumoured for roles at both Louis Vuitton and Givenchy which went to Pharrell Williams and Sarah Burton respectively). On social media, there was a rare positive consensus on the decision: in her own post, the designer, who was born in South London to a British mother and Jamaican father, expressed her ‘deep honour’ at being chosen for the role. ‘It is a dream realised to embark on this new chapter, following in a lineage of inspired craftspeople and designers,’ she wrote.

READ: Lauded British designer Grace Wales Bonner is the new head of menswear at Hermès

1980s ‘architect of glamour’ Antony Price returned to the runway

The fashion critic Alexander Fury – who is an avid collector of his work – has called Antony Price, a British fashion designer who came to prominence in the 1980s, as ‘criminally underrated’. Best known for creating the visual universe of Roxy Music, and staging similarly dramatic runway shows in the decade, the ‘architect of glamour’ made a welcome runway return in November, courtesy of a one-off salon show with London-based label 16Arlington. Staged in the latter’s east London studio, the high-profile cast – from Lily Allen to Adwoa Aboah – prowled the runway in the high-voltage creations, puffing on cigarettes before posing for photographer Felix Cooper. ‘I personally felt Antony never really received his flowers,’ Capaldo told Wallpaper*. ‘To have been able to witness such a legend at work has probably been one of the most incredible and pivotal moments in my career. It's been really magical.’ Sadly, it was announced that Price passed away at the age of 80 on 17 December 2025.

READ: ‘Architect of glamour’ Antony Price makes a high-voltage return to the runway with 16Arlington

Dario Vitale said goodbye to Versace

It was to be one of fashion’s shortest tenures – just a few short months after his debut, in December, it was announced that Italian designer Dario Vitale would be exiting Versace. The former design director of Miu Miu, and the successor to Donatella Versace, the news came as some surprise: Vitale’s debut show at Milan Fashion Week, though divisive, had won over critics and was already being worn by celebrities (Olivia Dean wore custom Versace for a recent SNL appearance, while Addison Rae was also an early adopter). We said that Vitale had ‘stripped back conceptions and ushered in an energetic new vision: sexually charged and ‘reckless’, one that harkened back to the dress codes of Gianni Versace without nostalgia.’ On social media, the announcement came with some disappointment at the way in which designers are given so little time to make their mark: ‘There’s a disturbing pattern across the fashion industry: giant companies, plucking creative directors, placing them on a pedestal, parading them as the future, and then discarding them just as quickly,’ wrote casting director Anita Bitton in a much-shared Instagram post.

In Vienna, there was a chance to see Helmut Lang’s fashion archive for the first time

Though he exited the industry 20 years ago, Helmut Lang’s influence on fashion remains palpable. A definitive figure of the 1990s, he proposed a vision of sensually-charged minimalism and utility which continues to define the way that we dress today. He also changed the way we consume fashion, too: his memorable New York runway shows stripped back the artifice of the 1980s and its elevated runway, drafting friends to walk alongside supermodels, while stripped-back campaigns were captured by a young Juergen Teller. This revolutionary spirit is celebrated in ‘Séance de Travail 1986-2005’, an exhibition which opened in December at MAK in Vienna, which marks the first time Helmut Lang’s fashion archive is on show to the public – from memorable garments to archival film, ephemera, even recreations of elements from his equally definitive stores (Lang donated his archive to the institution in 2011). ‘Looking at Helmut Lang’s store architecture, it became obvious: his stores were all about directing the gaze. This is also what exhibitions need to do, but here it was essential. A photo wouldn’t suffice; you have to experience it,’ curator Marlies Wirth told Wallpaper* of the exhibition, which is designed to immerse you in the Lang universe – all the way down to the floor, which features a seating plan from a runway show.

READ: Inside Helmut Lang’s fashion archive in Vienna, which still defines how we dress today

Marty Supreme birthed the year’s viral garment – thanks to Timothée Chalamet

The Marty Supreme press tour has already come with some memorable sartorial moments – the film’s star Timothée Chalamet and girlfiend Kylie Jenner in matching orange Chrome Hearts for one – though it was more humble track jacket which went viral in December (the Josh Safdie-directed film is out on Christmas Day in the United States). The nylon windbreaker, created by the film’s production company A24 alongside California-based label Nahmias, was part of a merch drop for the film – adorned with ‘Marty Supreme’ and three gold stars, Chalamet has barely taken it off since. Pop-ups in New York and London have seen queues around the block to lay their hands on the $250 jacket – with resale sites selling the garment for up to for up to £4,366 (that’s over 20 times its original price). It speaks not only to A24’s marketing prowess, but also to the rise of movie merch – at the end of 2024, Mary Cleary explored its rise for Wallpaper*. ‘How it will continue to play out is yet to be seen, but one thing is almost certain: movie merch will continue to take over fashion,’ she wrote – and was right.

Over the past dozen years, Italian fashion house Fendi has enriched its canon with experiments from some of the world’s most exciting creatives. Invited to play with the maison’s codes, each participant, ranging from Peter Mabeo to Sabine Marcelis, has created an annual display at Design Miami, combining furnishings with Fendi icons to offer a fresh view on the brand’s history.

Constanza Vallese interprets Fendi for Design Miami 2025

This year’s collaboration also marks an opportunity to celebrate the fashion house’s centenary, and, most importantly, the people at the heart of Fendi. ‘I was thinking of the Fendi sisters as a collective energy of creative women who embodied elegance and also strength,’ says Constanza Vallese, the Milan-based Argentinian designer tasked with this year’s display for Design Miami 2025. Her Fonderia Fendi installation will showcase objects created with five different Italian specialists, in a celebration of Fendi and a demonstration of the power of craft.

When she was invited by curator Dan Thawley to participate, Vallese had already been observing Fendi for a while, admiring ‘its ability to blend timeless tradition with something bold’. But it wasn’t until she visited its Rome HQ and workshops that she truly understood the craftsmanship and innovation behind every piece. ‘I think Fendi transcends fashion, creating a broader artistic language that made the project feel natural and aligned with my own practice,’ she says.

Vallese’s own work sits at the intersection of art, design, jewellery and craft. The objects she creates bear a trace of the hand that made them, and embody a sense of artisanal integrity. Flowers are recurring motifs, appearing in ceramic surfaces or textiles. Cross-pollination has been built into her practice from the start, evident from her otherworldly floral jewellery and cutlery created with Orit Elhanati, and her collaboration with Super Yaya on a collection of bronze furniture and textile adornments.

With Fonderia Fendi, she takes this multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to a higher level, calling on four creators that embody some of Italy’s most striking craft excellence. For bronze, she worked with the Milan-based Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, a long-term collaborator that she chose for its ability to give ‘a sense of softness and fluidity to such a strong material’. For glass, she enlisted Murano legend Barovier & Toso, while ceramics were entrusted to Officine Saffi, a non-profit studio whose approach blends tradition and experimentation. Rug maker CC-Tapis worked on bespoke tapestries with Vallese, who also collaborated with Fendi on leather elements, the first time she had worked with the material.

‘From the beginning, I felt the story of the five Fendi sisters held a strong symbolic weight. The idea of working with five Italian ateliers across five disciplines felt like a natural extension of that narrative,’ she says. ‘It became the conceptual backbone of the project: a modern homage to tradition, collaboration, and the enduring creativity of the house with my personal aesthetics.’

The objects she created are like elegant whispers that reflect both her experimental work and Fendi’s heritage, as well as something new, a creative investigation of techniques and materials. The five materials – bronze, leather, glass, ceramic and woven wool – are distinct expressions of their own craft, but they also come together in a series of objects, including a bronze chair, bench and room divider enriched by Fendi’s leather; tiled seats or plinths embossed with floral motifs and a take on the house’s logo; and mouth-blown vases layered with gold-flecked details and floral textures.

Fendi’s codes are present throughout, most meaningfully in the recreation of its Selleria stitch as an exaggerated motif. ‘It has such historical significance that it felt like a strong detail to bring into my work,’ says Vallese. ‘It’s a celebration of the human hand and the time it takes to make something with care. I wanted to carry that idea into the bronze collection, creating a tactile contrast between soft and solid, and bringing that sense of intimacy into the sculptural realm.’

Another key element is the colour palette. Vallese reproduced Fendi’s signature yellow as a pale shade, combined with blue to express a brightness informed by the Miami sunlight. The colours also feature on Vallese’s limited-edition ‘Peekaboo ISeeU’ bag, in Sorbetto yellow and Anice blue leather, and the lily patterns woven into pale yellow reliefs by CC-Tapis.

‘These hues helped set the tone for the entire installation,’ she explains. ‘In many ways, the project was about translating the codes of craft, femininity, materiality and colour into my visual language, and creating a world where softness meets structure, and where every detail, no matter how subtle, speaks to care, emotion and intention.

‘It’s an Italian salotto – a salon,’ she concludes, referencing Italy’s pavilion at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts. ‘We thought of a soft, calm space to contrast with the hardness of glass, ceramic and bronze. It will be playful like the Miami light, the kind of space that invites people to sit and enjoy it.’

‘Fonderia Fendi’ will be on show from 2-7 December at Design Miami

Nearly 36 years since she began her career at the Roman fashion house, Maria Grazia Chiuri is set to return to Fendi as chief creative officer – a much-rumoured move which will see her replace Silvia Venturini Fendi, who announced she was stepping away from her creative role at the company earlier this month.

The Rome-born designer is best known for her nine-year tenure as creative director of Dior’s womenswear and haute couture lines (she was succeeded by Jonathan Anderson, who debuted his men’s and womenswear collections for the Parisian house earlier this year). Prior to that, she was creative director of Valentino alongside Pierpaolo Piccioli, who she had previously worked with at Fendi.

Maria Grazia Chiuri is Fendi’s chief creative officer

‘I return to Fendi with honour and joy, having had the privilege of beginning my career under the guidance of the House’s founders, the five sisters. Fendi has always been a forge of talents and a starting point for many creatives in the industry, thanks to the extraordinary ability of these five women to foster and nurture generations of vision and skill,’ she said in a statement today.

The creative direction of the house has been in limbo since the departure of Kim Jones in December last year. In the time since, Venturini Fendi – a third-generation member of the Fendi family who joined the company in 1992 – has overseen the design of the house’s men’s and womenswear collections, including a lauded 100th anniversary show in February.

Though not specified, Chiuri is expected to oversee both the house’s men’s and women’s collections, as well as haute couture and accessories. Her first show will take place in February of next year during the womenswear edition of Milan Fashion Week. Venturini Fendi, meanwhile, will stay on as ‘honorary president’.

‘Maria Grazia Chiuri is one of the greatest creative talents in fashion today, and I am delighted that she has chosen to return to Fendi to continue expressing her creativity within the LVMH group, after sharing her bold vision of fashion,’ says Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH Group, of which Fendi is a part. ‘Surrounded by the Fendi teams and in a city that is dear to her, I am convinced that Maria Grazia will contribute to the artistic renewal and future success of the Maison, while perpetuating its unique heritage.’

LVMH will be hoping that Chiuri brings her Midas touch to the house: during her tenure at Dior, she grew sales from €2.2 billion in 2017 to €9.5 billion in 2023. As the house’s first female creative director, she brought a feminist lens to her collections – memorably, her first collection included a T-shirt reading ‘We Should All Be Feminists’, taken from the 2014 essay by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; and she went on to collaborate with numerous women artists during her tenure, including Judy Chicago, Mickalene Thomas and Eva Jospin.

‘I am particularly grateful for the work accomplished by my teams and the ateliers,’ she said at the time. ‘Their talent and expertise allowed me to realise my vision of committed women’s fashion, in close dialogue with several generations of female artists. Together, we have written an impactful chapter of which I am immensely proud.’

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A third-generation member of the Fendi dynasty, Silvia Venturini Fendi first visited the Roman fashion house’s atelier on Rome’s Via Borgognona aged one. At that time, it was run by her mother Anna and her four sisters, Paola, Franca, Carla and Alda; later, she would grow up there around Karl Lagerfeld, who would become creative director in 1965, the beginning of a 54-year tenure which ended with his death in 2019. In 1992, she would begin working alongside him, later becoming artistic director of accessories and menswear.

‘He was always interested in the moment. The past was the past, and the future we don’t know. So let’s live in the moment. It has shaped my view,’ she told Wallpaper* in a recent interview, discussing Fendi’s 100th anniversary show, which took place in February. After the departure of Kim Jones the December before, she took on responsibility for the house’s men’s and womenswear lines – the second time she had been sole creative director of the brand (for a brief period in 2019, after Lagerfeld’s death, she designed both the men’s and women’s collections).

Silvia Venturini Fendi to become ‘honorary president’ of Fendi

Just a few days after presenting a colourful men’s and womenswear collection in Milan last week, it has been announced that Venturini Fendi is to step away from her creative responsibilities and become the ‘honorary president’ of the house (Fendi was acquired by LVMH in 2000, taking away family control). ‘In her new capacity, she will focus on supporting Fendi’s heritage, while continuing to champion the brand worldwide and promoting the Maison’s rich history, exceptional craftsmanship, and the world of Fendi Casa,’ read a statement from the house. A new ‘creative organisation’ will be revealed in due course.

‘These have been truly exciting years, a journey I have walked also in the name of my grandmother Adele, my mother Anna, and her sisters,’ says Venturini Fendi. ‘My heart turns to Karl, an extraordinary master who granted me the honour of working by his side, teaching me the art of sharing, a defining quality in my family’s history of women, while guiding me to nurture and protect my own creative vision so that I could then fly on my own.

‘What a wonderful journey it has been, not only creatively but also from a human perspective: first through my bond with Karl Lagerfeld, then with Kim Jones and last but not least with my fantastic team, which over the years has become part of my family,’ she continues.

‘Her vision has guided Fendi from its Roman artisanal roots into the future, culminating in the celebration of the House’s 100-year anniversary,’ adds Ramon Ros, Chairman and CEO of Fendi. ‘I am thrilled to see the new projects that Silvia will lead in her new position, contributing not only to Fendi’s legacy and values but the world of Design and Craftsmanship around the world.’

READ: Silvia Venturini Fendi on luxury, lineage and looking to the future: ‘If it reminds me of something we’ve already done, we move on’

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A wild, animalistic mood permeated the A/W 2025 collections, where a frenetic collage of clashing animal prints, slices of faux fur and shearling, and fronds of feathers suggested a need for escape and release. This was the starting point of the cover shoot for the September 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, an exploration of the uninhibited, subversive glamour which ran through the season, where tropes of luxury were twisted, or turned on their head.

Photographed by Austrian image-maker Nicole Maria Winkler and styled by Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes, the shoot sees model Costanze Van Rosmalen – who made a memorable runway debut at Prada’s A/W 2025 show, titled ‘Raw Glamour’ – inhabit a surreal domestic scene, a hallmark of Winkler’s work (for Wallpaper’s March 2025 Style Issue, she created a liminal apartment complete with disorientating trompe l’oeil wall coverings, part of an ongoing collaboration with set designer Kim Harding).

‘What I find exciting is creating deconstructed settings which emphasise the model’s performance for the camera. It doesn’t feel like her natural habitat but a constructed scene,’ she says. ‘In this instance, the double-height stage resembled a domestic set-up – a living room complete with sofa and TV and a bed on top. In another setup our model Constanze casually speed-walked on a treadmill wearing thigh-high Acne Studios boots – one of my favourite moments.’

‘Faux animal furs and reptile skins were really prevalent this season,’ adds Hughes. ‘For this shoot, I liked this idea of clashing them to create these surreal hybrid combinations, layered up in a single look. They are also textures synonymous with traditional glamour and luxury – we wanted to play with them to create a modern way of dressing up.’

Explore the shoot below.

The September 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Though it is everywhere around her, Silvia Venturini Fendi does not like to reside in the past. A scion of the Fendi dynasty – a largely matriarchal lineage – she first visited the Roman fashion house’s atelier on Via Borgognona aged one, and grew up there, watching her mother Anna and her four sisters, Paola, Franca, Carla and Alda, at work (they had inherited the fur and leather goods workshop from their parents, founders Adele and Edoardo Fendi, transforming it into a globally recognised brand).

Aged five, she met Karl Lagerfeld at the beginning of his 54-year tenure at the house – she remembers her mother’s excitement at his visits, and her own desire to follow him around to find out why – later working alongside the designer when she joined the company officially in 1992 (she briefly escaped to Rio de Janeiro, where she made jewellery on the beach). Two years later, she would begin the roles she has held since – artistic director of accessories and menswear – and, for a brief period in 2019 after Lagerfeld’s death, she designed the womenswear line as well, a role she has recently taken on again following Kim Jones’ departure last October.

Silvia Venturini Fendi on 100 years of Fendi

So when it comes to Fendi, she’s seen it all. And if she’s seen it before, she doesn’t want to see it again. ‘If it reminds me of something we’ve already done, then we can’t do it. We move on,’ she says. She learnt such mantras from Lagerfeld, a towering figure of fashion who was nonetheless insistent about never undertaking a retrospective of his work during his lifetime (it was not until after his death that the Costume Institute, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, hosted the career-spanning ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’, in 2023). ‘He was always interested in the moment. The past was the past, and the future we don’t know. So let’s live in the moment. It has shaped my view.’

Rome itself is a city of unavoidable history, where daily life unfolds around the hulking ruins of past civilisations. Fendi, which celebrates 100 years this year, is part of this history, too – a byword for Roman style that’s woven into the city’s topography. It’s on the first billboard you see after border control at Leonardo da Vinci airport, and its flagship store is just down the road from the Spanish Steps, while numerous landmarks, including the Grotto of Diana at Villa d’Este, the Temple of Venus and Rome, and the Trevi Fountain, have been restored by the house in a series of ambitious, multimillion-euro projects. At the last, Lagerfeld hosted the house’s 90th-anniversary couture show, ‘Legends and Fairytales’, in 2015. In an act of true fashion magic, a transparent runway gave the appearance that the models were walking on the fountain’s waters.

‘Rome can give so much information, suggestions, emotions,’ says Venturini Fendi. ‘You really see the coexistence of different eras, but also inspirations, movements, styles, architecture. It’s always a place of information. But it’s not like living in a museum. When you are a Roman, you look at everything, you use it. Everything you touch has a story. I live in a very old house – if I dig in my garden, who knows what I would find.’

It could well be a metaphor for her role at Fendi, where, despite her desire to honour the past (a conversation with Venturini Fendi is peppered with reminiscences of her mother, her childhood, her aunts, the atelier), there is no desire to dig up the garden, nor raise the dead. Instead, she relates to the past not through what she calls ‘scientific research’, but the more tremulous act of memory – interpretation over fact, emotion over logic. It’s why she rarely visits the house’s archive, located on the lower ground floor of the Fendi HQ at Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, though she works in the design studio just six floors above. Even when it came to designing her A/W 2025 collection, presented in February in Milan and doubling as the start of the house’s centenary celebrations, she did not look at past garments. ‘I tried to avoid any precise reference because, to me, anniversaries are beautiful, but you don’t want it to be a retrospective or nostalgic.’

We talk in Venturini Fendi’s glass-walled corner office – affectionately known as ‘the aquarium’ – on the sixth floor, which offers an expansive view of Rome’s industrial hinterlands and the surrounding countryside. Like everything in the city, the building has a past – in this case, a darker one, having been commissioned by Benito Mussolini as the centrepiece of his reimagined ‘Roman Empire’, but later abandoned by the Fascist leader after the onset of the Second World War. Comprising a monolithic travertine block, perforated by 216 arches, it’s a sharp, modernist interpretation of the Coliseum, and it gained a new lease of life as the Fendi HQ in 2015 after a renovation by local firm Marco Costanzi Architects.

‘It’s a building that had been forgotten for a long time, which was a good thing, because it belonged to a particular moment in history,’ says Venturini Fendi. That said, she appreciates that it is linked to a celebration of labour and industry – ‘to work, and to Italian creativity’. Around its base are a series of 28 neoclassical sculptures, which imagine Italy’s various trades in mythic style. It’s a nod to the way that Fendi, since its beginnings as a leather and fur workshop, has been a house of craft and making. Founded in 1925 by her grandparents, it was foremost a furrier, though it also created leather goods (fur remains, but it is now just a small part of a larger fashion empire, LVMH having acquired a major stake in it in 2000). And these values endure. ‘Fendi has always been a very luxurious company. Buying a fur [back then] was like buying jewellery – it was special.’

Venturini Fendi is currently in the middle of preparing a second collection as the sole creative director of the men’s, women’s and accessories collections, following the centenary show earlier this year. Held at the house’s recently renovated Milanese HQ on Via Solari as part of the city’s fashion week, the co-ed show played out on a vast carpeted runway with a guest list that included Luca Guadagnino, Elizabeth Olsen and Sarah Jessica Parker (the last’s role in Sex and the City would play a part in immortalising Venturini Fendi’s most enduring creation, the ‘Baguette’ bag). At the start of the show, Venturini Fendi’s seven-year-old twin grandsons Dardo and Tazio – the children of her daughter Delfina Delettrez Fendi, the house’s artistic director for jewellery – pulled open a huge set of doors designed to recall those of the historic atelier and store on Via Borgognona.

