Prior to Demna’s first runway show for Gucci, held in Milan in February of last year, the Georgian designer posted a letter to Instagram outlining his vision for the Italian house. It documented the search for what he called the ‘Gucciness of Gucci’, a trip that took him to its native Florence (the house was founded in the Tuscan city in 1921) and to the vaunted galleries of the Uffizi Museum, where viewing Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in person for the first time led to a revelation.

‘Standing in front of it, I felt overwhelmed,’ he wrote. ‘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.’

Inside Gucci Palazzo in Florence

Palazzo Gucci – which has previously been known as the Gucci Museo and the Gucci Garden – occupies Palazzo della Mercanzia, built in the 14th century as a place where merchants could resolve disputes through local tribunals. In the early 2000s, it became Gucci’s headquarters and archives in the city; in 2001, to mark the house’s 90th anniversary, it became the Gucci Museo. In 2018, under creative director Alessandro Michele, the project expanded, transforming into the Gucci Garden – an immersive installation curated by Maria Luisa Frisa – which also housed Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura, a restaurant by the three-Michelin-star Italian chef.

The importance of the address to the house (though it is not where Gucci was founded, it is often seen as its spiritual home