‘The idea was to have this allegorical moment, opening a door to create a passage from past to future,’ she says, noting that their vast size was intended to evoke the feeling she had when visiting the Fendi workshops as a child. ‘Everything looked oversized and important and magical, almost like Alice in Wonderland,’ she recalls. To complete the full-circle moment, the twins wore recreations of a Lagerfeld-designed outfit that Venturini Fendi had worn at a similar age for a Fendi campaign. ‘That was the moment where I really felt the energy of being involved. The adrenaline that fashion can give in those 15 minutes is so strong. My grandchildren are waiting for the next show because they think they will be in it every time – they loved all the attention,’ she laughs. ‘I probably created two monsters.’

The show itself captured a mood of insouciant Roman glamour, which, for womenswear, shifted between an hourglass silhouette – plissé in construction and descending into a frilled ‘lettuce’ hem – and flourishes of ‘fur’, from intarsia and gheronato patchwork coats and jackets to stoles, some of which dragged along the floor as models walked. Bar one chevron coat in mink (‘for tradition’), each was an ‘illusion’ – in a painstaking act of craft by the Fendi fur atelier, the ‘fur’ was actually shearling, treated like fur pelts and meticulously trimmed and dyed to resemble fox, mink and sable. Such experimentations take her back to her mother and aunts, who radically shifted the construction of a fur coat by removing the lining for lightness, or turning it inside out so that the leather skin was on the exterior. ‘They were considered crazy to try and demolish a status symbol,’ she says. ‘When you have such a long history behind you, you look at it, but you have to find a way to translate it for tomorrow.’

The response to the show was rapturous, though Venturini Fendi already knew it was a good collection. She had felt it since the fittings, where she watched the models – a cast of Fendi muses past and present, from Doutzen Kroes and Yasmin Le Bon to Karen Elson and Penelope Tree – occupy the clothing with confidence, an energy that continued backstage. ‘I could feel how empowered those women were,’ she says. ‘I was thinking about all the beautiful people that I’ve seen wearing Fendi, and who have been nourishing my imagination and taste.’ It comes back to the essence of Fendi, which is difficult to pin down – the house has never had a definitive silhouette to riff on, like Christian Dior’s Bar jacket or Yves Saint Laurent’s Le Smoking tuxedo – but when captured, it is undeniable. ‘I think from the reaction on the night, people were like, that’s Fendi. And to me, that’s how Fendi should be.’ Reviewers agreed, with many observers noting that a large part of this was down to Venturini Fendi’s singular position as a third-generation member of the fashion dynasty. ‘A rich yet unsentimental example of the value of familial ties and insider knowledge,’ said The Cut’s Cathy Horyn; ‘She seems to know Fendi-ness by heart,’ said WWD.

Venturini Fendi recognised her life was different to others as a child, largely because of the ways her mother dressed her and her sisters. ‘She worked day and night, but she still loved fashion, she loved beauty – she always saw the aesthetic life as substantial. From an early age, she taught us to be very different individuals from the rest – in the 1960s, all the girls were dressed in pastel colours, while we were in grey, navy or black.’ One trip to the beach with her nanny and two sisters prompted commiserations from a shopkeeper, who thought that, because they were dressed all in black, they were from a local orphanage.‘We had to say, no, it’s just fashion,’ says Venturini Fendi, with a smile. This is part of what she calls a transmission of taste. Because, while the world bristles at ‘nepo babies’, there is an undeniable weight to knowledge that’s passed from generation to generation. After all, this is the traditional way of Italian craft workshops and bottegas, where technique lives on through its transmission from parent to child.

‘I’ve tried to teach my own children by example,’ she says. ‘I’m not the kind of mother who is there giving them lessons, but I think that they look to me, and how I behave. With Delfina, I feel very proud – she has a great sense of fashion, she recognises beauty.’

Who knows what the next chapter in the Fendi story will be – LVMH is yet to announce whether Jones’ role as artistic director of womenswear and couture will be replaced by somebody external. But for now, Venturini Fendi is happy she gets a chance to do another show, and to write her own slice of history. ‘It’s going to be interesting to be represented in the archive. I want people to say, maybe she didn’t do so many collections but the ones she did, they were good, deep, smart – a moment. Some companies change a lot, but we don’t. Karl was here 54 years. If you go in the archive and there are just these four collections by me, that’s enough.’

A version of this story appears in the September 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Models: Ajak at Established, Finlay at Models 1. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Set design: Maya Angeli. Hair: Masayoshi Fujita at Of Substance using Oribe. Make-up: Sandra Cooke using 111 Skin and Merit. Manicure: Cherrie Snow at Snow Creatives using Joonbyrd. Digi tech: John Cronin. Photography assistant: Pablo Gallegos. Set design assistant: Archie Thomson. Fashion assistant: Lucy Proctor. Production assistant: Ady Huq.

For Wallpaper’s September Style Issue, we slip the surly bonds of stuffy sobriety to embrace the spirit of glamour and luxury that flowed through the A/W 2025 collections, twisted and subverted by the season’s designers. Case in point: Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ womenswear collection took an unfiltered look at luxuriousness and femininity under the banner of ‘Raw Glamour’.

There were similar explorations of glamorous archetypes at Miu Miu – notably, the pointed 1950s ‘bullet’ bras – and at Fendi, for which meticulously dyed shearlings were made to appear like fox, mink and sable. The vibe shift is reflected in our womenswear shoot, styled by fashion and creative director Jason Hughes and photographed by Nicole Maria Winkler.

It was a similar story at the menswear shows, which saw garments shot through with a sense of sensuality, elements of which Jason, working with Melanie + Ramon, picked up on for our menswear shoot, capturing a new ‘dangerous’ mood.

Meanwhile, fashion features editor Jack Moss unpacks the trends of the season, and he also travelled to Rome to meet Silvia Venturini Fendi, who, as Fendi celebrates 100 years, has taken on sole creative control following the exit of Kim Jones. In Paris, Hannah Tindle talks to Nicolas Di Felice, who is breathing new life into Courrèges with a sleek, modernist vision influenced by art, architecture and raves.

Taking a peek behind the scenes, design critic Hugo Macdonald profiles production studio Bureau Betak, the creative superpower behind spectacular A/W25 runway show sets for the likes of Valentino, Gucci and Burberry. Danielle Demetriou travelled to Tokyo to visit Acne Studios’ new flagship store in Aoyama, while Hannah Silver headed to Paris to speak to Jonathan Anderson about his new vision for JW Anderson, which also sees him turn art curator (and art dealer).

Sofia de la Cruz chats with Harry Nuriev – a designer beloved by the fashion industry – as he opens his new east London restaurant, Noisy Oyster. And finally, for the latest in our End Paper series, Simon Chilvers delivers a paean to brown, fashion’s most underrated hue.

Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief

On the womenswear cover: Coat (on top), £26,000, by Fendi. Coat (underneath), price on request, by Balenciaga. Boots, price on request, by Acne Studios. Bodysuit; tights, both stylist’s own. ‘No 2’ bar stool, from £3,052, by Eileen Gray, from Aram. Alpaca rug, £4,763, by The Rug Company

On the menswear cover: Jacket, £2,100, by Numeroventuno by Alessandro Dell’Acqua. Shirt, £900, by Zegna. T-shirt; jeans, both price on request, by Celine. Boots, £1,700, by Prada. Necklace, £270, by 886 The Royal Mint. Belt, £289, by Commission

The September 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 7 August 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Milan Design Week 2025 saw the fashion contingent put on its most comprehensive showing at the design fair to date, taking up residence in some of the city’s storied landmarks to do so.

From Gucci’s ‘Bamboo Encounters’ staged in the cloisters of San Simpliciano and Aesop’s ‘The Second Skin’ exhibition in the sacristy of the Chiesa del Carmine, to Loewe at the Palazzo Citterio and Prada Frames taking over the iconic Milano Centrale station, the showcase proved a heady melting pot of sensorial immersions and design collaborations.

Here, Scarlett Conlon highlights the standout fashion moments of Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week 2025 – from Loewe’s playful artist-designed teapots to a blockbuster Charlotte Perriand exhibition from Saint Laurent.

Georg Jensen’s ‘Gelateria Danese’

Danish design house Georg Jensen provided Milan Design Week’s most palatable pit stop: Gelateria Danese, an ephemeral ice cream parlour that drew inspiration from the interiors of Copenhagen’s Palace Hotel (opened in 1910, Georg Jensen provided furnishings and silverware) while referencing Milanese café culture. On the menu was traditional affogato (coffee was sourced from local roastery Prolog), while an array of ice cream flavours were dreamed up by Copenhagen-based Italian chef Chiara Barla. Each was served on Georg Jensen silverware, from coupes to tub-shaped cups, as well as spoons taken from ‘The Artisans Series’. ‘You’ll find pieces you’d typically associate with ice cream, but instead of being disposable, they’re crafted in silver,’ said recently appointed creative director Paula Gerbase. ‘Not only creating durable objects, but elevating the fleeting moments we use them in.’

The Row’s first homeware offering

In signature understated style, The Row launched ‘Home’ at Salone. Comprising a collection of three handwoven throws and a quilted blanket, the Olsens’ first foray into luxury home design was presented elegantly draped over steel and bronze rails by Julian Schnabel in the frescoed rooms of what will shortly become the New York-based brand’s Milanese HQ. Created with artisans in Kashmir, India, each blanket takes between 600 hours to craft and employs a different weaving technique from which they take their name: the Classic, The Row Weave, and the Himalayan Weave, arriving in four colourways – mink, ivory, brown and black. Lightweight at less than 14.5 microns and discreetly embroidered with the brand’s initials, they stand to become one of the year’s most coveted IYKYK home improvements.

Prada Frames boards a restored Gio Ponti train

As the city’s most majestic portal, Milano Centrale station proved the perfect location for the fourth edition of Prada Frames, ‘In Transit’. The annual event curated by Formafantasma that invites panellists from all areas of design, including architecture, engineering and environmental planning, into thematic dialogue has become one of the most popular attractions at Design Week, taking place in iconic landmarks around the city. This year, attendees were invited into the station’s Padiglione Reale that once served as the waiting room for Italian royalty and heads of state before boarding the Arlecchino train designed by Gio Ponti and Giulio Minoletti in the 1950s and recently restored by the Fondazione FS Italiane (out of the entire original fleet, this was the only one viable to be brought back to its former glory). Over the course of the week, discussions on digital, global, material and hacking infrastructures, along with interrogations of infrastructures of power, played out on board, seeking to examine ‘the impact of digital revolutions and global distribution networks on daily life’. Once again brilliantly introduced and contextualised by Alice Rawsthorn, several key takeaways included the necessity for infrastructure to collaborate rather than colonise, integrating ancestral knowledge to reframe industrial design, and the urgent need to re-evaluate industrial infrastructures to work in conjunction with the natural world rather than see them as separate entities.

READ: Aboard Gio Ponti's colourful Arlecchino train in Milan, a conversation about design with Formafantasma

Stone Island’s ‘sonic experience’

Stone Island invited visitors to its ‘sonic experience’ called ‘Friendly Pressure: Studio One’, staged in collaboration with Friendly Pressure, the London-based sound system studio founded by Shivas Howard Brown. A study of the textures of sound, the week-long programme of events took place in spaces that had bespoke hi-fidelity audio systems installed by Friendly Pressure in direct response to the precise dimensions of the space to rouse emotions akin to ‘the golden age of recorded music, treating sound as both a sensory and physical experience,’ the brand relayed. Studio One, where the events took place, was inspired by Carlo Scarpa, while inside soundproofing by Soundwave Jasmine and CC-Tapis rugs ensured the desired sound dispersion. Mirroring Stone Island’s sartorial approach to how materials respond to their environment, an allegorical experience emerged, parallelling reactions to touch and sound.

Louis Vuitton’s latest Objets Nomades series

Louis Vuitton revealed its 2025 home collection by staging a takeover of the neoclassical residence of Palazzo Serbelloni in the centre of Milan alongside its Objets Nomades series. Featuring designs from leading artists that the Paris fashion house has collaborated with over the years – including Patricia Urquiola, Jaime Hayon and Atelier Biagetti – it drew special attention to the work of futurist artist Fortunato Depero and Charlotte Perriand, whose textile work for the house was realised for the first time. Elsewhere, a special-edition trunk celebrating the house’s original design icon, the Malle Vaisselier, opened to reveal a service of refined porcelain and delicate glasses. It was the more whimsical items on display that drew the most attention: the Odyssée table football and a pinball machine inspired by the A/W 2025 fashion show by creative director Pharrell Williams were designed for Studio Louis Vuitton by Estúdio Campana and balanced the splendour with a cheeky wink.

Miu Miu’s ‘Literary Club’

The doors to The Miu Miu Literary Club opened once again during Salone, inviting guests into the Circolo Filologico Milanese that had been given a modernist Miu Miu makeover. Conceived under the direction of Miuccia Prada and curated by writer and researcher Olga Campofreda, the theme for this year was ‘A Woman’s Education’ and saw two days of panel discussions exploring the subjects of girlhood, love and sex education through the pages of Simone de Beauvoir’s 1954 coming-of-age novella ‘The Inseparables’ and Fumiko Enchi’s groundbreaking 1957 novel charting female desire, ‘The Waiting Years’. On day one, author Lou Stoppard moderated a panel discussion exploring ‘the power of girlhood’ in the context of De Beauvoir’s work with Lauren Elkin, Geetanjali Shree, and Veronica Raimo, and on day two Kai Isaiah Jamal delved into Enchi’s with through the lens of ‘love, sex, and desire’ with Nicola Dinan, Naoise Dolan, and Sarah Manguso, both championing the voices of female literary voices past, present and future.

Valextra’s ‘travelling sculpture’ with Zaven

Milanese leather goods brand Valextra is famed for sitting at the intersection of fashion and design with an archive dating back to 1937 that includes collaborations with AG Fronzoni and the first Compasso D’Oro award. For its Salone project this year, it continued its Vocabulario Project, inviting the Venice-based design studio Zaven to work with one of its most famous creations from the last century and recontextualise it through an idiosyncratic lens. The result is the ‘Costa 70 x Zaven’ suitcase, an identical re-creation of the Giovanni Fontana-designed luggage that dates back to the 1960s filled with a series of abstract resin objects that Zaven designed to be engineered into a build-it-yourself home sculpture. ‘Responsive and thought-provoking design has been at the core of Valextra’s DNA since 1937 and Zaven mirrors our own passion in realising objects of excellence in both a functional and meaningful way with this exceptional reinvention of an archival icon,’ says Valextra CEO Xavier Rougeaux.

READ: Valextra’s collaboration with Zaven is a ‘travelling sculpture’ with its own suitcase

Brioni bottles a rare fragrance with Lalique

If time is regarded as one of the greatest luxuries, then Brioni bottled it for Salone. A project four years in the making was unveiled at its Via Gesu flagship to mark Brioni’s 80th anniversary. Beloved for its exquisite attention to sartorial detail, the brand unveiled the Dualité Crystal Edition Perfume in collaboration with Lalique, an ode to artisanal craftsmanship and the art of olfactory. The glass bottle – of which only 18 are available – stands at nearly 40cm high and features an internal sculpture that was created using the cire-perdue method, the lost-wax technique first used by René Lalique in 1893 and passed down through generations of glassmakers. Inside, the Extrait de Parfum scent was created by master perfumer Michel Almairac over a seven-year-period and features notes of green apple, violet, Ambroxan, and rare iris butter. ‘This collaboration between our maisons became one of shared passion, representing everything we stand for: a dedication to time, the selection of precious raw materials, exquisite artisanry and the difference that human touch makes,’ says Brioni design director, Norbert Stumpfl.

Luca Faloni collaborates with Winetage

Luca Faloni partnered with Winetage, the fellow Italian brand that upcycles wine barrels into original design objects, to create a daybed upholstered in its exquisite brushed linen fabrics. Crafted from wood that still bears the red-wine stains and aromas from years of maturing the best Italian vintages, the daybed is furnished with padded tubes in fruity Bordeaux-red tones. Designed to spotlight the best of Made in Italy, the finished product combines fashion, wine, and design, providing the perfect resting spot to indulge in all three.

Missoni Home opens new Milan store

Missoni Home might be a mainstay in many a Milano dwelling, but it didn’t have its own spot in the city it calls home until this design week. Beside the brand’s Via Solferino showroom, the first dedicated Missoni Home boutique opened this week with its interior decor riffing on several of the brand’s most distinctive signatures, including degradé-painted pillars, zig-zag wallpaper, and its joyful rainbow colour palette, featuring a special curation of its expansive home offering.

Tod’s celebrates Made in Italy craft

As one of Italy’s most recognisable design icons, the Tod’s Gommino driving shoe holds a special place in the Made in Italy playbook. For Salone, the brand released a limited edition of the driving shoe (above) and unveiled a special coffee-table photography tome, ‘Italian Hands; Artisanal Stories From Italy’. A celebration of the processes and products that are exported all over the world, it features prominent Italian tastemakers alongside the artisans with whom they collaborate and promote – including master Murano glassblower Giberto Arrivabene, master of terracotta Rosario Spina, artisan of brass and bronze Ernesto Carati; and pesto connoisseur Christian Belforte. ‘This book is a tribute to those who, every day, with passion and commitment, contribute to keeping a fundamental part of our cultural identity alive,’ says Tod’s group president Diego Della Valle. ‘It is a recognition of those who know how to enhance craftsmanship, making it a symbol of authentic, timeless quality, even for new generations.’

Gucci’s Bamboo Encounters

Few materials are as synonymous with Gucci as bamboo. One of the fashion house’s defining motifs since it was first used on its iconic handbag in 1947, its legacy defines the innovation inherent to the Florentine brand. For Milan Design Week this year, the house invited seven artists to give their take on the material in their own mediums for its installation ‘Gucci Bamboo Encounters’. Curated by 2050+ founder Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli and staged in the cloisters of the Chiostri di San Simpliciano, works ranged from a sculpture by Swedish-Chilean artist Anton Alvarez and a collection of baskets featuring hand-blown glass accents by Palestinian architect, artist, and researcher Dima Srouji, to a jubilant collection of bamboo kites by the Dutch design collective Kite Club. They were joined by artists Nathalie Du Pasquier, Laurids Galleé, and Sisan Lee, each of whom explored the shapeshifting possibilities of this chameleonic material.

READ: Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli on curating Gucci Bamboo Encounters at Fuorisalone: ‘We didn’t want to produce commodities’

‘La Prima Notte Di Quiete’ by Loro Piana and Dimoremilano

Loro Piana may have staged its design week event in the Cortile della Seta courtyard of its Milan headquarters, but there was nothing familiar about this space. Realised in collaboration with design duo Dimorestudio (founded by Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci), the usually light-flooded space had been transformed into a decadent 1970s film set meets affluent Milanese penthouse accessed via a cinema foyer draped in red theatre curtains. Invited through the curtains, visitors were presented with a fully furnished home, featuring furniture designed by Dimorestudio for Loro Piana Interiors alongside exquisite vintage pieces upholstered in Loro Piana’s luxurious home textiles and art from Tornabuoni Art, Cardi Gallery, and Galleria Gracis e Secci Gallery. Immersing visitors in the space for four-minute intervals was a soundtrack curated by music composer and multimedia artist Nicola Guiducci that ranged from excerpted dialogue on a rainy evening to a phone ringing and a piano playing that both heightened the cinematic experience.

Saint Laurent’s homage to Charlotte Perriand

When it comes to the design world, Yves is never far from Saint Laurent. For its design week installation, creative director Anthony Vaccarello looked to one of the design heroes of the French fashion house’s founder, Charlotte Perriand, commissioning four pieces of furniture she conceived between 1943 to 1967 that have only existed as sketches or prototypes until now. Comprising the rosewood and cane sofa designed for the Japanese ambassador’s Paris residence in 1967; the rose and cherrywood Mille-Feuilles table that she made a reduced-scale model of in 1963; the Indochina Guest Armchair she designed for her own home in 1943; and the Rio de Janeiro bookcase she designed in 1962 for her husband Jacques Martin’s apartment, the collection has been produced in full scale for the very first time for Milan Design Week. Standing in homage to the design talents of both Perriand and Saint Laurent, each piece in the collection will be available on an exclusive made-to-order basis following the showcase.

Versace’s celebration of the ‘Art of Living’

The Versace brand may be undergoing creative changes following the announcement last month that Donatella Versace would be stepping down as creative director, but its extravagant proposition for home design remains steadfast at its Milan Design Week presentation, The Versace Art of Living. Described as a ‘universe that brings a fantasy of poise, extravagance and heritage to life’, the star of the show this season was the reinvention of the ‘Harem’ chair, its steel frame made bountiful with the addition of thick padded satin cushions and, of course, a large gold Medusa head, alongside an update the of the 1994 wooden chair the ‘Vanitas’, upholstered in velvet. The house referenced Versace’s last fashion show at the event, stating that, like its ready-to-wear offering, ‘to embody Versace is to embrace a way of living at once proudly historied and decidedly modern, and to live it – to wear it, eat from it, sit on it, sleep in it – with uncompromising intention.’

Dolce & Gabbana’s ode to ‘love and hospitality’

The master of Southern Italian charm, Dolce & Gabbana, brought the verdant coastal landscapes of its founders’ native Sicily to the northern design capital for Salone with Verde Maiolica, a porcelain service in green and white. Celebrating the handmade craftsmanship of the region, its botanical design finds its roots in the Mediterranean shrub, while the collection – comprising tea and coffee sets alongside tableware, flatware and glassware – ‘represents and narrates the tale of love and hospitality’, relayed the brand at its Via Broggi cocktail presentation.

Fendi Casa’s collaboration with Lewis Kemmenoe

Fendi Casa continued its Design Miami collaboration with British designer Lewis Kemmenoe in Milan, seeing him take over the windows of its Via Manzoni flagship with his large-scale abstract panels. Acting as a metaphor for the savoir-faire behind the Rome-based brand’s furniture, they encapsulated the duality of the new interiors collection that is at once sumptuous and minimal. New to its line-up this year was ‘Cover’ sofa, designed to be ‘dressed up or down’ – a sartorial reference to reliable wardrobe staples; the ‘Twist’ chair by Stefano Gallizioli, a wood structure upholstered in leather with armrests resembling the swirls of a ribbon; and the modular ‘Later’ sofa, designed by Ceriani Szostak and inspired by the rationalist architecture of Fendi’s iconic Rome HQ that is famously both imposing and inviting.

Issey Miyake’s ‘Type-XIII Atelier Oï’ lighting

Issey Miyake invited guests to its Milan flagship to unveil ‘Type-XIII Atelier Oï’, the fruits of its collaborative project between the Swiss design studio Atelier Oï and A-POC Able Issey Miyake, which explores the seemingly limitless possibilities of its iconic ‘A Piece of Cloth’ concept. Unveiling lighting prototypes that use one piece of wire and a piece of cloth in several formations, the house presented two distinctive series. The first, the ‘O Series’, draws inspiration from the Japanese art of Ikebana, with five sculptural lights designed to take on the same decorative presence as flower arrangements that can be easily moved around the home with the recycled polyester ‘Steam Stretch’ material used in A-POC Able’s clothes-making process appearing to blossom in spontaneous directions. The second, the ‘A Series’, pays homage to Miyake’s iconic 1997 APOC show that saw a formation of models take to the runway connected by one continuous roll of fabric. Here, a pre-knitted roll stretches out to create a three-shade interconnected light installation that can be cut to size to suit the space it is destined to take pride of place in.

READ: A-POC Able Issey Miyake’s lighting collaboration with Atelier Oï is based on its philosophy of ‘a piece of cloth’

Hermès’ brilliant white box

In a departure from the darkened rooms of recent years, Hermès turned its La Pelota venue into a brilliant-white box. ‘To design an object, to make it, a box is needed,’ visitors were told before stepping into the stark space. Designed by Charlotte Macaux Perelman, architect and artistic director of Hermès collections for the home, the cavernous box-like room presented four polyhedron shapes descending from the ceiling and emitting a fluorescent glow beneath.‘Like a sculptor's marble block, [the box] contains the object, the idea we have of it, and the dream it inspires,’ the house continued. Each of these suspended structures featured this year’s ‘Objects For The Home’, including the ‘Contrepoint Dinner Service’ by Nigel Peake and Pivot D’Hermès side table by Tomás Alonso alongside the ‘Double D’Hermès’ jugs and ‘H Partition’ throws by Studio Hermes. Positioned both inside the cavities and on cutout shelves along their surface, the intersection between an object of function and admiration was brought to the fore.

READ: A bit of all white: Hermès unveils its latest home collections in Milan

Armani Casa’s ‘Oriental Inks’

After two years of delighting Milan Design Week-goers by throwing the doors open to his historic Palazzo Orsini home on Via Borgonuovo, Giorgio Armani opted to redirect attention back to the sprawling Armani Casa flagship on Corso Venezia to mark 25 years of Armani Casa and unveil its new homewares collection, ‘Oriental Inks’. Working in collaboration with De Gournay, iconic items of furniture in the permanent Armani collection were transformed with exquisite silk and beaded embroidery and gold-leaf appliqué depicting bamboo, dragons and jungle landscapes, chosen for being ‘auspicious symbols of strength, flexibility and endurance’ designed to transport their owners – and admirers – elsewhere. The ‘Amedeo’ bed, in particular, took over 200 hours to embroider its monkey-inhabiting canopy scene. ‘The display and the new pieces, authentic examples of the highest level of craftsmanship, are visible through the windows to anyone passing by,’ shared Mr Armani. ‘I quite like the idea of a surprise that captures attention, a suggestion that broadens horizons, now that horizons are often becoming narrower.’

Loewe’s artist-designed teapots

Former Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson may have left the building, but one of his proudest legacies lives on at design week. Marking its ninth craft exhibition during the city-wide showcase, the brand presented ‘Loewe Teapots’ featuring 25 different interpretations of the ubiquitous vessel by 25 international artists and the last curation from Anderson to be presented by the Spanish house. From the coral-like glaze application of South Korean artist Jane Yang-D'Haene’s pot to the surrealist two faces of Spanish ceramicist Laia Arqueros Claramunt’s design, the collection ranged in depiction from classic ceramic to convention-defying proportions, with each piece representing the intimate ceremony in which a teapot takes the lead.

READ: 25 artists reimagine the teapot at Milan Design Week 2025

Dior expands ‘Ode to Nature’ collection with Sam Baron

Dior Maison worked with French artist Sam Baron to expand its ‘Ode To Nature’ collection with three one-metre-high glass vases that were every bit as intricate as one of the French fashion house’s couture creations. Each depicting its own garden of intertwining branches, petals and foliage, the bodies of the hand-blown and hand-constructed vessels were inspired by the first Miss Dior amphora perfume bottle from 1947. Starting as a ribbed glass tube, each was gently blown and fired over several hours to create the distinctive shape before the exacting process of applying the delicate decorative details could begin. Designed to conjure the bouquets of flowers that founder Dior insisted on having in his salon, each of the three designs is available in a limited edition of eight – Monsieur Christian Dior’s lucky number.

Stay tuned for more of the best fashion moments at Milan Design Week 2025.

As is so often the case, it was fashion soothsayers Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons who seemed to distill the mood of the season with their A/W 2025 collection for Prada, positing a ‘raw glamour’ – a subversive interrogation of the tropes of feminine elegance, from ‘fur’ coats to 1960s-style dresses, which Mrs Prada said chimed with a growing unease about the state of the world. ‘It is not my job to be political but when you open a newspaper – oh my God!’ Mrs Prada said after the show. ‘Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

Nostalgic glamour – largely twisted or disrupted – ran throughout the season in evocations of ’fur’ (almost exclusively faux, or cleverly manipulated shearling), bra tops and pussybow blouses, celebrating an unconventional, dishevelled beauty. The carved or sculpted waistline also emerged as a trend throughout the month – though in the hands of designers like Sarah Burton, who made her debut at Givenchy, the silhouette was stripped of connotations of confinement. ‘[It’s about] strength, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, feeling powerful or very sexy,’ she said. Elsewhere, cocooning and concealing silhouettes protected against the elements – whether real or existential – while upside-down and back-to-front silhouettes reflected our topsy-turvy moment.

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss selects the trends and takeaways from the A/W 2025 womenswear shows, which concluded earlier this week in Paris.

Designers explored a ‘raw glamour’

‘Raw glamour’ was the term coined by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons to describe their A/W 2025 womenswear collection for Prada. ‘Glamour was something we were attracted to, instinctively, and its connection to femininity,’ said Mrs Prada on a show which interrogated notions of conventional beauty – all the way down to the dishevelled bed head hair by Guido Palau. Typically feminine silhouettes – like 1960s-style dresses – were blown up in size as if sizes too big, or came creased and sliced-away raw at the hem. Meanwhile tropes of feminine elegance – like fur coats or ladylike handbags – were subverted in provocative style, the former into strange forms with protusions around the neck or trapped under plastic (‘fur’ was actually shearling – more on that later). ‘It is not my job to be political but when you open a newspaper – oh my God!’ Mrs Prada said after the show. ‘Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

A similar mood was struck at Miu Miu – where Mrs Prada works solo – seeing the designer propose a wardrobe of undone Milanese glamour, where similar hallmarks of femininity, from the 1950s-pointed bra to ‘fur’ stoles and brooches, were warped and disrupted. ‘These accessories of femininity – bras, furs, brooches – they are things we have had forever. Are they relevant today? Do they lift us up?’ she said of the collection, which played out amid a set entirely covered in girlish yellow moiré. A similar mood ran throughout the season: at Valentino, Alessandro Michele’s louche, eclectic vision of glamour – sheer lace bodies, satin bra tops and bows, more ‘furs’ and feathers – played out amid a surreal ‘public bathroom’ (models tottered around the space, gussying themselves up in the toilet mirrors as if in a nightclub restroom), while Francesco Risso’s Marni playfully riffed on the salon show with high-colour faux furs, patchworked dresses and 3D flower adornment. At Acne Studios, pussybow bodysuits and slashed scarf dresses – straight out of a Helmut Newton photograph – were worn with fuzzy ‘fur’ coats, their construction inspired by that of teddy-bear limbs.

Textures and prints got animalistic

The proliferation of ‘fur’ this season was unavoidable, appearing in various iterations, from candy-striped at Gucci, two-toned at Marni, to mink-grey at Giorgio Armani. Almost exclusively faux or crafted from cleverly manipulated shearling, the by-product of meat and dairy farming (an exception was Gabriela Hearst, where the sustainably conscious designer had crafted a coat from second-hand mink to prevent waste), its use suggested both Prada’s ‘instinctual attraction to glamour’ and a desire for protection (indeed, some uses of the material were almost primitive in their cut). Highlights included a series of incredible ‘fur’ coats and stoles at Fendi’s 100th anniversary show which had the illusion of fox, mink or sable but were actually shearling – a paean to the house’s brand of Roman elegance – while at Rabanne, tassel-like ‘tails’ hung from coats and dresses. The animalistic mood extended into print, both Dolce & Gabbana and Saint Laurent featured leopard spots – the latter under a slick of transparent resin – while at Duran Lantink, zebra, cow, python and leopard prints met in an unconventional mélange (in a playful flourish, the model Leon Dame was entirely body-painted in black and white zebra stripes).

The waist was accentuated

‘McQueen is about a waist,’ said the Irish designer Séan McGirr at his A/W 2025 show for the British house, after a trip into the archive had drawn him towards Lee McQueen’s amped-up ‘hourglass’ silhouette – accentuated shoulder, narrow-waist – which captures the clash of power and eroticism which ran through his collections. McGirr’s riff was lithe and elongated, with extra-long sleeves, a corseted waistline and rounded, armour-like shoulders. ‘I took a lot of pieces from the archive, especially tailoring, and reworked them in a way that made sense for today.’

Meanwhile former McQueen designer Sarah Burton’s acclaimed debut at Givenchy – which also began with a return to the archive, inspired by a lost trove of Hubert de Givenchy’s 1952 sketches – saw her meticulous eye for tailoring create carved-waist blazers and overcoats with a wide, amplified shoulder line that was without constriction. ‘I want to address everything about modern women,’ she said. ‘[It’s about] strength, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, feeling powerful or very sexy. All of it.’ At Miu Miu, wool tailoring was cleverly constructed with a fold under the chest – the result was a narrowed, though not restrictive, waistline – while at Balenciaga, meticulous pattern-cutting saw ‘fur’-hooded nylon parkas whereby the quilted exterior had been reworked to recall a corset or bodice.

Things got turned back to front, or upside down

When Celine Dion wore a white John Galliano tuxedo to the Academy Awards in 1999, she landed on numerous worst dressed lists. Turns out the Canadian chanteuse was simply ahead of her time: this season, several designers turned garments back to front – a fitting uniform for our topsy-turvy times. Most committed were Paris-based duo Danial Aitouganov and Imruh Asha, whose A/W 2025 collection for fledgling brand Zomer saw almost every look turned upside-down or back-to-front resulting in a kind of opposites day in clothing form (even the run of the show went backwards, starting with the finale). At Givenchy, Burton presented a more refined take with a sculptural tailored jacket which fastened along its back, while at Hodakova – the buzzy LVMH Prize-winning label run by Ellen Hodakova Larsson – trousers were turned upside down and recut into dresses (belts still ran around the waistline, which was now the hem). Meanwhile at Issey Miyake, performers contorted themselves into surreal forms as part of a collaboration with Erwin Wurm and his ‘One Minute Sculptures’ – a reflection of the playfully surreal collection, in which shopping bags became tops and trompe l’oeil prints saw dresses printed on dresses.

Looks were cocooning, wrapped or concealing

The want for protection, to be covered up, wrapped and cocooned is nothing new for the winter season, though for A/W 2025 the current state of unease – referenced by numerous designers this season, from Miuccia Prada to Rei Kawakubo – no doubt contributed to a renewed desire to be protected against the elements (whether the everyday or the existential). Most strikingly, this came in the idea of concealment: several designers created silhouettes this season which obscured the hands, whether the jaunty kangaroo pockets on dresses at Issey Miyake – it made the models appear to be clutching their hands to their chests – or Rokh’s long, cape-like silhouettes which entirely enveloped the hands of the wearer.

At Hermès, Nadège Vanhée presented a collection which moved between a determined sensuality – she also carved the waist in sinuous leather dresses – and something softer and enveloping, figured in coats with enormous collars, or leather jackets with soft double-faced cashmere linings. A similar tenderness was struck at Sacai, whereby Chitose Abe said she was thinking about the act of wrapping: as such, the silk foulard became a motif, inspiring the cut or dresses or inset into a blazer. Meanwhile at Comme des Garçons, a liberated A/W 2025 collection – which Kawakubo said was a celebration of the ‘small but mighty’ – saw enormous sculptural ‘gloves’ wrapped around the hand like a boxer’s gloves or lobster claw. It spoke to the idea that concealment could be as much about armour as comfort – a mood reflected at Junya Watanabe, where leather jackets were cut with giant spikes or had a plate-like construction, like a beetle’s shell.

Like most good stories, the fable of Fendi begins with romance. Founded by husband and wife Edoardo and Adele Fendi, the house’s first brick-and-mortar store was opened on Rome’s Via del Plebiscito in 1925. Over the 100 years since, it has remained – in one way or another – a family business, passed down to generations of women who have each played a part in propelling the small leather goods boutique into a global luxury empire.

Last season, Kim Jones’ final collection for the house paid tribute to its remarkable maternal lineage, presenting a series of airy looks that fused Fendi’s ochre-hued codes with the dropped-waist glamour of the 1920s. Before it was revealed, the voice of the 91-year-old Anna Fendi – daughter of Adele – spoke of her time running Fendi with her four sisters, Alda, Paola, Carla, and Franca. ‘Our mother always said: You are like a hand. There are five of you, the fingers. They are different from each other; they are complementary to each other.’

Inside Fendi’s centenary show at Milan Fashion Week

This evening in Milan, the reins were back in the hands of the Fendi family once again as Silvia Venturini Fendi – Anna Fendi’s daughter – presented the house’s A/W 2025 collections for men and women, designing the latter for the first time since Jones’ appointment in 2020 (having been creative director of the house’s menswear collections since 2000, she briefly designed Fendi womenswear after the death of Karl Lagerfeld in 2019). It was fitting that the show also marked the centenary of the house, as well as the opening of Fendi’s newly renovated headquarters on Via Solari, where the show was held.

Beginning theatrically with the twin sons of Silvia’s daughter, Delfina Delettrez Fendi, pulling open a vast set of doors – a recreation of those found on Via Borgognona in Rome, where the Fendi sisters had their atelier – the collection that followed conjured a vision of Cinecittà glamour, ’a sensuality instilled with a Roman rigour,’ as the designer described. Materiality was a focus: a series of ‘fur’ coats – a garment long synonymous with the house – were in fact shearling, using techniques of intarsia, honeycomb and gheronato patchworks to recall the skins of sable, mink and fox. Meanwhile smatterings of crystal and paillette adornment, delicate chantilly lace and pleated taffeta reflected the collection’s celebratory mood.

Taking place in the vast central hall of the renovated space – now double the size of the space in the building previously used to show the house’s runway collections – the cast was a roll-call of the house’s perennial muses, from Penelope Tree to Liya Kebede, Doutzen Kroes, Eva Herzigova and Karen Elson. Meanwhile Sarah Jessica Parker – whose Sex and the City character Carrie Bradshaw propelled the Fendi Baguette bag, designed by Silvia Venturini Fendi in 1997, to international fame – sat front row. She could barely conceal her delight.

After Silvia Venturini Fendi took to the runway to take a rapturous final bow (before the space was cleared to make way for a party complete with pasta and champagne), the designer said that despite the anniversary, she was hesitant of nostalgia. Instead, she was looking towards the future: one which, since Jones’ departure, is currently undefined. ‘I didn’t want to spend too much time dwelling on the physical archives,’ she said. ‘[This collection] is about my personal memories – real or imagined – of what Fendi was, and what Fendi means today.’ As for the Fendi of tomorrow, it remains to be seen – though after today’s show, one wonders if there’s a case for keeping it in the family.

‘This show is so important to me,’ she told Wallpaper*. ‘It is a flashback and a fast forward. It is about five generations of Fendis, from my grandparents’ historic store and atelier to my grandsons opening the doors to the show – a look to the future.’

fendi.com

Nothing is quite what it seems with the S/S 2025 collections, seeing designers riff on wardrobe staples with illusory tricks – from trompe l’œil to twisted silhouettes and unexpected fabrications. Whether the turned-up hemline of a leather Loewe overcoat – as though perpetually caught in a gust of wind – or a surreal Hodakova shoe, which squashes together a beach flip-flop and high-heeled pump, these are pieces that appear as one thing, but are actually another (a response, no doubt, to our increasingly disorientating digital age). The effect is something like a surreal collage; garments that implore a second look.

S/S 2025’s twisted wardrobe staples

As such, in the March 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on international newsstands now), photographer Nicole Maria Winkler and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture these looks in a surreal interior of their own: a liminal apartment whereby Winkler’s archival photographs become trompe l’oeil wall coverings, or adorn folding screens and chests of drawers. Inhabited by Swiss artist and model Veronika Kunz, the space – which was imagined by set designer Kim Harding – is completed with modernist furnishings, from a Ron Arad bed to an Afra and Tobia Scarpa Cassina sofa.

‘Nicole and I have been friends for many years and have played with trompe-l’œil before, and this story was a further exploration of that theme,’ Harding told Wallpaper*. ‘Delving into Nicole’s archive of still lifes, we created some interesting stand-alone pieces to sit among the set itself.’

Model: Veronika Kunz at Kunz Management. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Set design: Kim Harding Studio. Hair: Sophie Jane Anderson. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Makeup by Mario. Manicure: Sasha Goddard at Saint Luke using Dior. Digi tech: Anna-Sophia John. Photography assistant: Tom Porter. Set design assistants: Matilda Greenwood, Heather Allen. Fashion assistants: Nathan Fox, Rebecca Evans-White. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

A version of this article appears in the March 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

As seen in the March 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on newsstands now), we explore S/S 2025’s defining trends – from illusory trompe l’oeil to transparent layers and gravity-defying spiralling silhouettes – through 12 arresting looks and accessories, for men and women.

Trompe l’oeil (top left)

‘Truth and pretence, the real and the unreal,’ said co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons of their S/S 2025 menswear collection, which was filled with trompe l’oeil illusions – a response, no doubt, to our disorienting post-truth era, where nothing is quite what it seems. Their womenswear collection followed a similar track: like this coat, its surface printed to give the effect of faux fur.

Cut-outs (top right)

Bold acts of construction have long defined Florentine house Ferragamo, whether the vertiginous ‘Rainbow’ wedge heel – created for Judy Garland in 1938 – or the sculpted surface of the ‘Wanda’ bag. Current creative director Maximilian Davis picked up the mantle for S/S 2025, using the house’s atelier to extraordinary effect with leather mesh jackets and skirts cut to the shape of Ferragamo’s historic ‘Gancini’ motif.

Reimagined plaid

Plaid made something of a return this season, with designers evoking the humble material to suggest a mood of teenage rebellion – a nod to plaid’s longtime synonymy with grunge and punk. At Acne Studios there were enormous plaid bows on skirts (‘the familiar, twisted,’ said creative director Jonny Johansson); nipped-waist checked shirts were infused with a mood of refinement at Bottega Veneta; while at Loewe, Jonathan Anderson placed floating layers of plaid over baggy chino-style pants – part of the designer’s ongoing interrogation of wardrobe archetypes.

Hybrid accessories

The mashed-up accessory – like this futuristic sneaker-cum-penny loafer by Fendi – was a throughline of the season, with designers proposing strange and surreal hybrids that appeared as one thing but were actually another. They seem fit for our online era: the effect is reminiscent of the kind of dizzying juxtapositions you find when whizzing through a social-media stream at speed.

Spiralling silhouettes

The spiralling staircase of New York’s Guggenheim Museum inspired the construction of Pieter Mulier’s latest Alaïa collection, where dresses looped around the body to gravity-defying effect. In a shift from Paris to New York, Mulier presented the collection at the Frank Lloyd-Wright-designed landmark, echoing a similar transatlantic trip Azzedine Alaïa took in 1985, showing at the city’s Palladium nightclub.

Puzzle-piece construction

Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest womenswear show for Louis Vuitton took place on a raised runway constructed from a puzzle-like collection of the house’s signature trunks in an array of finishes and hues. Such playful amalgamations continued in the collection itself, which featured a series of sandals constructed from chunky, bolted-down straps of leather, some adorned with coins and crystals.

Blown-up tailoring

‘The joy of looking, discovering and dressing,’ said Matthieu Blazy of what would be his final collection for Bottega Veneta (he was named artistic director of Chanel last December), hoping to evoke a sense of childhood wonder. Cue animal motifs, colourful tasselled wigs and blown-up silhouettes, as if a child was playing dress up in their parent’s closet. ‘We need joy. We need this moment for ourselves, and continue to play.’

Shifted waistlines

Recent seasons have seen the American designer Tory Burch – once the poster girl for all-American preppiness – take a more experimental approach with freewheeling collections rooted in fabric and form. For S/S25, clever construction sees knee-length skirts hover away from the waist for an unexpected silhouette – the type of twisted classic that has now become Burch’s forte.

Brown

If brown has been something of an overlooked shade on the runway, in recent seasons designers have begun to embrace the hue for its suggestion of nostalgic sartorial elegance – particularly its richest shades of chocolate and chestnut. Like this trench coat by Paul Smith, part of the designer’s reminiscence on Soho’s Italian coffee bars of the 1960s and their famous patrons, from Lucian Freud to Francis Bacon.

Transparency

‘The paradox of lightness through craftsmanship,’ said Nadège Vanhée of her latest outing for Hermès, presented amid a set constructed from raw artist’s canvases. Impossibly lightweight layers of sheer fabric suggested the initial brushstrokes of a painting, while also proposing a mood of feminine sensuality, long a hallmark of Vanhée’s collections for the Parisian house.

Open arms

Jonathan Anderson described his latest menswear outing for his eponymous London-based label as ‘irrational clothing’, a nod to the surreal blown-up silhouettes, supersized knits and balloon-like protrusions of fabric. Though, as is his knack, the strangeness proved seductive, like a series of oversized gilets that proposed arms-out dressing as the mode du jour.

Deconstruction

The ritual of dressing, of putting on your clothes in the morning and removing them at night, was the inspiration behind Victoria Beckham’s S/S25 collection. ‘Observing the physical relationship between skin and garment,’ led the British designer to pieces turned inside out or deconstructed – like a series of sliced-away tailoring, as if still in the process of creation.

Models: Loka Lindaregard at Models 1, Reuben Larkin at Linden Staub. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Mayuko Nakae using Oribe. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Ilapothecary. Manicure: Sabina Uzunovic at Snow Creatives using Nailberry. Photography assistants: Guillaume Mercier, Julie Robinson. Fashion assistant: Lucy Proctor. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

A version of this article appears in the March 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Sometimes, it’s the most unexpected combinations that yield the most remarkable results. A case in point: Italian fashion house Fendi’s enduring connection with Miami. For the first major fashion brand to champion the city’s art and design scene – Fendi has had a committed presence at Design Miami since 2008, and was one of the first luxury brands to set up shop in the city’s Design District – it’s a bond that goes way back. Now, showcasing just how perfectly the city’s fluorescent energy complements the maison's deep Roman roots, Fendi’s Miami flagship boutique reopens in the Design District after an extensive renovation and major expansion.

Inside Fendi's Miami flagship store

At more than double its original size – now 6,700-plus sq ft – the store sits at 150 NE 40th Street and is the brand’s second-largest US store after New York. Featuring four Roman-inspired arches and custom-made glass bricks evoking ocean waves, the effect – particularly after dusk – is dramatic. An external gallery, lined with pastel-pink tiles featuring the FF logo, is surrounded by tropical greenery.

Step inside and straight onto a marble floor inspired by the historical Temple of Venus in Rome, a mix of Patagonia and Travertine marbles in subtle geometric patterns. Ribbed Travertine walls, pale metallic accents and a custom-designed table by Roberto Sironi in Rima marble, bring layers of texture and intrigue.

Hand-tufted carpets in Miami’s signature champagne pinks and greens palette echo the curves of the Tiber River. Here, Fendi’s Women’s leather goods and accessories are given ample room to sing, while unique furniture pieces like the ‘Jia’ chairs by Atelier de Troupe and StudioTwentySeven’s ‘Marula’ chair keep things comfortable.

The second level is reached via a sweeping walnut staircase. Here, more StudioTwentySeven pieces anchor the menswear space.

The women’s section features a stunning, handmade, retro-fused glass wall that continues the arch motif from the exterior, and furniture from Fendi Casa. In the VIP area, pink-toned fringe curtains are set against a stainless steel backdrop and a concrete art piece by Edoardo Piermattei.

As the sun sets on a year of massive change for Fendi, including the departures of both CEO Serge Brunschwig and designer Kim Jones, who stepped down after four years as artistic director, the Miami store marks the beginning of a new era as well as the brand's upcoming centenary year in 2025.

Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou, who succeeded Brunschwig as CEO last June, joined Sylvia Venturini Fendi in Miami for the opening. Next up for Fendi is a coed fashion show at Milan Fashion Week in February, coinciding with the reopening of Spazio Fendi in Milan.

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Unboxing beauty products on Boxing Day? Well, metaphorically speaking, why not?

Here, we take a look back at the pages of Wallpaper* from the past year, reflecting on the make-up, perfume, tools and accessories that defined our 2024.

Unboxing beauty products from 2024, as seen on the pages of Wallpaper*

Chanel lipstick in Wallpaper* February 2024: The Design Awards Issue

In the February 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, we presented a design award to the Chanel ‘31 Le Rouge lipstick’. The lipstick comes in several shades and textures, all created to be housed in a glass case crafted by Japanese artisans and designed by Sylvie Legastelois.

Read the full article here.

MyBlend led mask in Wallpaper* March 2024: The Style Issue

For the first Wallpaper* Style Issue of the year in March 2024, we turned the spotlight on the MyBlend ‘myLedmask’, with its uniquely contoured design slightly reminiscent of Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In.

Read the full article here.

Acne Studios x Frédéric Malle perfume in Wallpaper* April 2024: Global Interiors

We spoke with the creative director of Acne Studios Jonny Johansson, fragrance legend Frédéric Malle and emerging nose Suzy Le Helley about their collaborative work on ‘Acne Studios par Frédéric Malle’ eau de parfum, previewed in the April 2024 issue of Wallpaper*.

Read the full article here.

Bottega Veneta scented candle in Wallpaper* June 2024: The Travel Issue

Bottega Veneta launched scented candles earlier this year, with three different fragrances available in red, yellow and green lava glaze ceramic pots. We captured the brand’s ‘Redstone’ candle on the pages of Wallpaper* June 2024, which contains notes of plum nectar, tobacco and cedarwood.

Read the full article here.

Rimowa vanity case in Wallpaper* June 2024: The Travel Issue

Rimowa's vanity case also made its debut in Wallpaper* June 2024, our annual travel issue. A reimagined 1970s design from the Rimowa archives, the case is robust enough to contain a multitude of products and tools without fear of damage whilst on the move.

Read the full article here.

Fendi perfumes in Wallpaper* July 2024: The Design Directory

In 2024, Fendi created seven exclusive perfumes, inspired by the personalities and memories of close members of the Fendi family. The collection, which we included in the July issue of Wallpaper*, features refillable glass bottles evoking the vocabulary of Roman architecture.

Read the full article here.

Calvin Klein CK One perfume in Wallpaper* August 2024: The USA 100

The August 2024 issue of Wallpaper* was dedicated US creatives, with an accompanying portfolio shot by Inez and Vinoodh. In addition, we looked at 12 American design icons, including Calvin Klein’s ‘CK One’ eau de toilette. First released in 1994, the fragrance remains a best seller to this day.

Read the full article here.

Solid soap in Wallpaper* September 2024: The Style Issue

For Wallpaper* September 2024, the year’s second issue dedicated to style, we celebrated the pleasures of solid soap, including bars from the likes of Aesop, Celine, Diptyque, Hermès and Sisley.

Read the full article here.

Celine Beauté lipstick in Wallpaper* October 2024: Guest Editors

Celine launched its first-ever beauty line in October 2024, Celine Beauté. Designed by Hedi Slimane, who has since left the house in the hands of his successor Michael Rider, the ‘Le Rouge Celine’ lipstick in a shade of red called 'Rouge Triomphe’ made its Wallpaper* premiere in the same monthly issue.

Read the full article here.

Hermès eye and lip pencils in Wallpaper* November 2024: The Art Issue

Hermès’ ‘Trait d’Hermès’ eye and lip pencils were designed by Pierre Hardy and Gregoris Pyrpylis, the house’s creative director of beauty, to evoke a playful stationary set. We captured the collection’s kaleidoscopic colour palette in Wallpaper* November 2024.

Read the full article here.

Bottega Veneta perfume in Wallpaper* November 2024: The Art Issue

Bottega Veneta’s fragrance collection by Matthieu Blazy (now succeeded by Louise Trotter after his appointment as creative director at Chanel) includes five scents inspired by Venice, with bottles blown in Murano glass. Above, is the brand’s ‘Come With Me’ eau de parfum, as featured in the November 2024 issue of Wallpaper*.

Read the full article here.

Dior perfumes in Wallpaper* December 2024: The Entertaining Issue

In 2024, Francis Kurkdjian, the creative director of Dior Parfums took five fragrances from the house’s ‘La Collection Privée’, reinterpreting their notes in ‘Esprit de Parfum’, a new scent range featured on the pages of Wallpaper’s December Entertaining Issue.

Read the full article here.

Dries Van Noten lipsticks in Wallpaper* December 2024: The Entertaining Issue

After taking a final bow on the runway earlier in the year, for the December 2024 issue of Wallpaper* we caught up with Dries Van Noten about his next steps, which include growing the beauty and fragrance arm of his eponymous brand (and spending more time in his beloved garden).

Read the full article here.

Opportunity knocks where you least expect it. For Lewis Kemmenoe, it was on Instagram, in the form of a short but intriguing message. Simon Parris, of Kim Jones Studio, had a collaboration in mind. A single meeting and a week or so later, Kemmenoe was on his way to Rome. Eight months on from then, ‘Aenigma’, his capsule collection of furniture for Fendi is set to be unveiled at Design Miami 2024.

Showcasing innovative collaborations with an emphasis on luxury craftsmanship and rich materiality, Fendi has been a prominent participant in Design Miami since 2008. Like the perfect finger joints of his carpentry, Kemmenoe is an exquisite fit for the commission, joining a notable roll call that includes Maria Pergay, Dimorestudio, Cristina Celestino, Chiara Andreatti, Sabine Marcelis and Misha Kahn. And, like each of them at the time that they answered this brief, he’s a design star clearly on the ascent.

Fendi’s Design Miami showcase with Lewis Kemmenoe

The ‘Aenigma’ collection includes three chairs, a wall panel, vases, lamps, a table and a cabinet, bringing a fresh take on modernism to play in a series of functional, sculptural pieces. Organic materials, such as wood, bark, alabaster and stone, are combined with aluminium and brass, patchworked panels subtly referencing the outlines of garment patterns. Though the collection came together quickly and instinctively, it was during Kemmenoe’s visit to Fendi’s headquarters in Rome – his first time in the city – that he rapidly found his flow with the project. ‘It was an illuminating trip,’ he recalls of his visits to landmarks like the Vatican and Borghese Gallery, where the grandeur of the architecture and the organic forms of Caravaggio’s work began to resonate with his own artistic approach.

‘It validated what I’d already been exploring in my designs – organic shapes and the tactile nature of materials like alabaster and wood. I discovered a lot of connections between my work and the Roman aesthetic – it felt very cohesive.’ Kemmenoe found the Vatican’s relief sculptures particularly inspiring. The way these elements were positioned in the space is echoed in the placement of organic shapes in his own furniture. And in Fendi’s archives, he also discovered handbags made with leather and wood panels, which felt remarkably similar to his own sensibilities – bridging the gap between traditional craft and contemporary design.

For Kemmenoe, becoming a furniture designer was a decision that evolved from his education (fine art at Central Saint Martins followed by design at the Royal College of Art) and early freelance commissions in film and architecture. It was during the Covid lockdowns that he found the space to truly explore his passion for making. With more time at home, Kemmenoe began a shift away from abstract sculptural work towards more functional, everyday pieces of furniture and, by 2021, his distinctive, material-led, midcentury-inspired aesthetic was attracting high levels of acclaim and, accordingly, collectors.

His process is intuitive, allowing the material to guide the final form. ‘There’s a mystery to my work because I’m not a traditionally trained carpenter. I come to it with a different perspective.’ Without the constraints of conventional cabinet-making skills, Kemmenoe’s designs often subvert expectations, his outsider approach resulting in designs that provoke curiosity while remaining grounded in functionality.

Inspired and influenced by Japanese and American modernism – in particular, the works of George Nakashima – Kemmenoe appreciates the fusion of traditional craftsmanship with modernist design principles. ‘I admire the way that Nakashima approached materials and how he let them speak for themselves,’ he says. ‘It’s an ethos I try to bring into my own practice, working with the grain of the wood or the texture of a material, rather than against it.’

As he describes it, Fendi gave him carte blanche to create the collection, a level of trust that both excited and challenged him. ‘With that freedom came questions of whether my ideas were really going to work,’ he reflects. ‘I had to trust my instincts, but if something felt right, I knew I was on the right path.’ Unsurprisingly given his training, Kemmenoe has always straddled the line between art and design, but in this project, he leans into both worlds. The chairs, for example, are produced in two contrasting versions – brass and aluminium – allowing the materials to engage in a visual conversation. This dialogue is central to Kemmenoe’s practice, where rough textures often contrast with smoother finishes.

A series of organic-shaped lamps is inspired by Isamu Noguchi’s famous paper light sculptures. Made from wood veneer, backlit to highlight the grain, they give a soft ambience to a space. ‘There’s always this sense of discovery when you interact with a piece,’ says Kemmenoe. ‘You might see something from a distance and think it’s one thing, but as you get closer or touch it, you start to see or feel new details.’ He is also incorporating alabaster, a material deeply rooted in Roman history, into a series of vases for the collection.

‘I’ve always been interested in the intersection of heritage and modernity,’ says Kemmenoe. ‘This project has given me the chance to explore that balance in a new way, as well as access resources that have allowed me to take my designs to another level. I’m excited to see how people respond to the pieces.’ Looking ahead, he sees potential for future collaborations, particularly with Fendi Casa, the brand’s home interiors division. He also hopes to expand his practice globally. ‘I feel like this is just the beginning,’ he says. And as we all know, opportunity could knock again at any time.  

‘Aenigma’ collection is on show from 3-8 December at Design Miami, designmiami.com, lewiskemmenoe.com, fendi.com

British designer Kim Jones is to exit his role as artistic director of womenswear and couture at Italian house Fendi, it has been announced this afternoon (11 October 2024). He is set to continue as artistic director of Dior Men, another house in the LVMH stable, the statement confirmed.

Jones began his tenure at Fendi in 2020, filling the role which had been vacant after the death of Karl Lagerfeld in February 2019. His collections for Fendi reimagined the house’s Roman roots in the designer’s sleek, contemporary style, while references to his own fixations – among them the work of the Bloomsbury group – were woven throughout. In the statement, Fendi says he was ‘guided by passion and creativity... constantly renewing the house’s codes’.

‘Kim Jones is a highly talented designer who has brought his unique and multicultural vision to Fendi over the past four years,’ says Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH. ‘I would like to thank him for his contribution and look forward to continuing to witness his creativity for Dior Men.’

Kim Jones is leaving Fendi

His final show for the house took place this past September (2024), with Jones presenting a collection that looked back to the 1920s, the decade in which Fendi was founded (2025 will mark the house’s centenary year). ‘The foundations of how women dress today and, in many ways, how we think are in the 1920s. It’s about modernity in style and attitude,’ he said.

‘There [was a] modernism in dress, design, decoration and thought. We approached the collection with these things in mind, as an amalgam of epochs, moods and techniques – then and now,’ he continued. As a final flourish, an enormous white box opened in the centre of the runway at the end of the show, revealing a tableau of models inside. Now, it feels like a fitting finale.

As yet, there is no announcement about Jones’ successor, though it adds to a growing number of vacancies at fashion’s major houses – among them Chanel and Dries Van Noten. Fendi says that ‘a new creative organisation for Fendi will be announced in due time’.

fendi.com

The S/S 2025 shows offered a typically transporting array of runway sets and show spaces, which spanned the romantic, the playful and the surreal, alongside the downright cinematic. Like Anthony Vaccarrello’s opulent, monolithic set for Saint Laurent – an enormous gilded circle that hovered over a circular blue runway – made all the dramatic by rain pouring through its open-to-the-elements ceiling.

Other brands drafted artists to create installations to backdrop their shows: there was Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s ‘messy, complicated’ domestic scene for Acne Studios, or Gary Hume’s reimagining of a 1990 work, ‘Bays’, for Daniel Lee’s latest Burberry show in London. Meanwhile, perhaps the most Instagram-friendly moment of the month came at Bottega Veneta, where Matthieu Blazy created a menagerie of leather beanbag animals inspired by a scene from E.T. (read on for the full story).

Here, selected by Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss, are the most breathtaking runway sets fashion month – a celebration of the architecture of fashion.

The best runway sets of S/S 2025

Artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s twisted living room for Acne Studios

‘The idea for this collection started from a twisted domestic scenery. I asked myself whether classic domestic codes could actually be translated into fashion,’ explained Jonny Johansson of his surreal S/S 2025 Acne Studios collection, which reimagined home furnishings – from curtain ties to wax tablecloths – as clothing. Backdropping the show was a ‘complicated and messy’ domestic scene by Philadelphia-based artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase, comprising soft sculptures of lamps, radios and cats, alongside recycled furniture from Leboncoin scrawled with his playful motifs. Evoking a twisted living room, the artist told Wallpaper* that the installation was a musing on ‘emotions and the body, and how they affect the space around you’. Read more.

Bottega Veneta’s menagerie of bean-bag animals

‘I was interested in the power of “wow”,’ said Matthieu Blazy of his latest collection for Bottega Veneta, which was inspired by a sense of childhood wonder, 'the joy of looking, discovering and dressing’. It was a mood reflected in the show space, a menagerie of leather beanbag chairs for guests to sit on – a reference, the designer said, to the scene in E.T. when the titular extraterrestrial hides amid a pile of soft toys in Elliott’s closet. Spanning killer whales, bunnies and foxes, the beanbag design was inspired by Zanotta’s ‘Sacco’ easy chair, with Blazy working with the Italian design company on the unique project. Read more.

Gary Hume’s reimagining of a 1990 work for Burberry

At London’s National Theatre, Daniel Lee looked towards artist Gary Hume – best known for being a part of the YBA movement, and currently showing at Sprüth Magers in London – to create the runway set for his latest Burberry collection, inspired by the artist’s 1990 work ‘Bays’. Originally staged as part of the notorious East Country Yard Show, the work comprises a series of lorry tarpaulins, hung like curtains and slashed to recall doorways and windows. Over three decades on, they were reimagined in medical green, lining the lobby of the brutalist theatre, which was partly chosen for the way it recalls the original concrete industrial space of the 1990 show. ‘I hadn’t touched the pieces in a long time, and so when Daniel asked me if I could participate in his show, I said yes,’ Hume told Wallpaper*. ‘There was a real bond of being two creative people.’ Read more.

Balenciaga’s dining-table runway, inspired by Demna’s childhood

Demna said that this season began with reminiscences of holding fashion shows on his grandmother’s kitchen table in Georgia as a child. ‘My early memories of fashion start with me drawing looks on cardboard, cutting them away and making “fashion shows” on my grandmother’s kitchen table,’ he wrote in a letter to guests. ‘Thirty-five years later, this show reconnects me to the beginning of my vision. It’s a tribute to fashion which has a point of view.’ For the runway set, this scene was blown up to surreal proportions, with an enormous polished dining table – around which VIP guests sat – serving as the show’s runway.

Loewe’s ‘radically reduced’ runway set, featuring a Tracey Emin sculpture

Jonathan Anderson described his latest Loewe show as an act of ‘radical reduction’, an attempt to replicate the ‘eye going into focus’ as your eyes adjust to a darkened room. The show space, constructed in a box in the grounds of Paris’ Château de Vincennes, was similarly spare: a vast white space with a circular runway that ran around a 2007 sculpture of a metal bird on a narrow, totem-like plinth by British artist Tracey Emin. Anderson said he liked the idea of the looks circulating around the sculpture ‘like a sundial’. ‘Caught in a moment of pause, [Emin] encourages us to imagine the bird’s imminent flight, and ultimately its freedom,’ said the designer via the collection notes.

Chanel’s blown-up birdcage, marking the house’s Grand Palais return

Chanel’s S/S 2025 show marked a triumphant return to the Grand Palais, the longtime site of the house’s runway presentations after the Beaux-Arts building was renovated to host the fencing competition during the Paris Olympics. Under the enormous glass roof, the house erected a giant birdcage, complete with the house’s double-C motif interwoven into its design. At the end of the show – which drew on bird motifs, from feather trims to feather prints – the actress-singer Riley Keough was lifted upwards on a swing inside the cage, singing a version of Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’ as models took their finale circuit. It was a nod towards one of Chanel’s most memorable ads: the 1991 Coco L'Esprit de Chanel campaign starring house muse Vanessa Paradis as a feathered bird in a cage (though this time, the enormous fluffy white cat was missing).

Louis Vuitton’s raised runway, constructed from hundreds of the house’s signature trunks

There was a hint of nostalgia to the runway set for Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest show for Louis Vuitton, which was staged on a raised runway and lit by a ‘Louis Vuitton Paris’ neon sign, recalling the amped-up fashion shows of the 1980s and 1990s. The runway itself was crafted from what appeared to be hundreds of Louis Vuitton’s signature trunks – spanning an array of eras and styles – all stacked up and hammered together, rising from the floor of the Louvre venue as the show began.

Archer-artist Sagg Napoli creates a fantastical show set for Dior

Maria Grazia Chiuri’s latest show began with the multidisciplinary Italian artist-archer Sofia Ginevra Giannì (aka Sagg Napoli) marching down the runway, bow in hand, before entering a Perspex corridor and firing shots on target. Carrying on the tradition of Chiuri collaborating with women artists, she had also designed the runway set. It saw the space in the gardens of Paris’ Musée Rodin transformed with an installation evocative of wrought-iron gates adorned with looping texts from the artist, who draws on the culture of southern Italy in her work. Meanwhile, an enormous Big Brother-style eye served as Sagg Napoli’s target – light work for the artist, who also has competed in national Italian archery competitions.

Alessandro Michele’s romantic, dust-sheet covered set for his Valentino debut

Fashion month’s most-anticipated moment took place in a judo stadium on Paris’ outer reaches, entirely transformed for the occasion by Italian design maverick Alessandro Michele, who was making his debut for Valentino after a two-year hiatus (he left his role as creative director of Gucci in 2022). Evoking what Michele deemed a 'Pavillon des Follies’ (which was also the title of the collection), the typically theatrical space saw the designer assemble a jumble of chairs, furniture and lampshades which were all covered in dust sheets, while the runway itself was made from shattered mirror, casting shards of light on the models’ faces. It provided an apt backdrop for Michele’s romantic exploration of beauty. ‘When I say beauty, I am clearly not referring to its universalistic, dogmatic and normative mythologisation,' he wrote in an introduction to the collection. ‘I rather allude to that unique capability to deeply feel and connect with something.’

Saint Laurent’s rain-soaked show space, which paid ode to Yves Saint Laurent’s Marrakech

It was a return to Saint Laurent’s Rue de Bellechasse headquarters on Paris’ Left Bank for Anthony Vaccarello’s latest womenswear show for the house, a location that he had not shown at since his debut eight years ago. The monolithic set, created by Bureau Betak, comprised an enormous gilded circle – open to the elements – under which models walked on a slick blue runway, evocative of the blue used in the Saint Laurent gardens in Marrakech. It was made all the more strking by the fact that the rain was pouring, a final cinematic flourish to the already dramatic mise-en-scène.

Gucci’s setting sun at Milan’s Triennale Milano design museum

Milan’s temple to design, the Triennale Milano museum, provided the setting for Sabato De Sarno’s latest Gucci show, following a menswear presentation in the historic space earlier this year. This time, the designer created an enormous curving runway that looped around the museum’s ground floor, where various ‘rooms’ were designed to evoke a sunset, moving from yellow to orange to Ancora red, the deep oxblood hue that has become central to De Sarno’s tenure. The idea behind the exuberant collection was to capture a moment in time, just as the sun is rising or setting: ‘a moment to seize and live to the fullest’.

Fendi’s futuristic runway set, which came with a final surprise

It was only fitting that what will be Fendi’s first collection of its centenary year (the brand turns 100 in 2025), was celebrated in theatrical style. In the centre of the vast, sound-stage-like space on the outskirts of Milan was an enormous, futuristic white box, into which models streamed after taking their loop around the square-shaped runway. It was to provide a moment of surprise: as the show ended, the box opened up, revealing a tableau of models inside. In their flapper-inspired dresses and nostalgic, crystal-adorned looks, it was a clash of past and present: ‘I wanted something romantic, something with a debt to the 1920s from the 2020s,’ said Kim Jones, artistic director of Fendi’s womenswear and couture.

For more on the latest fashion weeks, see our reports from the Paris, Milan, London and New York S/S 2025 shows.

A slight shift in scheduling saw Milan Fashion Week move a day earlier this season, the extension giving some much-needed breathing room to an always-packed programme. ‘I’m very satisfied with this synergetic effort by the four main players on the fashion circuit,’ said Carlo Capasa, president of Camera della Moda, the week’s organising body. ‘[We] had for some time been asking for an extension of the Milan Fashion Week, given its calendar of over 200 appointments.’

Roman house Fendi began proceedings on the afternoon of 17 September, seeing Kim Jones look back to the 1920s – the decade the Roman house was founded – followed by Marni, whereby Francesco Risso presented a collection of idiosyncratic glamour which riffed on mid-century silhouettes and would prove one of the week’s highlights. Elsewhere, there were blockbuster shows from Gucci, Versace, Ferragamo, Bottega Veneta and Dolce & Gabbana – where the designers paid homage to Madonna as she watched on from the front row – while an eclectic show from Prada celebrated individual style.

Those not showing this season included Tom Ford – new creative director Haider Ackermann will debut next year – and Giorgio Armani, which will show in New York in October, part of the eponymous designer’s 90th birthday celebrations. Missing too were MSGM (the brand hosted a more intimate presentation in its HQ) and Blumarine, where David Koma will present his first collection next season.

Here, reported from Milan, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss picks the best of Milan Fashion Week, as it happens.

The best of Milan Fashion Week S/S 2025

Bottega Veneta

‘I was interested in the power of “wow”,’ said Matthieu Blazy after his latest Bottega Veneta runway show, which marked the closing act of this season’s Milan Fashion Fashion Week. ‘The wonder you have as a kid when you try on your parent’s clothes; it’s almost primal,’ he elaborated, noting that he had been thinking about a moment in Steven Spielberg’s coming-of-age classic ET when the titular extraterrestrial hides himself in a closet of full of colourful soft toys. In the showspace, a former warehouse, he recreated the scene: in lieu of traditional seating were bean bag chairs, crafted from leather and shaped like different animals, from bunnies and killer whales to foxes and cats. It set the stage for a collection of unadulterated play and creativity, which alongside the clever, luxurious riffs on quotidian garments which have become Blazy’s signature – here, blown-up corporate tailoring, handbags evocative of supermarket bags, T-shirts and jeans with purposeful creases – were joyful, almost childlike flourishes, whether tasselled wigs, animal motifs, or vivid shots of colour. ‘[This collection] encompasses the joy of looking, discovering and dressing,’ he said, noting that the collection began with him imagining a man in a suit dropping his child at school, carrying their colourful pink rucksack over their shoulder. ‘Last season was maybe more contemplative,’ Blazy continued. ‘But at the same time, we need beauty. We need joy. We need this moment for ourselves, and continue to play.’

Dolce & Gabbana

The rumours of Madonna’s appearance at Dolce & Gabbana’s latest runway show had swirled since the opening day of Milan Fashion Week, and were all but confirmed when the artist posted on her Instagram she had touched down in the city the day before the show. Indeed, as the 1000-strong crowd took their seats at the Metropol venue – where Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce hold their runway shows each season – she did indeed appear, clad in a Dolce & Gabbana black veil and crown, her arrival prompting a spontaneous ovation as guests clamoured to get footage of the star. It was the type of mega-watt moment that Milan – or indeed London and New York – has so far lacked, the frisson of excitement continuing as the show began, a loving homage to the queen of pop which saw models clad in curly blonde wigs, pointed bra tops (a nod to design contemporary Jean Paul Gaultier) and lace-up corsets which evoked of the wardrobe of the artist’s ‘Blonde Ambition’ era of the early 1990s. ‘Madonna has always been our icon. It’s thanks to her that a lot of things in our lives changed,’ they said, referencing a close collaboration which dates back to 1992, when the pair designed costumes for her ‘The Girlie Show’ tour. To finish, an emotional Madonna – who recently completed her latest tour, ‘Celebration’, comprising her greatest hits – embraced the designers as they took their final bow, a moment which had everybody in Metropol venue on their feet once again.

Ferragamo

Maximilian Davis staged his latest collection for Ferragamo on a circular runway, lushly clad in off-white carpet and surrounded by curtains in the same hue (as the show began, they were closed to envelop the audience in the vast, cocoon-like space). It seemed to signal a move towards softness from the British designer this season, seeing Davis look towards two clients of house founder Salvatore Ferragamo, ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev and American choreographer Katherine Dunham (the pioneering dancer has been called the ‘matriarch and queen mother of Black dance’). Signalled by a historic Ferragamo illustration of a ballet shoe on the invite, Davis evoked the tropes of dancewear for a collection more rooted in the rehearsal room than the blousy glamour of the stage. Indeed, a series of looks comprised layers of leggings, dance tops and leotards, while ribbon-tie fastenings on footwear recalled those found on ballet slippers.

Elsewhere, silhouettes wrapped the body or were louche and oversized – a nod, said Davis to Nureyev‘s wardrobe in the 1980s – while fabrics had a sense that they had been worn in, whether the opening creased outerwear or frayed edges to shorts and handbags, which the designer said was a reference the relaxed, beachside dress codes of his own Caribbean heritage. ‘I’ve always incorporated different historic eras in my work, periods in which I can recognise myself,’ said Davis, who is astutely bringing Ferragamo’s rich history into the present day. ‘I looked for similarities with Ferragamo, and the beauty of this brand is that there are so many stories that you can relate to. Every shoe has its own meaning; every shoe has a story.’

Gucci

The invitation for Sabato De Sarno’s latest Gucci show was a reissue of Enzo Mari's perpetual calendar for Danese Milano, its curving plastic design reissued in Ancora red, the deep, oxblood tone which has run through his tenure as creative director so far. The choice of object was intentional: this, said De Sarno, was a collection about ‘a precise moment in time… a moment to seize to live to the fullest… a moment the sun dives into the sea at the end of the day.’ As such, the semi-circular runway – which ran through Milan’s Triennale museum, a temple to design – echoed the tones of the setting sun, moving from yellows and oranges to, finally, Ancora red through the various ‘rooms’. It made for a collection which saw De Sarno celebrate life’s ephemeral joys, proposing quotidian garments instilled with moments of pleasure – from glimmering metal paillettes and delicate lace to shots of neon colour, headscarves and bold prints inspired by the house’s horsebit motif. In his words, this was a ‘casual grandeur that takes shape through my obsessions… always with an irreverent attitude.’ It ended with the models dancing away down the runway, followed by a bouncing De Sarno, who seemed to embody the collection’s easy, uplifting mood. ‘A year later, this collection shows an accomplished journey of construction,’ said the designer of a confident outing. ‘Moment after moment, I have built my ideas for Gucci.’

Missoni

Filippo Grazioli is a designer unafraid of the bold and colourful, a trait which sets him in good stead at Missoni, where graphic flourishes and a free-spirited approach have been central to the Italian knitwear label since its founding in 1953. Grazioli said that this season, in lieu of a rigid inspiration point, he was instead thinking about ‘the energy of chaos through the endless dance of colours and shapes’ (though he did name check the modernist wire sculptures of American artist Ruth Asawa). Largely, this meant honing in on Missoni’s signature zig-zag, whether emerging on what he called ‘millefeuille’ on front of a top (a three dimensional layered zig-zag which jutted outwards in shades of red, white and black), or blown up into chevrons which decorated dresses and overcoats. A sense of textural play, meanwhile, came in the colourful fronds of tassels, spiky knits, or a fluffy fabric which almost had the appearance that the model had stepped out of a bubble bath. It made for a freewheeling, instinctive collection, continuing a mood of experimentation which has given new energy to Milan this season.

Sportmax

The central courtyard of Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan’s historic art gallery, provided a dramatic backdrop for Sportmax’s latest show – all the more so for the way its entire surface had been covered with yards of bright, optic white carpet. It was a surreal trick: in some ways it seemed to evoke snow, though it also gave the ornamental 18th-century space a futuristic sheen. The Sportmax team revel in these strange juxtapositions, a mood which continued through the collection, where moments of sharp precision – sculptural box-shaped bra tops; trousers sliced at the hem; nipped-waist overcoats and blazers – met the fluid and the embellished, whether clattering crystals trapped under a layer of sheer fabric, beaded dresses, or the sinuous gowns which wrapped cleverly around the body. It fit well into the season’s already-prevailing mood, where designers are channelling a new eclectism and paying ode to an individual sense of style. As such, the design team said this was a collection of pure intuition – an experimental way of working that they have always flourished.

Tod’s

‘Artisanal Intelligence’ was the playful title of Matteo Tamburini’s sophomore collection for Tod’s, which was backdropped by an enormous installation by Italian sculptor Lorenzo Quinn erected for the occasion in a former warehouse on the outskirts of Milan. It comprised of an enormous pair of hands and twisting loops of ‘leather’, through which models – a starry line-up including Naomi Campbell, Mariacarla Boscono and Mona Tougaard – walked, before circling the cavernous space. Though if the focus was craft, Tamburini cleverly avoided the heavy or the overwrought, instead attempting to capture a sense of Meditteranean ease in lightweight poplin cotton shirts and parkas, narrow-strap sandals, and gently draped silhouettes in tones the designer described as shifting between warm ‘stone, sand and bronze’ and ‘the vibrant colours of Italian landscapes: the green of the meadows, the blue of the sea, and the red of the earth’. It also included a new riff of the Gommino driving shoe, here adorned with a row of metal rings (a motif that reappeared on the neckline of a draped layered gown worn by Boscono), while structured, elongated bucket-style bags met ladylike handbags in mock-croc and faux ostrich, the latter with an elegant metal band along their closure. On the way out, guests passed rows of artisans stitching the Gommino shoe by hand, a reminder of the handwork – and human beings – behind every piece.

Emporio Armani

With no Giorgio Armani show this season – the collection will instead be shown in New York this coming October as part of the Italian designer’s ongoing 90th birthday celebrations – it was left to Emporio Armani to carry the torch for the brand in Milan. It is a buoyant time for Emporio, evidenced this evening by a party which unfolded straight after the show, with guests ushered next door for spritzes, champagne and dancing to celebrate the renovation and reopening of the Emporio Armani store in Milan (it would go on until the early hours of the morning). The show was titled ‘Future Perfect’ and captured a similarly uplifting mood, with Mr Armani looking towards perhaps his most famous look: the men’s blazer and tie, the latter languid and oversized (it is a look that is having a moment, evoked by Anthony Vaccarello in his A/W 2024 Saint Laurent menswear collection, which recalled the Armani-dressed American Gigolo). Here, he made a version for women – ‘an elegant and provocative declaration of gender equality,’ the notes described – juxtaposing it with fluid, feminine looks in featherweight fabrics, which like all his summer collections was rooted in a mood of travel and escape. The feeling of ease carried on down to the footwear, a soft, lithe version of the boxing boot. For his final bow, as with recent seasons, Mr Armani shared the runway with his team – including Leo Dell'Orco, head of design for menswear and Silvana Armani, head of design for womenswear (she is also the designer’s niece). As ever, the applause was rapturous.

Moschino

Adrian Appioloza began his sophomore collection for Moschino with the humble white bed sheet, using it as a jumping-off point for a musing on the creative process, and how we use clothing to define who we are (befitting the inspiration, the Milan warehouse was hung with clothes lines of washed white linen). Twisted into gowns, morphing into trench coats, or scribbled on with biro drawings, the opening looks captured a mood of adolescent experimentation, setting the stage for a collection which saw the ‘ordinary made extraordinary’ (in the same vein, the opening looks were accompanied by playful handbags shaped like tea bags and laundry detergent bottles). The energetic collection which followed saw Appioloza draw inspiration from various subcultures, from bikers to the grunge movement to Buffalo, the 1980s British collective referenced here in bold typographical graphics by Terry Jones, the founder of London’s i-D magazine, as well as original archival jewellery by Buffalo member Judy Blame (Trust Judy Blame, set up in the late creative’s memory, also collaborated with Moschino on reissued pieces). The show ended with perhaps the collection’s highlight, a trio of gowns stitched onto the back of otherwise plain black suits. They were both beautiful and surreal – a fitting denouement to a collection which saw Appioloza confidently hone his vision for the house, which like its founder, Franco Moschino, revels in the playful, but is grounded in the real.

Prada

There was a simplicity to the OMA-designed Prada show set this season, which comprised a series of snaking benches that had been covered with sheets of satin, sliced and raw along their edges (it meant a departure from the ‘fairytale ravescape’ of last season’s menswear show). Though it was to prove something of a red herring. Because this was a collection which hit a mood which has already prevailed this season: one of a new eclecticism, collections which favour heady juxtapositions and individual expression over tidy thematics. Indeed, as the collection notes described, this was ‘a rejection of the derivative and expected’, a response, said co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, to the idea of the internet algorithm, the constant delivery of information tailored to each person’s reality. ‘We are driven by algorithms,’ said Mrs Prada succinctly backstage. ‘We like things because people tell us to like them.’

Instead, the designers celebrated what they called the ‘unpredictability’ of human nature, the desire to constantly shift between moods in the way that we dress and express ourselves. ‘Today is a period of endless information, driven by algorithms where each person sees their own version of the present, their own reality curated for them,’ elaborated Mrs Prada. ‘We wanted not to critique but to engage with this idea, to open a dialogue inspired by our cultural moment. We examine its core meaning and find our own reactions – the idea of choice, of unpredictability as a measure of human creativity, of Prada for each individual.’ This was a collection where no two looks were the same, and opposing elements – largely a shift between the prim and ladylike and the surreal and fetishistic – made for a collection where ‘infinite options proffer infinite opportunities,’ as the house described.

So there were trompe l’oeil elements (‘fur’ collars, belts overlaid onto trousers) which reflected the men’s collection shown this past June, as did shirts and dresses which were cut to be purposely skewiff (then, the pair talked about an ‘instinctive’ approach to dressing, with ‘clothes that have lived a life, that are alive in themselves’). Elsewhere, ideas clashed: a conservative Argyll jumper was worn with a tough leather skirt, covered in hanging metal rings; a feathered dress with an neon-coloured anorak; a worn-in long-sleeved T-shirt with a full-length satin skirt decorated with appliqué flowers. Eyelets, meanwhile, were blown up to enormous size, while accessories came in futuristic visor-like hats or sunglasses in-built into headscarves. The result was dizzying and disorientating, the equivalent to whizzing through the Instagram Explore page at speed.

‘We thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Simons. ‘That reflects an idea of transformation – through your practice, your actions, or through the clothes you wear. They’re all means to express a message, about your own authority, your own personal strength. They can transform your own perception of yourself.’

Max Mara

During his two-decade-long tenure as creative director of Max Mara, British designer Ian Griffiths has established a rich and eclectic canon of women from history – oftentimes lesser-known or overlooked – which he draws on for inspiration. This season, he cast his net back to the time of antiquity – specifically, the 4th century and the Alexandrian mathematician and astronomer Hypatia, an influential speaker and teacher who was a rare female voice in ancient Egypt. It led to a collection Griffiths titled ‘Science and Magic’, paying homage to mathematicians as those who ‘reduce the messy old universe to a series of sleek equations’, something which could also be said for Griffiths’ approach to clothing, which simplifies dressing with sleek but pragmatic propositions for a woman’s wardrobe. It could be the perfect outerwear (here, a full-length but lightweight riff on the classic single-breasted overcoat), or crisp white shirts, sinuous ribbed knits or gently oversized blazers, which were all on offer. Meanwhile origami-like folds, which emerged on the waistline of dresses and jackets, referenced the work of Hypatia, who, as a follower of Pythagoras, focussed on the proportions of triangles – a task which Griffiths likened to that of the Max Mara dressmaker, who also works in intricate lines and folds.

Jil Sander

The work of Canadian photographer Greg Girard inspired Lucie and Luke Meier’s latest Jil Sander collection, which unfolded in dimly lit corridors of brown velvet curtains erected in a warehouse space on the northern reaches of Milan. In particular, the ‘colour and emotional gradients’ of his photographs, which have largely focussed on the transformation of Asian cities – and the life of those on their margins – from the ‘hidden nightlife’ of Hong Kong to the neglected neighbourhoods of Shanghai, where he has lived since 1998. It made for a moody outing from the pair, where decidedly eclectic combinations were designed to evoke both ‘romantic seediness’ and ‘urban sophistication’, referencing glimpsed scenes in cities after dark. Of the collection’s eclectic mood – garments spanned iridescent tailoring, cowboy denim, floral-adorned vinyl overcoats, riffs on the bowling shirt, doiley-like crochet and ribbed knits with twisting beaded edges – the wife-and-husband duo said they drew on ‘whatever sparked their imagination, from any time or place’. It made for an unexpected but liberated collection, one which evoked ‘a tender desire to be beautiful, glamorous, and pleased’. As a final flourish, Girard’s photographs appeared across garments, whether a lit-up car at dusk or constellations of flowers, mirrored by those which appeared across the white carpeted floor.

No. 21

Alessandro Dell’Acqua said he was inspired by the optimistic spirit of the 1960s for his latest No. 21 collection. It was an era he had come to via the photographs of Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger, who is known for capturing the rebellious, subcultural scene of the time – particularly those in Europe influenced by Americana (as such, his images have long been a reference point for designers working in denim and leather). Though this was not a literal reinterpretation; instead, Dell’Acqua – whose work has always captured a fierce, dishevelled glamour – instead wanted to evoke the creative spirit of the young women, who often found rebellion in unexpected, mismatching combinations which opposed the conservative dress codes of their parents. So there were skewiff floral cardigans worn with shimmering brocade skirts, pearls and messed-up beehive hair, furry leopard-print collars and checkerboard print pointed pumps, as well as billowing sheer layered dresses which revealed colourful underwear beneath. Elsewhere, buttoned-up swing coats and shrunken tailoring recalled the distinct silhouettes of the 1960s. ‘I took their creative spirit, which, in my opinion, came from their urge to put different fads and fashions, mode e modi together,’ said Dell’Acqua. ‘They reinvented themselves day after day.’

Marni

Following a world tour that included stops in New York and Tokyo, Marni’s Francesco Risso returned home to Milan last season, with the designer choosing to stay in the city for S/S 2025. In fact, this was just about as close to home as you could get: Risso selected Marni’s headquarters on Viale Umbria to stage the show, which unfolded in a vast concrete hall entirely covered with wooden bistro chairs at alternating angles. In the centre, three pianos – led by the musician Dev Hynes – started to play as the show began, seeing models emerge in threes and weave their way through the chairs on seemingly random paths (when the lights came up at the end of the show, they had, in fact, been following different coloured lines along the floor).

It set a theatrical stage for a revelatory collection from the designer, who eschewed the raw creativity of recent seasons for an exercise in glamour and polish – albeit in Risso’s offbeat style. It largely centred on plays on midcentury silhouettes: narrow-waisted dresses were adorned with floral prints, opera coats were slung gently off the shoulder, while dramatic headwear was adorned with ‘feathers’ recalling cut-out paper (a similar technique was used to create a play on the feather boa). Meanwhile, a masculine slant came in broad tailoring, leather jackets and high-waisted trousers, recalling 1960s greasers. Make-up saw arching Divine-style eyebrows on men and women, the look becoming more exaggerated as it reached the final looks: a flurry of flared, couture-like gowns, adorned with crystal flowers. It was a collection that Risso said was about a pursuit of beauty, an act he likened to 'chasing a white rabbit across your yard’. ‘This is the romance of Marni: the ephemeral, lingering desire to go chasing rabbits,’ he said.

Fendi

As renovations of Fendi’s Milan headquarters on Via Solari continue, it was out to a vast soundstage on the city’s outskirts for Kim Jones’ latest ready-to-wear collection for the Roman house. Marking the beginning of a centenary year – Fendi was founded in 1925 as a leather goods manufacturer – the British designer looked for inspiration in the house’s founding decade, seeking to channel the liberated modernity of the 1920s with a feminine collection that spanned diaphanous, flapper-inspired dresses, sinuous sheer layers, and flourishes of crystal embellishment (Jones said the intricate craft on display was a bridge to his couture collections for the house, extending all the way to crystal-decorated pop socks). The languid glamour was contrasted with the near sci-fi white of the runway set, which centred on an enormous box (as a final trick, it opened to reveal a glimmering tableau of models inside).

‘The foundations of how women dress today and, in many ways, how we think are in the 1920s. It’s about modernity in style and attitude,’ explained Jones, who noted 1925 was also the year that Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby were published. ‘There’s a modernism in dress, design, decoration and thought. We approached the collection with these things in mind, as an amalgam of epochs, moods and techniques – then and now.’ This intermingling of eras was reflected by the soundtrack, which saw a soaring Max Richter composition interrupted by extracts of a conversation between house scions Anna Fendi and Silvia Venturini Fendi (the latter is also artistic director of accessories and menswear), in which they discuss Adele Fendi, who founded Fendi with her husband Edoardo. ‘I wanted something romantic, something with a debt to the 1920s from the 2020s,’ said Jones. It was a leap between centuries which made for perhaps his strongest Fendi collection yet.

Stay tuned for more from Milan Fashion Week S/S 2025.

It is little surprise that Beijing-born architect Ma Yansong grew up fixated with science fiction. The soaring, curvilinear lines of his buildings – from the undulating Harbin Opera House in China to the suspended alien vessel-like Aranya Cloud Center, which is currently in construction in Qinhuangdao – look to have descended to Earth from a far-off realm.

‘Good buildings should feed people's imagination, provide them with pleasure and provoke some sort of spiritual reaction,’ Ma told Wallpaper* at the beginning of 2023. ‘I like to create a kind of surreal atmosphere with architecture that's a little strange, unfamiliar or abstract. If the built world is too practical, it feels flat, and there's no space for imagination.’

Future fashion: Fendi collaborates with MAD Architects

Now, Ma brings his distinct eye to a project far smaller in scale: a handbag and sneaker design for the Italian house Fendi, first revealed at the house’s menswear show in January 2024, and now arriving in stores worldwide. It continues a longtime link between the house – which is based in Rome, its home city – and architecture, whether in previous collaborations (like that with Kengo Kuma for S/S 2024), or various ambitious building projects.

These include the Marco Costanzi-led renovation of the Mussolini-era Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome, which Fendi now uses as its headquarters, or the recently opened Fendi Factory in Bagno a Ripoli by Milan-based fist Piuarch, designed to float into the rolling Tuscan hills beyond.

The collaboration, designed alongside Silvia Venturini Fendi, is described by the house as 'combining new technologies with an Eastern affinity for natural forms'. This philosophy is epitomised by a version of the house’s signature ‘Peekaboo ISeeYou’ bag, which features curving, wave-like panels of leather across its futuristic façade, with glossy coloured aluminium emerging from beneath. It comes in two distinct colourways: one is constructed from grey leather with yellow panels, the other black with blue.

A similarly futuristic design defines the ergonomic sneaker, which, in Ma’s signature style, looks to have stepped off the set of a science-fiction movie. Slip-on, for ease, the show features a curvilinear injection-moulded sole that reflects the sweeping silhouettes of his architectural practice, with 'bubble' details and metal elements adding surface interest. A mesh tongue and stretch shoelaces complete with design, which, like the ‘Peekaboo’, comes in dove grey with yellow accents, or black with midnight blue. A white and silver version is also available,

Fendi and MAD Architects is available in limited-edition numbers from Fendi stores and the brand’s website from today (5 September 2024).

fendi.com

Soft curves, streamlined silhouettes and sleek fabrics: the A/W 2024 menswear collections were imbued with a new flamboyance, seeing classic ensembles reimagined with a sense of panache and performance.

There was Loewe, where creative director Jonathan Anderson looked towards the ‘iconography’ of Hollywood and the ‘collaged realness’ of social media with a collection adorned with theatrical flourishes. This included bows and beads alongside the delirious illustrations of Los Angeles-based artist Richard Hawkins (‘it’s all about different types of validation… how we perceive ourselves to the outside world,’ said Anderson at the time).

At Saint Laurent, Anthony Vaccarello proposed louche, oversized tailoring and outerwear which recalled the 1980s silhouettes of American Gigolo. ‘Fluid, with an intentional slouch, an illusion of fabric turning liquid,’ said the designer. Meanwhile, Dolce & Gabbana’s latest menswear offering was titled ‘Sleek’: a ‘story of elegance and handmade… a sartorial essay,’ described Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of the largely black collection, which demonstrated their tailoring prowess.

Here, taken from the September 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, photographer Matthieu Delbreuve and fashion editor David St John James put a series of these menswear looks centre stage in a series titled ‘Quiet on Set’.

Model: Indy van Opstal at Ford Models Paris. Casting: Svea Casting. Grooming: Chris Sweeney at One Represents using Sunday Riley and Sisley. Interiors: Olly Mason. Photography assistant: Kevin Ramos. Fashion assistant: Olivia Meghan. Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson. Production assistant: Minna Vauhkonen.

This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

As seen in the September 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper* – a reflection on a season defined by tactility, texture and touch – 12 of A/W 2024’s defining men’s and womenswear moments, from scrunched-up Miu Miu gloves and decadent Ferragamo feathers to seductive leather ties and cocooning balaclavas.

Soft touch (top left)

Enveloping textures, the pleasure of clothing on the skin: this season is all about tactility. Cue a melange of furry, fuzzy, soft-to-the-touch textures – whether the teddy-bear feel of a Dries Van Noten bag or the fluffy finish of a Carven skirt.

Match point (top right)

This season saw designers explore the co-ordinating accessory, albeit in an unexpected manner – at Gucci, the tone of a leather glove met that of a handbag, part of Sabato De Sarno’s ongoing investigation of colour and texture.

Parallel lines

The stripe is one of Missoni’s enduring motifs, often appearing in vivid colour combinations. Designer Filippo Grazioli paid homage to the pattern in playful style, like with these shaggy knit stripes, which adorn an elongated overcoat.

Glossed over

Slick, high-shine textures lent this season’s menswear a futuristic sheen. At Jil Sander, lustrous crackled-leather overcoats appeared as part of a collection that designers Lucie and Luke Meier described as an ‘immersive capsule, smooth and embracing’.

Back out

At Prada’s womenswear show, the backs of tailored jackets were sliced away, as if to expose their lining, appearing as part of a collection that saw co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons excavate historical silhouettes.

Hands on

At Miu Miu’s show, rolled-up sleeves and heavy, worn-leather gloves suggested a woman at work. Indeed, gloves – largely oversized and scrunched up – appeared throughout the collections, with iterations at The Row, Marni and Balenciaga.

Tied up

The tie was reimagined by a gamut of designers. At Prada, it formed part of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ riff on the corporate uniform, while at Bottega Veneta, ties were cut from leather in Matthieu Blazy’s typically seductive style.

Fine feather

A fascination with old Hollywood glamour permeated Maximilian Davis’ collections for Ferragamo. Flourishes of feathers sprouted from necklines or heeled pumps – an ode, said Davis, to the liberatory dress codes of the 1920s.

Slim chance

Menswear designers provided a long and lean riposte to the oversized silhouette that has dominated recent seasons. Silvia Venturini Fendi was one such voice, presenting slim, straight-cut tailoring, inspired by the contrast between ‘town and country’.

Hood times

The idea of protection featured prominently, with designers creating silhouettes that wrapped and enveloped. At Issey Miyake, balaclavas appeared as part of a collection that saw Satoshi Kondo explore the instinctual ‘act of clothing the human body’.

Second skin

This season’s slick boots offer up a glamorous way of protecting the body as the temperature drops. Such is the case with this pair by Daniel Lee, whose latest collection for Burberry is inspired by the ‘heritage of the British outdoors’.

Buckle up

A defined waistline added a nostalgic elegance to the season’s menswear silhouette, whether in nipped-waist tailoring, tie-fastening overcoats or eye-catching belts, like those at Prada, which were perhaps A/W 2024’s most covetable accessory.

Models: Jimai Hoth at PRM Agency, Mohammed Banze at Wilhelmina. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Set design: Kei Yoshino at Bryant Artists. Hair: Mayuko Nakae using Oribe. Make-up: Sunao Takahashi at Saint Luke using Chanel Fall-Winter 2024 Make-up Collection and No.1 de Chanel Skincare. Manicure: Sabina Uzunovic at Snow Creatives using Kure Bazaar. Photography assistants: Callum Su, Joshua Hippolyte.

This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

September, so said legendary American Vogue editor Candy Pratts, is the January of fashion. Following a brief summer break after the conclusions of menswear and haute couture – which took place over June and July – Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025 arrives in New York next week on September 6 2024, with subsequent stops in London, Milan and Paris. Think of it as a new fashion term.

The schedule is now set, with a few surprises along the way. Among them, the news that Pieter Mulier will show his next Alaïa collection in the city on September 6, heralding the start of fashion month. It is over four decades since the house’s eponymous founder, Azzedine Alaïa, first showed in the American city, when he presented a collection in September 1982 to an audience which included Andy Warhol and Paloma Picasso. No doubt Mulier – who has garnered plenty of high-profile devotees of his own – will draw a similarly starry crowd. Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren will show the day prior with a special show in the Hamptons on September 5. London-based label Cos has also announced a return to New York, having shown last season in Rome.

Elsewhere, it will no doubt be the season of debuts: chief among them is the much-anticipated arrival of Alessandro Michele at Valentino, who will show as part of Paris Fashion Week. Eyes will also be on Givenchy, Chanel and Dries Van Noten which – at the time of writing – are each without creative directors.

Here, everything Wallpaper* knows about Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025.

Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025: what to expect

New York Fashion Week S/S 2025 (6 – 11 September 2024)

New York Fashion Week S/S 2025 will begin – unofficially – on September 5, as American fashion behemoth (and member of the Wallpaper* USA 400) Ralph Lauren presents his latest collection in an exclusive show in the Hamptons, the beachside Long Island locale which has long played host to the rich and famous. ’The Hamptons is more than a place,’ said Lauren in a statement. ’It’s a natural world of endless blue skies, the ocean, green fields, and white fences, rusticity and elegance with a quality of light that drew artists here decades ago. It has been home, my refuge and always an inspiration.’

The day afterwards, Pieter Mulier will show his latest Alaïa collection in New York, four decades after Azzedine Alaïa first showed in the city in 1982. It will be his second time showing outside of Paris – an intimate show at the designer’s brutalist home in Antwerp, Belgium took place in 2023 – and will no doubt be one of the highlights of the schedule. ’A city close to Pieter Mulier’s heart and the maison’s,’ said Alaïa on Instagram. It will be accompanied by ‘a series of exclusive moments’ which will take place in the city from 6–8 September. Meanwhile Cos – which last season showed at Corsie Sistine in Rome – will return to New York with a show on September 10 in Brooklyn. ‘New York is a dynamic city with so much character – it’s a place of inspiration, full of interesting and creative people,’ says the brand’s design director Karin Gustafson. Another new arrival is Off-White, who under creative director Ib Kamara will swap Paris for New York, showing on the afternoon of Sunday 16 (the title of the show is ‘Duty Free' and will take place at Brooklyn Bridge Park). Nanushka will also debut at the week, showing on the afternoon of September 7.

Elsewhere, expect a continuation of the Tory Burch renaissance as the designer presents her S/S 2025 collection on the evening of Monday 17, while New York stalwarts Coach, Michael Kors and Carolina Herrera will all show during the week. Wallpaper* USA 400 members Willy Chavarria and Peter Do, the latter showing his third collection for Helmut Lang, will round out the schedule, alongside rising names Zankov and Diotima. Tommy Hilfiger has also confirmed a spot on the week’s schedule, having initially been absent. He will show his latest collection at 6.30pm on Sunday 16.

London Fashion Week S/S 2025 (12 – 17 September 2024)

Beginning slightly earlier this season to avoid a clash with Milan Fashion Week (which starts this season on September 17), London Fashion Week will continue its 40th birthday celebrations with a packed schedule comprising the usual slew of energetic, emerging labels amid a smattering of more well-established names. Of the latter, Burberry will remain the chief draw for international editors visiting the city – Daniel Lee will show his fourth runway collection for the British label – while JW Anderson will present another agenda-setting collection on Sunday morning, his usual slot.

Other names showing this season are Simone Rocha, Roksanda, Erdem, Ahluwalia and Aaron Esh, alongside a new edition of London-based incubator Fashion East (participants are yet to be announced). Watch out for Derrick – Luke Derrick’s burgeoning London-based label had plenty of buzz last season for its sleek, contemporary riff on men’s tailoring – and Nensi Dojaka, who returns to the schedule after a hiatus. Feben will also return to London, having shown last season with the support of Dolce & Gabbana in Milan. Look out too for the rebirth of Kent & Curwen, with the British label having been purchased by Chinese golf brand Biem.L.Fdlkk Garment in 2023.

London Fashion Week will also have a new home this season, the central Newgen space moving from Old Selfridges Hotel back to 180 Strand.

Milan Fashion Week S/S 2025 (17 – 23 September 2024)

Milan Fashion Week will run a day longer this season, part of a re-jigging of the fashion month schedule led by Camera della Moda, the week’s organising body. ’I’m very satisfied with this synergetic effort by the four main players on the fashion circuit,’ said the organisation’s president Carlo Capasa. ’[We] had for some time been asking for an extension of the Milan Fashion Week, given its calendar of over 200 appointments.’

As such, the week will begin with Fendi on September 17, the Roman house presenting its S/S 2025 collection at 3pm (this time, the show will take place on a Tuesday, as opposed to its usual Wednesday). Elsewhere, expect a continuation of Prada’s ‘fairytale ravescape’ set which it revealed as its menswear show in June (the house’s womenswear sets usually riff on their menswear predecessors ), alongside similarly blockbuster shows from Gucci, Versace, Ferragamo, Dolce & Gabbana and Bottega Veneta.

Absent from this season’s schedule is Tom Ford – after the departure of creative director Peter Hawkings earlier this month – and Giorgio Armani, the latter showing in New York off-schedule in October. Also currently absent are MSGM and Blumarine (David Koma will show his debut as creative director next season), while Central Saint Martins graduate Susan Fang will show with the support of Dolce & Gabbana on Sunday morning.

Paris Fashion Week S/S 2025 (23 September – October 1 2024)

No doubt the biggest moment of Paris Fashion Week will be the arrival of Alessandro Michele at Valentino, who will present his first runway show this September (the ex-Gucci creative director’s first collection for the house, titled ’Avant les Débuts’ was revealed in a surprise lookbook drop this past June). ‘It’s an incredible honour for me to be welcomed at Maison Valentino. I feel the immense joy and the huge responsibility to join a maison de couture that has the word “beauty” carved on a collective story, made of distinctive elegance, refinement and extreme grace,’ said Michele in a statement issued after his appointment in March 2024. He will show on the afternoon of Sunday 29.

A number of other houses – among them Givenchy, Dries Van Noten and Chanel – are currently without creative directors. Givenchy is absent from the schedule (the new creative director will likely debut in February 2025), Dries Van Noten is slated to show on the afternoon of Wednesday 25 (it will be the first show since the eponymous creative director exited in June), and Chanel will retain its usual spot on the morning of Tuesday 1 October. An otherwise busy schedule – as has become the norm for the city – will include shows from Loewe, Louis Vuitton, Rick Owens, Dior, Saint Laurent, Hermès and more. Balenciaga, meanwhile, will show on the evening of Monday 30, shifting from Sunday morning.

In other news, Paris label Coperni will host its S/S 2025 show on October 1, 2024 at the so-called happiest place on earth – Disneyland Paris. Founders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer have said the collection will blend ‘magic with reality, paying tribute to the beloved Walt Disney Animation Studios movies of our childhood’. Meanwhile Ganni, the stalwart of Copenhagen Fashion Week, will shift to Paris this season, following the appointment of Laura du Rusquec, previously of Balenciaga, as CEO this past April.

Stay tuned for more from Women’s Fashion Month S/S 2025.

A new injection of energy came to Milan Fashion Week Men’s this season thanks to something of a British invasion: Martine Rose, who is largely inspired by underground subcultures in her idiosyncratic menswear collections, made her debut week on Sunday afternoon (16 June 2024), while heritage house Dunhill also joined the Milan schedule, seeing Simon Holloway present a collection he described as ‘radically classic’. Elsewhere, London-based label JW Anderson continued to show its menswear collections in the city, this season creating a collection titled ’Real Sleep’ inspired by the slumber state of hypnotherapy.

Other talking points of the weekend included Sabato De Sarno’s sophomore menswear collection for Gucci, which this season shifted to Monday morning (17 June 2024) and took place at Triennale Milano, the design gallery first constructed in the 1930s (it continued De Sarno’s desire to foster a link with the arts, having shown his Cruise 2025 collection at London’s Tate Modern last month). Prada, meanwhile, took over the timeline with a typically transporting set created alongside OMA/AMO – this time, a ‘fairytale ravescape’ featuring a cabin on stilts that had been erected in the Fondazione Prada space – backdropping what was one of the season’s defining collections. 

The schedule was rounded out by the titans of Milanese style: among them Dolce & Gabbana, Zegna, Fendi and Armani, while Massimo Giorgetti celebrated 15 years of his Milan-based label MSGM.

Here, Wallpaper* selects the highlights from Milan Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2025. 

The best of Milan Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2025

Zegna

A field of linen had been recreated in an enormous sound-stage-like venue on Milan’s outskirts, close to the city’s Linate airport, for Zegna’s latest runway show. Artsistic director Alessandro Sartori said that he wanted it to feel like the blades of linen – here constructed from featherweight strips of metal – were invading the otherwise industrial space. This shifting between man and nature was the catalyst for the collection, said Sartori, which was at once precise and organic, seeing sharply defined tailoring meet natural earthy hues of terracotta, beige and warm yellow and languid silhouettes. Much of the collection was crafted from linen – ‘Us, in the Oasi of Linen’ was the collection’s title – making use of the house’s near-unrivalled production and innovation with the material, which is also far more sustainable that other natural fibres like cotton. ‘[Linen is] as malleable and sensual as the idea of summer dressing we are prompting,’ the designer said, noting that it ‘moulds to individual personalities… [for men] who play buoyantly with their own appearance.’ This included the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, something of a house muse for Sartori, who closed the show with an elegant runway turn.

Gucci

This season, Sabato de Sarno shifted Gucci’s menswear show to its final Monday, choosing the Triennale Milano, the city’s 1930s-built design gallery, as a new venue. The clean white lines and light-filled atrium of the Giovanni Muzio-designed space provided something of a fresh slate for De Sarno, whose sophomore menswear collection felt like his strongest vision for the Italian house yet. There was an optical clarity to the season’s looks, which had been inspired by surfing, here figured in graphic short-and-shirt sets, swim slippers and luminous wraparound sunglasses which sat around the neck on Gucci-adorned straps like chokers. The mood was youthful: super-abbreviated shorts (an ode, perhaps, to house ambassador Paul Mescal, who sat front row in his own pair of Gucci short shorts), sheer net polo shirts and the poppy colour palette all skewed younger than the winter season (befitting this mood, 400 students were in attendance for Milan’s fashion and design schools). As has become a signature of De Sarno, flourishes of embellishment were used to elevate everyday garments, like the extraordinary beaded polo shirts or dangling tassels of beads across shirts and jackets, which lent a feeling of material richness to an otherwise streamlined collection.  

Giorgio Armani

Mr Armani presented his eponymous menswear collection this season without any accompanying notes, preferring to let the clothing speak for itself. It is something that the designer – who turns 90 next month – has done across his five-decade-long career as a figurehead of Italian design, preferring to eschew seasonal gimmicks and complex runway sets for a mood of considered design and quiet elegance. Watched on by a Hollywood front row (another thing Mr Armani is synonymous with) which included Russell Crowe and La La Land director Damien Chazelle, this was an exercise in Armani-isms: unstructured tailoring in louche, generous proportions, diaphanous shirts and waistcoats, and a simple palette of Armani greige and navy. A mood of travel also permeated the collection – another hallmark of the designer – here figured in hazy palm-tree-frond prints and straw or cotton sunhats. Joined for his bow by team members Leo Dell’Orco and Gianluca Dell’Orco, the designer known as ‘Il Maestro’ received a warm standing ovation from the Teatro Armani crowd.

JW Anderson

The slumbering between-state of hypnotherapy was the starting point for Jonathan Anderson’s latest collection, a free association of ideas that saw the Northern Irish designer at the peak of his creative powers, balancing the strange and seductive in polished style. Looks emerged at first in threes: three duvet-like quilted jackets, three oversized utility gilets, three blown-up knit cardigans. Their play on proportion continued throughout – other silhouettes were stretched or shortened, and an enormous tie was gleefully oversized – while protrusions of coloured satin, or a series of bulbous padded T-shirts, lent a sculptural feel. Elsewhere, surreal motifs emerged like repressed memories or dreams, whether Guinness-adorned sweaters (Anderson said he remembered its unexpected advertisements growing up in Northern Ireland) or knitted dresses adorned with images of houses, as if lifted from a children’s storybook (on one, a tiny three-dimensional bird sat on the shoulder). Part of the inspiration for the liberated, freewheeling mood was a recent trip to Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival: ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ said Anderson. ‘The eye has changed within menswear and within womenswear. People want something that is really challenging.’

Martine Rose

Prior to the Martine Rose show – which happened just after Prada, and just a few hundred yards away – people questioned just how the London-based designer might bring her idiosyncratic, underground-infused brand of menswear to Milan, in what would be her first showing on the city’s fashion week schedule. Would she succumb to the city‘s sartorial polish? Presented in a former industrial building, the floor scattered with Martine Rose flyers – like those you might have found for a 1990s rave – the answer was a resolute no. Models stomped and slithered around the space with prosthetic noses (purposely haphazard) and wearing matted wigs so long they almost dragged along the ground. Men wore pencil skirts and fishnet stockings, or tailored trousers cut to appear like chaps (the crotch part was leather, an inversion of the expected), while for women the padded protection of a motorcycle jacket became the bust of a dress. Martine Rose signatures recurred throughout – shrunken football shirts, warped tracksuits, zip-away denim – alongside the requisite nods to nightlife and its dress codes. ‘When you’re young, you think that when you grow up your tastes are going to mature with you,’ she told Wallpaper* prior to the show. ‘This is the sort of irony.’ 

• Read our exclusive interview with Martine Rose

Prada

This season, the Fondazione Prada’s Deposito space had been installed with a new dwelling – a small white hut, raised on stilts, and with a long walkway leading down to the curving white runway below. From its windows and door, left slightly ajar, pulsated the sound of Faithless’s Insomnia, while flashing lights suggested a party was happening within, just out of sight. Here in this ‘fairytale ravescape’, said co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, was a collection which mused on ‘freedom, youthful optimism and energy’, something the former reiterated backstage after the show. ‘Youth is the future… it is hope,’ she said ‘We wanted to do something that would express youthful optimism because the times are so bad.’

The pair did so in pieces which appeared to have ‘lived a live, that are alive in themselves’. Silhouettes were dynamic: purposely creased, warped, shrunken and exaggerated, ‘like clothes you already live with,’ said Simons. Sleeves were short, as if garments had been borrowed or swapped between people. Shirts were skewiff and twisted around the body – like after a long night – while narrow trousers sat low on the waist and pooled at the ankle. Other pieces were made to question the reality of what you were seeing, demanding a second look. Like trompe l'oeil Breton T-shirts, where the stripe was warped and distorted, or low-slung leather ‘belts’ which were actually set into trousers. Enormous visor sunglasses – their lenses decorated with photographs of raves, Roman statuary and American highways – and prints by the artist Bernard Buffet, the latter appearing ‘like a concert T-shirt’, added a surreal, disorientating edge. 

The pair said that it came down to working with intuition, of following what they were drawn to without asking why. ‘Sometimes when you are older you start to overthink, and you limit yourself. When you are young, you just go,’ said Simons. ‘We wanted to create clothes that have lived a life, that are alive in themselves,’ the pair concluded. ‘There is a sense of spontaneity and optimism to these clothes - they reflect instinctive but deliberate choices, freedom.’

Dunhill

A serene Milanese garden, close to the city’s rarefied shopping street Via Monte Napoleone, provided the setting for Simon Holloway’s sophomore collection for British heritage brand Dunhill, here shifting to the Italian city after showing last season at London’s National Portrait Gallery. This was a continuation of that debut, seeing Holloway once again explore the tropes of British dress – particularly those over a summer season of sporting and society events – in pursuit of what he called ‘radical classicism’. As such, he ran a gamut of typically British looks, from the casual – a suede utility jacket worn with driving gloves, cable-knit sweaters and pleat-front jeans – to the sporty – rugby shirts and shorts, striped varsity socks – and the unapologetically grand, like the collection’s final look, a black morning suit worn with an ivory silk scarf and cane. ‘These are not basic clothes for going into the office,’ said Holloway. ‘These are clothes for enjoyment, for a life well-lived.’

Emporio Armani

Unbridled horses frolicking in the surf, purple fields of lavender: the projections on the wall of the Teatro Armani showspace set the scene for an Emporio collection titled ‘Freedom in Nature’ which saw Mr Armani supplant his man for the season from his usual urban sprawl and into the wilds. The mood was one of adventure and abandon: shirting was plunging and worn with voluminous pants and heavy boots – the latter a nod to equestrianism – while superfine tailoring recalled safari jackets and kimonos. A focus on the waist ran throughout, whether in the belted utility jackets or the loops of leather which narrowed the waist of the designer’s louche, lightweight tailored blazers. It ended with the scent of lavender as a stream of lederhosen-clad men promenaded the space with baskets full of the springtime-blooming flower. Here, nature might have been somewhat tamed, but it nonetheless made from a transporting closing milieu, with the models surrounding Mr Armani – this season joined by Leo Dell’Orco and Silvana Armani, who look after the house’s men’s and womenswear collections – for his usual ovation, this year all-the-more celebratory in anticipation of his 90th birthday next month. 

Fendi

Fendi left behind its usual showspace in the house’s Via Solari HQ (renovations and an expansion are currently underway), transporting guests to a studio lot-like showspace on Milan’s outskirts. It lent the presentation a grander scale, a feeling mimicked by the enormous mirrored blocks which danced around the runway as if operated by remote control, reflecting both audience and models across their spinning surfaces. Silvia Venturini Fendi, who heads up the house’s menswear and accessories collections, said that this season she was inspired by a deep dive into the Fendi archive. The Roman house will turn 100 this year, and the designer created a celebratory crest comprising four of the house’s motifs, including the famed double-F emblem, which here adorned sweaters and shirts. It lent the collection a varsity feel – Venturini Fendi talked before the show about wanting Fendi to feel like a team, or club – where striped knit rugby sweaters and ties met plaid jackets, school blazers and a playful riff on the football shirt. This was a uniform for the Fendi clan – and its wide-reaching international fanbase – to sport with pride in its centenary year.

Dolce & Gabbana

‘Italian Beauty’ was the title of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s latest menswear collection, which saw the duo make a subtle gear-shift from the sharp, reduced line of recent seasons towards something softer, inspired by effortless Italian summers and actors like the louche Marcello Mastroianni. Raffia, a distinct hallmark of Italian furnishings, was one such motif, used here to create airy summer jackets and oversized polo shirts, while ever-astute tailoring – here largely double-breasted and worn with pleated trousers which narrowed towards the hem – harked back to the 1950s. Elsewhere, the collection was enlivened with flourishes of embroidery and embellishment, like the sprays of delicate red flowers which aodrned crisp white trousers and jackets.

MSGM

It was 15 years ago that Italian designer Massimo Giorgetti founded MSGM, a landmark celebrated with his latest menswear show held in a former industrial garage on Milan’s outskirts on Saturday morning. The crisp, optical collection, which looked towards the sea for inspiration, was backdropped by explosions of primary-colour paint against a series of Perspex boxes which lined the runway. They were an ode, Giorgetti elaborated, to an early collection he drafted an artist to daub with paint after fearing it was too safe. It also referenced the broad strokes of colour and graphic motifs the designer has evoked over the last decade and a half, here conjured in a vivid array of pattern, from riffs on nautical stripes and colourful daisies to painterly prints of seaside scenes. Indeed, Giorgetti said it is in his cliffside home in Liguria, close to Portofino, where the ideas for the collection percolated. As for the mood, this was a Mediterranean summer at its most evocative: ‘the rocks, Mediterranean pines, agaves, the scent of salt and resin,’ he listed, transporting guests – in Giorgetti’s typically uplifting fashion – from a cloudy Milan to the Italian riviera. 

Stay tuned for more from Milan Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2025.

Workwear has long been the bedrock of men’s fashion, endlessly riffed upon, honed and upgraded – from the classic denim shirt and jeans, adopted by cowboys and miners in the American West, to chore jackets, cargo pants, and hi-vis jackets. This sense of utility was seen throughout the S/S 2024 collections – from Prada’s danger-red pocket-covered gilet, a play on the uniforms of security details, to Givenchy’s khaki bombers, Celine’s camo-adorned pants and hardy suede jackets at Miu Miu.

Utilitarian men’s fashion gets an upgrade for S/S 2024

The season’s functional mood is captured in a series of carefree combinations by Italy-born, London-based stylist Nicola Neri and photographer Luca Strano, who is based between London and Milan. As seen in the May 2024 Milan Preview Issue of Wallpaper* (on international newsstands now), this series of portraits puts the utilitarian aesthetic in the hot seat – leaving you with a blueprint of how to upgrade the everyday this spring and summer.

Models: Tom Davison and Milo Boaten-Rolfe at Xdirectn, Oscar Young at Premier, Rea at Milk Management, Zakaria Dau at PRM, Mason Marchetti and Yertai Abdibekov at Next London. Casting: Miro Raynov. Hair: Kanae Kikuchi at Haco+ using Instant Icon. Make-up/grooming: Jo Banach using Chanel Les Beiges Summer Spirit and Hydra Beauty Micro Serum Lip. Interiors: Olly Mason. Photography assistants: Domizia Salusest, Farid Ghimas. Fashion assistant: Hope Palmer. Hair assistants: Takuro Watanabe, Rio Shimmaki. Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson.

A version of this article appears in the May 2024 Milan Preview Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

As Salone del Mobile 2024 and the wider Milan Design Week got underway this week in the design capital, one thing quickly became clear: the majority of the fashion contingency among the schedule was in a reflective mood.

While some brands looked to design masters past, others mined their archives: Bottega Veneta worked with the Le Corbusier Foundation to re-interpret its LC14 Tabouret Cabanon stool; Yves Saint Laurent collaborated with the Gio Ponti archive to create an exclusive porcelain collection; and Gucci presented archival re-editions in its now-signature Ancora red from the likes of Tobia Scarpa and Venini.

Elsewhere, Hermès and Armani placed their new furniture and design creations beside the sartorial objects that inspired them (with Giorgio Armani sharing personal photographs that span his career) and Loewe worked with its Craft Prize alumni to create 26 unique lamps that spotlighted the time-honed craft techniques that still exist around the world.

It’s a move that reflects a recent trend in their primary medium of fashion, where reminders of iconic codes are increasingly served up to highlight the importance of respecting the signatures that stand the test of time.

Here, in our comprehensive round-up, is the Wallpaper* edit of the best fashion moments at Milan Design Week 2024.

Fashion moments at Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week 2024

Armani Casa

Held once again in Palazzo Orsini on Via Borgonuovo (also known as Armani HQ), Armani Casa’s Salone installation took visitors on a journey of the places founder Giorgio Armani has been most inspired by during his illustrious career. His travels have taken him far and wide – all over Europe, as well as Japan, China, Saudi Arabia and Morocco – and over the years, homages to the craft and skill he has discovered in each have appeared in his ready-to-wear collections. For this installation, called ‘Echoes From The World’, he placed his exquisite couture creations and his own personal collection of souvenirs (from Samurai swords to kimonos) alongside new pieces of furniture such as the Venus console with a hand-painted lacquered glass top backed in gold-leaf to give a luminous shimmer in the room dedicated to China and the blue velvet bed in the room celebrating Morocco that took months to make (only seven centimetres of this fabric can be woven in a day and this bed took 12 metres of material). A highlight waiting at the end of the show was a room with supersized images from Armani’s private photo album in a few of the locations celebrated here. ‘For this edition of the Salone del Mobile, I imagined a “cinematic” journey to the countries that have always inspired me: places and cultures that spark highly personal reworkings,’ shared Armani, adding: ‘I like to present myself to the public in the most authentic and direct way possible.’

Hermès

Taking over the sprawling La Pelota space for the week, Hermès presented ‘Topography of Material’, an installation conceived ‘to create a dialogue between roots and movement, between materials and know-how’, shared the brand. Suspended below foot-level on a diagonal catwalk of sorts, guests were welcomed by 16 intersecting floors that brought together 16 different types of stone, ten types of earth, four types of wood and many variations of terracotta brick all sourced from either Italy or France arranged in intricate ways to celebrate the skill of timeless handcraft. It formed a powerful introduction to the presentation of objects itself as this year Hermès made a point to highlight its own enduring codes. Behind a 35m-long and 6.m-high suspended black wall lay objects from the house’s archive juxtaposed with recent masterpieces and objects making their debut. For example, the silver Timour choker necklace from 2002 sat beside the new Diapason D’Hermès chair designed by the Hermès Studio this year in homage to the piece of jewellery; the original Mangeoire pouch from 1949 (used to feed horses) stood beside the new Derby leather buckets, also launched this year; and the Drag travel bag from the 2010s was presented next to Jasper Morrison’s Equilibre chair for Hermès from 2020. As intended, it effectively presented the virtues in time-honed skills and luxurious designs that retain a forever relevance.

Valextra

Valextra worked with Bergamo-based Studio Temp (with whom it also collaborated for Casa Valextra) on its Valextra Vocabolario concept that transformed its John Pawson-designed Via Manzoni flagship into the Valextra Spa. The idea was to highlight the exceptional care that goes into each of Valextra’s leather goods, from the hands that craft them to the after-care that the brand offers its clients. Inside a huge, simulated sauna, guests were invited to sit and observe the brand’s artisans hand-painting its signature black lacquered Costa edging onto handbags in real time. In the pink-carpeted space around, the brand’s new Assoluto collection – a three-piece capsule crafted from Econyl – was unveiled as machines worked in real time to 3D-print the new Iside Onda handbag. Combining state-of-the-art handbag development and best-in-class customer service through a radical architectural lens, it beautifully captured the DNA of this Milanese brand.

Bottega Veneta

Bottega Veneta presented ‘On The Rocks’ at the Palazzo San Fedele, a special location for the house as it was the setting for creative director Matthieu Blazy’s first show and is its soon-to-be HQ. Partnering with Cassina and Fondation Le Corbusier, the brand honed in on the iconic LC14 Tabouret Cabanon stool that it described as ’a timeless icon of Le Corbusier that embodies the excellence of the Cassina carpentry workshop’. First conceived by the designer for his Côte d'Azur cabin, it was inspired by a washed-up whisky box he found on the shores beneath the residence, hence the title of the installation, which saw several iterations piled high, one on top of the other, reminiscent of a jagged coastline. This isn’t the first time Blazy has affiliated himself with the object; at his recent A/W 2024 womenswear fashion show set, guests sat on bare wooden versions. For Salone, they came in the same rendering but also covered in the brand’s famous intrecciatio leather to create 160 limited editions.

Loewe

Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson primarily worked with alumni from the brand’s prestigious Craft Prize on his first-ever lighting installation at Salone del Mobile. Staged at Palazzo Citterio in the heart of the Brera Design District, the presentation featured one-of-a-kind lighting designs from 24 artists who the brand has either worked with or supported in the past. Remarkably, it was the first time that any of the featured makers had worked with light, which accounted for the originality on display. From Enrico David’s curved Onyx table lamp that features the face of a woman on closer inspection and Dahye Jeong’s spherical structure using an ancient weaving technique using horsehair, to Young Song Lee’s hollowed-out calabash fruits covered in twisted mulberry-tree paper and Dame Magdalene Odundo’s cinched leather hanging lamps (above), each captured the celebratory spirit of Loewe in the world of craft and design that promotes and helps preserve the most exquisite techniques from all over the world. While each of the 24 pieces was for sale at the start of the week, by 5pm on the second day the majority were – predictably – all snapped up.

Gucci

Gucci’s creative director Sabato de Sarno’s ‘Ancora’ campaign continues to thrive in Milano as the brand unveiled Gucci Design Ancora in its newly reopened flagship on Via Montenapoleone. Entering through a carpeted staircase surrounded by lacquered walls in the dark red ‘Ancora Rosso’ hue that is a signature of the De Sarno era at Gucci, visitors were presented with an antidote in acid green when they reached the top. Inside this starkly saturated mini maze, architected by Guillermo Santomà, were five objects De Sarno had chosen from several Italian masters over the years that had been re-issued in the Ancora-red hue for the occasion. The Le Mura sofa by Mario Bellini for Tacchini from 1972; the Clessidra rug from an iconic design of Piero Portaluppi made by CC-Tapis; the Storet tallboy by Nanda Vigo for Acerbis in 1994; the Opachi vase by Tobia Scarpa for Venini in 1960; and the Parola lamp by Gae Aulenti and Piero Castiglioni for FontanaArte in 1980 each stood in their own space to be admired from all angles. ‘Through Design Ancora, Gucci doesn’t simply celebrate old icons, it creates new ones,’ said Michela Pelizzari, founder of P:S Agency, which co-curated the project. ’The aura emanating from the brand spotlights five pieces by Italian masters that are perfect from a design standpoint but less known to the general public.’

Thom Browne

For his Salone del Mobile debut, Thom Browne took over the Palazzina Appiani to unveil his collaboration with the 160-year-old home textiles expert Frette with his performance, entitled Time To Sleep. True to his reputation for subverting traditional settings and concepts into unexpected scenarios, Browne placed six identical beds under the frescoes in the Hall of Honour and had models undress themselves before getting into bed. In the models’ getting dressed, rather than undressed, to sleep, Browne intended to ‘challenge the audience to question the role of dress in public life’, highlighting that the act of sleeping is just as important as the hours we are awake. ‘I think it's so much more interesting, and it elevates the product launch, when you create an installation that transcends the specific world that it’s in,’ Browne told Wallpaper* during rehearsals for the performance. The collection, which is available immediately, comprises sheets, blankets, terry-towel and cashmere robes, bath towels, and a quilted bath mat in crisp white cotton-sateen. ‘The reason I wanted to work with Frette is because they’re the best at what they do,’ added Browne.

Saint Laurent

The Paris-based house turned the clock back to 1953 and the private collection of Anala and Armando Planchart who commissioned the legendary architect Gio Ponti to mastermind their hilltop Venezuelan villa overlooking Caracas. On finishing the project, Ponti commissioned artisans from his native Italy to help furnish the space and turned to Ginori 1735 to create a collection of porcelain plates featuring motifs from around the villa and the couple’s initials. It is these plates that creative director Anthony Vaccarello curated and had reissued by the ceramic experts for Saint Laurent’s special installation in the cloisters of the Chiostri di San Simpliciano. Displayed in oscillating tubes on a raised platform that mirrored the height in which they originally lived in Villa Planchart Segnaposto, the presentation marked a coming together of multiple design icons.

Prada

Once again collaborating with FormaFantasma (above), Prada staged its Prada Frames seminar discussions on the theme of Being Home. Throughout the week, luminaries in different fields came together – including Paola Antonelli, Brigitte Baptiste, Kate Crawford, Jack Halberstam and David Van Severen – to cover myriad topics that were contextualised by Alice Rawsthorn. Each of the 17 sessions took their leave from different rooms around the home: for the bedroom, Gulsum Baydar and Philippe Rahm discussed the bedrooms role as a comfort zone; for the living room, Jayden Ali and Jack Halberstam were in conversation with Andrés Jaque exploring the rituals of diaspora communities in architectural spaces; and in the library, Isabella Rossellini and Mary Kuhn examined the relationship between humans and nature in the home, past and present. Staged each year to invite people out of their everyday lives and explore new and alternative analysis of familiar situations, it continues to be a highlight. Read more about Prada Frames.

Issey Miyake

60,000 bamboo skewers were used to create the one-of-a-kind carpet collaboration between Issey Miyake and the Dutch collective We Make Carpets. Famous for transforming everyday objects into artistic works of beauty, the artisans channelled Issey Miyake’s own skill at finding the sweet spot of robust-delicacy with the piece that was created by inserting the skewers one by one by hand into a thick piece of foam. The resulting patterns emerged organically as their dipped ends started to create surface patterns. Issey Miyake praised the group’s tenacity in making something meaningful without the need for ‘fancy gadgets and advanced technologies’, praising their labour-intensive and synchronised teamwork in bringing the piece to life. Transported flat to Milan city centre from where it was crafted in the Netherlands, in a nod to the national emblem it was presented resting on wooden beams crafted from tulip trees at the Via Bagutta flagship.

Versace

‘If These Walls Could Talk’ is an apt name for Versace’s Salone del Mobile presentation staged in its original atelier, the Palazzo Versace on Via Gesu. As many a fashion aficionado will know, it is at this residence that many of the fashion house’s famous catwalk shows have taken place over the years (including that 1991 show that birthed ‘the supermodel’) and where many of its globally recognised logos and icons were first designed, including the Medusa, Barocco and Greca emblems. They were omnipresent through this presentation that guided visitors from room to room, with even more opulence around each corner – an experience heightened by an audio experience created in collaboration with Radio Raheem for each space. They featured pieces new and reworked including The Medusa ’95 Conversational Sofa, the La Greca Bed and the Lady Desk, each a conversation starter in the space they stood.

Loro Piana 

Paying tribute to the late Milanese designer and architect Cini Boeri, Loro Piana showcased the most iconic pieces from her archive and presented them in its famously luxurious interiors fabrics. The collaboration with the official archive of Boeri, marks not only what would have been the year of Boeri’s 100th birthday, but the year Loro Piana also celebrates its centenary. Honouring Boeri’s insistence that furniture should be engaged with at all times, visitors to the presentation were encouraged to touch and sit on the pieces as they moved through the space. ’The thinking of Cini Boeri is extraordinarily contemporary,’ shared Francesco Pergamo, Director of Loro Piana Interiors. ’Just as extraordinarily contemporary remain the pieces we have chosen to exhibit together with Arflex and Archivio Cini Boeri, and to dress with our fabrics.’ Featured in the presentation are the famous modular Strips system, that won the prestigious Compasso d’Oro in 1979, the corresponding bed, the Bobo and Boborelax armchairs and the Botolo Chairs that have been covered in the brand’s ‘cashfur’ and made in a limited edition of 100. ’The dual centenary of Cini’s birth and the founding of Loro Piana has offered us the opportunity to contribute to the appreciation of the architect's figure,’ added Pergamo, who revealed plans to work with the archive on additional projects over the next three years.

Fendi Casa

Welcome to the world of Fendi Casa where the family keeps growing. This year, the Via Manzoni space was masterminded by Silvia Venturini Fendi and realised by Controvento creative collective. Together, they kept the house’s ‘double F’ logo of the house front and center, creating intimate spaces that invite people to cosy up, much like the emblem. The perfect example lies in the new Fendi F-Affair sofa by Controvento that is an interlocking platform of seats and suspended tables presented with a champagne bucket and glasses. It was joined by other collaborations in the sumptuous sofa department, the F-Stripes by Ludovica Serafini and Roberto Palomba and the Sohoft by Toan Nguyen. Existing families grew their brood, too: Thierry Lemaire’s Parsifal sofa was joined by the Mrs Parsifal armchair; Stefano Gallizioli’s Adrianand’s Audrey chair was complemented with square-shaped Audrette chairs; and Cristina Celestino's Ottavia chair was delivered of a sister, the Lazy Ottavia armchair.

Zegna

Zegna staged something of a takeover of Milan as it released its new Rizzoli tome, Born In Oasi Zegna. Named after the 100km of forested land north of Milan in the Biella Alps where its founder Ermenegildo Zegna initiated a reforestation programme in 1910, the book marked a moment for the brand to celebrate both its values and association with the city of Milan. In celebration, mini Zegna-branded newsstands (‘edicolas’) that are famously found on most corners were giving out limited-edition tote bags, while over in the piazza in front of the landmark Duomo, tulips transported in from the area were being planted in the square’s new flower beds. ’The project aims to convey the value and urgency of respect for the Earth and nature, as well as the importance that urban green spaces can bring people closer to natural ecosystems and the protection of biodiversity and social responsibility,’ shared the brand, ’concepts that are fundamental to Oasi Zegna.’

Dolce & Gabbana

Fresh from setting the city alight with its extravagant Milanese exhibition, ’From the Heart to the Hands’, Dolce & Gabbana staged an intimate reveal of its new interiors offering, The Dreaming Collection. Here, it was all about sitting comfortably, as the Moss Curved Sofa, which sits on a polished metal base in black nickel, and the DG Casa Moon Island armchair (above, which the brand said was ‘reminiscent of a warm embrace’) were joined by the Moon Island Sofa – designed to steal the spotlight in any room it’s in, much like everything this brand turns its heart and hand to.

Lanvin

Parisian house Lanvin looked towards its heritage for its installation at Milan Design Week; specifically, Lanvin Decoration, a furniture and decoration line which was first introduced by founder and couturier Jeanne Lanvin in 1920. Lanvin united with Rooms Studio – founded by two Georgian designers Nata Janberidze and Keti Toloraia in 2007 – for the project, which saw the pair curate a number of their pieces, including a series of sculptural chairs and benches, which were displayed at Lanvin’s Milan outpost.

Up until Karl Lagerfeld joined the brand in 1965, the Fendi logo showed a squirrel sitting on a walnut tree branch, a symbol of the hard-working founder Edoardo Fendi, who was said to be as busy as a squirrel by his wife Adele. Initially tasked with modernising the brand’s fur line, Lagerfeld apparently drew the brand’s new interlocking ‘FF’ logo on a piece of paper in just a few seconds (the letters stand for ‘fun furs’).

The logo instantly became a symbol of luxury and of the fashion-forward brand around the world. It has since featured on everything from a jacquard fabric used to line travel trunks, to trainers and, famously, a variety of belt buckles, and even formed the main motif of an entire collection in 2018. More recently, it also inspired Peter Mabeo’s ‘Efo’ coffee table. Now an iconic piece of the Fendi Casa collection, it is being reintroduced this year in a palladium and light grey version.

Read the Wallpaper* guide to what to see at Salone Del Mobile and Milan Design Week 2024

Revisiting the play of two rounded and organic Fs which began with Mabeo’s table, the Roman fashion house’s new ‘F-Affair’ sofa byControvento turns the double Fs into the three-dimensional elements of a modular seating system comprising a corner piece, a central piece, an ottoman and a chaise longue.

The giant F-shaped upholstered pieces interlock perfectly, and can be combined at will to fit any space. We particularly like this off-white version, in micro bouclé and white shearling, with the pale upholstery really allowing the letter-shaped elements to shine through, but the sofa will be available in any of the colour and material options offered by Fendi Casa’s exhaustive textile collection.

Fendi Casa,
Piazza della Scala
Milan

fendicasa.com

And so it begins again: as the warm early days of June roll in, so too does Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025, a Europe-wide menswear tour with stops in London, Florence, Milan and Paris, seeing designers both emerging and established present their vision for the season ahead.

Beginning today (7 June 2024), the first stop is London: the relatively scant schedule, with just a handful of designers showing over the weekend, serves as sedate warm-up for crowded days of shows in the coming days (accompanied by a new culturally minded schedule of talks and exhibitions). The next stop is Florence for historic menswear fair Pitti Uomo; there, subversive French designer Marine Serre – best known for her sliced-up, upcycled garments and signature crescent-moon print – and British design legend Paul Smith will both show as guest designers. 

In Milan, British designer Martine Rose joins the schedule for the first time, alongside heritage house Dunhill, which also makes the move from London to the Italian fashion capital (both will show on Sunday 16 June). Meanwhile, in Paris, highlights will include Pharrell Williams’ latest blockbuster menswear outing for Louis Vuitton and the final show from Dries Van Noten (the designer announced he would be exiting his eponymous brand last month).

Here, in an ongoing list, is everything Wallpaper* knows about Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025. 

Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025: what to expect

London Fashion Week (7 – 9 June 2024)

London Fashion Week’s 40th anniversary celebrations will continue this June with the event’s summer iteration, which, as in previous years, spans shows from both mens- and womenswear designers (prior to the pandemic, it was exclusively menswear on the schedule). This season, expect a new format from the British Fashion Council-helmed event, beginning with a program of activations at the Institute of Contemporary Arts – including exhibitions, panel discussions and performances – that will focus on highlighting designers spotlighting Black, South Asian and queer cultures. Elsewhere, across London a ‘40 for 40’ schedule will see 40 designers and brands host events across the city, while Soho nightspot Groucho Club will become a ’dynamic activation space’ hosting designers both established and emerging. 

‘The new format is a direct result of the conversations we are continuously having with the BFC community,’ says BFC CEO Caroline Rush. ’We want to ensure we are recognising the business needs of our designers and providing them with a global showcasing platform which is both relevant and beneficial. This iteration of London Fashion Week is a really exciting opportunity to future-proof and innovate the UK’s fashion showcasing capabilities and highlight the city’s point of difference during men’s fashion month.’

Elsewhere, in an intimate off-schedule presentation at his Docklands studio earlier this week (5 June 2024), Craig Green held his first runway show after a two-year hiatus, a heartfelt musing on ‘sons and fathers’. Over the weekend, a handful of other designers and brands will show on the relatively scant schedule, including Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, Qasimi and Denzilpatrick. 

Pitti Uomo (11 – 14 June 2024)

Each season, Pitti Uomo – a historic menswear and trade fair that takes place twice yearly in Florence, Italy – selects a handful of international guest designers to show as part of the unique line-up, which sees runway shows held in an eclectic array of venues across the city, from Renaissance palazzos to abandoned industrial lots. Recent iterations have seen appearances from Fendi, SS Daley, Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner and Luca Magliano, while Vivienne Westwood, Raf Simons, Giorgio Armani, Jonathan Anderson and Yohji Yamamoto have all previously shown as part of the definitive menswear event.

This year (see our Pitti Uomo 106 highlights) the first guest designer is Marine Serre, a buzzy French designer known for her sporty, subculture-infused pieces, which often feature reworked deadstock garments and her signature crescent-moon print (the latter, usually adorning second-skin tops, body suits and leggings, have gained her a legion of famous followers, from Beyoncé to Rosalía). Showing on 12 June 2024, she will present a menswear collection at a location that is yet to be announced. ‘I am really excited to present my next show in Florence,’ she says. ’We’re looking forward to bringing the essence of Marine Serre to Florence, mixing craftsmanship our way, and shaking the lines of what’s expected to be, bringing imagination at the service of transformation.’

Meanwhile, British design legend Paul Smith – who has shown at the fair previously – will begin proceedings with the launch of his S/S 2025 menswear collection on 11 June 2024. The choice of Pitti Uomo to show next season’s offering comes from the British designer’s ‘reverence for tailored clothing’, he says, noting that after first appearing as a guest designer in 1993, ‘the return to Florence feels like just the right thing to do’.

Milan Fashion Week Men’s (15 – 19 June 2024)

Highlights of Milan Fashion Week will no doubt include Sabato De Sarno’s sophomore menswear collection for Gucci, where he will continue to hone his elegant new vision for the house, which draws inspiration from the insouciant style of the Italian street. The show will take place on Monday 17 June, a move from last year’s Friday spot. Prada, meanwhile, will present its S/S 2025 collection amid a typically dynamic set created in association with OMA/AMO – Rem Koolhaas unpacked the architectural practice’s 25-year collaboration with Prada in Wallpaper’s March 2024 Style Issue.

Elsewhere, there is something of a British invasion: Martine Rose will show on Sunday 16 June in her first outing in the Italian city, as will heritage house Dunhill, which showed its first collection under new creative director Simon Holloway in London this past February. JW Anderson will also continue to show its menswear collections in Milan, also on Sunday evening.

Rounding out the schedule are Italian stalwarts Dolce & Gabbana, Zegna, Armani and Fendi, while rising Bologna-based brand Magliano will return to Milan after showing as guest designer at Pitti Uomo last season. MSGM, meanwhile, will celebrate 15 years with a co-ed show runway show on the morning of Saturday 15 June. ‘In June 2009, I presented the first MSGM men's collection alongside the women's resort,’ says founder Massimo Giorgetti. ’I would like to celebrate that memory and recreate the same energy.’

Paris Fashion Week Men’s (18 – 23 June 2024)

After the announcement that ex-Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele is set to take the helm at Valentino, replacing Pierpaolo Piccioli, fans of Michele will have to wait a little longer to see his vision for the Roman house – earlier this month, Valentino confirmed that it would not present a men‘s or haute couture collection in June, saving his debut for womenswear fashion week in Paris in September.

That said, an expansive schedule awaits elsewhere: notably, Pharrell Williams will show his third menswear collection for Louis Vuitton, which follows a Western-themed outing for A/W 2024 (a precursor of sorts to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, the musician chose to wear a look from the collection for her appearance at the 2024 Grammys). His last June show, which marked his debut, saw him shutting down central Paris’ Pont Neuf for the extravaganza, while in January he erected an enormous box in Paris’ Jardin d'Acclimatation, complete with a flurry of faux-snow for the dramatic finale. His upcoming show will likely be just as social-media ubiquitous, taking place at 8.30pm on June 18, 2024. Another notable moment will be Dries Van Noten’s final show on the evening of June 22, after the designer announced he would be exiting his eponymous brand last month.

Elsewhere, expect impactful shows from Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, Véronique Nichanian at Hermès, and Rick Owens, who will reveal whether the move to hosting his shows in his own Paris home – as was the case for his last mens- and womenswear shows – is permanent. Watch this space.

Stay tuned to Wallpaper.com for more coverage from Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025.

’Timelapse’ is an apt name for a new Rizzoli-published book on Italian sportswear brand Fila, an unorthodox, era- and genre-shifting biography which spans over a century of design and innovation for sporting luminaries – from sailor Giovanni Soldini to tennis player Björn Borg, who first put the brand on the map in the 1970s. 

The unique tome (available to pre-order from Waterstones, £65) was conceived by Italian journalist and fashion critic Angelo Flaccavento to ’tunnel both past and present into a single, forward-looking vision’. Alongside an introduction by Fendi menswear and accessories creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi, the richly illustrated volume is art directed by Milanese creative director and graphic designer Francesco Valtolina of Mousse magazine. 

’Fila: Timelapse’ published by Rizzoli

Fila was founded in Biella, Italy in 1911 by the brothers Ettore and Giansevero Fila, who originally sold sewing materials to the local Alpine community. Officially established as a brand in 1923, Fila expanded to cater further to the needs of those living in the Italian Alps, creating a range of products, from knitwear to underwear. It was in the 1970s, though, that Fila came to international prominence, signing a landmark deal with Swedish tennis player Björn Borg and outfitting him for some of his landmark victories (while also creating one of sport’s most enduring looks).

Borg adorns the cover of the new book, though those expecting a typical history of Fila should look elsewhere. Instead, Flaccavento weaves together a more unexpected tale, comprising both essays by authors Carlo Antonelli and Matteo Codignola, philosopher Emanuele Coccia, and researchers Marta Franceschini, Michele Galluzzo, and Lorenzo Ottone, alongside more abstract fiction and poetry inspired by Fila’s cultural impact and symbolic garments. For the latter, contributors include Charlie Fox, Silvia Calderoni, Jeph Burton, Rahim Attarzadeh and artists Karl Holmqvist and HB Hoyo.

Meanwhile, a rich catalogue of imagery spans past advertising campaigns, on-the-pitch looks, and an array of other archival imagery. Flaccavento says the collation of is ’instinctual rather than chronological... a dynamic journey through a fashion and sports phenomenon.’

’Experimental, engaging and informative, [it] is a journey that readers can hop into wherever they like; following the index, jumping back and forth, or even starting at the endpoint.... In this sense, it’s a true timelapse: a fluid document that testifies to the endurance and widespread relevance of Fila.’

’Fila: Timelapse’ is published by Rizzoli and is available to pre-order from Waterstones (£65, out 30 April, 2024). 

fila.co.uk

Pierpaolo Piccioli, the Italian creative director of Valentino, is parting ways with the Roman house after over two decades, it was announced this afternoon.

‘Not all stories have a beginning and an end, some live a kind of eternal present that shines with an intense light, so strong that it leaves no shadows,’ said Piccioli in a statement issued by the house.

Pierpaolo Piccioli to exit Valentino

‘Everything existed and exists thanks to the people I have met, with whom I have worked,’ he continued. ‘I carry this heritage of love, dreams, beauty and humanity with me, today and forever.’

Piccioli first entered Valentino in 1999 alongside former collaborator Maria Grazia Chiuri, having previously worked in Fendi’s accessories department. A successful working relationship with Chiuri – who is now creative director of Dior womenswear – saw the pair take over from Alessandra Facchinetti in 2009, beginning a critically lauded and commercially successful era at the brand (advents like the ‘Rockstud’ accessories range became ubiquitous, and are still produced today).

Though it was Chiuri’s exit in 2016 which saw Piccioli become one of fashion’s leading contemporary voices. An astute use of colour and dramatic, abundant silhouettes – particularly in his haute couture collections – made for some of the most memorable runway shows of the last decade. Perhaps chief among them was a couture show which took place on the Spanish Steps in Rome in 2022, the first time the landmark had every staged such an event. When it came to casting, Piccioli was an avid proponent of runway diversity. He was also devoted to his atelier, with his haute couture collections seeing each dress named after the artisan who created it.

His work during his solo tenure would become a regular fixture on the red carpet and he would take home numerous awards and plaudits, including a Fashion Award for Designer of the Year. Other memorable moments included an entirely pink collection (titled Pink PP, which got its own Pantone colour), while in a dramatic shift – and perhaps in a hint of what was to come – his A/W 2024 collection (seen in our Paris Fashion Week A/W 2024 highlights), shown in February, was entirely black. It will be his last.

‘I am grateful to Pierpaolo for his role as creative director and for his vision, commitment and creativity that have brought the Maison Valentino to what it stands for today,’ said Valentino chief executive officer Jacopo Venturini said in a statement.

A successor is yet to be announced, though Valentino says his replacement will be revealed ‘soon’.

valentino.com

A charred desert of Murano-glass cacti, a damask-curtained boudoir, a simulacrum of an art gallery – this season’s runway sets were an exercise in the theatre of fashion. Here, we select 12 of the very best runway sets and show spaces of A/W 2024 fashion month, which concluded in Paris last week.

Best runway sets of A/W 2024

Saint Laurent

For Anthony Vaccarello’s sensually charged A/W 2024 show, a boudoir-like mood was conjured by the show set, which comprised two vast circular rooms lined with emerald damask curtains. The curtains, said Vaccarello, were a nod to those found in the house’s historic haute couture salon on Paris’ Avenue Marceau. 

Read our review of the show here.

Jil Sander

Designers Lucie and Luke Meier said that this season they were thinking about sound and the way it influences our ’emotions, desires and needs’. As such, the warehouse space on the outskirts of Milan had been transformed into a green-toned ’smooth and immersive capsule’, populated by a series of blown-up cobalt-blue horns.

Read our review of the show here.

Louis Vuitton

Nicolas Ghesquière returned to the Louvre’s Cour Carrée for his tenth-anniversary show for Louis Vuitton, the location of his debut as creative director for the house back in 2014. This time, a dramatic installation by artist Philippe Parreno – made in collaboration with film production designer James Chinlund and sound designer Nicolas Becker – centred around an enormous orb, which crackled and flashed as the show began.

Read our review of the show here.

Prada

A continuation of the menswear show in January, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest OMA-designed show set featured a lush forest floor – complete with springs of real water, ferns, grass, pebbles and soil – encased beneath a gridded floor of futuristic clear perspex, to extraordinary effect. 

Read our review of the show here.

Bottega Veneta

Matthieu Blazy collaborated with Cassina to organise a special edition of Le Corbusier’s LC14 Cabanon stool – here in burnt wood – for the 350 guests attending his A/W 2024 show. In the formerly industrial Milanese space, they were combined with a burnt wood floor and enormous Murano-glass cacti to create a ’barren’ desert-like landscape inspired by Calabria in the south of Italy. Together, it provided an apt backdrop for a show celebrating regeneration and resilience. ’In a world on fire, there is something very human in the simple act of dressing,’ he said. 

Read our review of the show here. 

Loewe

The ’small but intense’ paintings of Albert York provided the backdrop for Jonathan Anderson’s latest Loewe collection, which subverted aristocratic dress codes in the designer’s typically idiosyncratic style. As such, it was the largest exhibition of the American painter’s work outside of the United States, where his devoted following included the former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. 

Read our review of the show here.

Dior

Continuing a tradition of collaborating with international women artists on her show sets, at the centre of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s A/W 2024 runway was a series of sculptures by Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni. Evoking ceremonial figures of women, created from cages of cane, the house said they capture a feeling of ’protection and transformation’.

Read our review of the show here.

Hermès

Hermès’ A/W 2024 show came complete with a downpour: as the show began, rain fell from the ceiling of the Garde Républicaine space, providing a dramatic backdrop to Nadège Vanhee’s latest collection, which was titled ’The Rider’.  ‘Astride a horse or a motorcycle… boldly she rides on,’ said Hermès. 

Read our review of the show here.

Acne Studios

A series of blown-up armchairs and footstools crafted from recycled black rubber tiles provided the centrepiece to a full-throttle collection from Acne Studios. They were created by Villu Jaanisoo, an Estonian artist who lent the existing pieces for the show. ’I was basically deep into a “racing” mode [last year], into everything related to racing, and I stumbled across these amazing pieces,’ Acne Studios creative director Jonny Johannson told Wallpaper*. ‘They symbolise the mood I was trying to create, and they do so in a modern way.’

Read more about the Acne Studios show set here and read our review of the show here.

Balenciaga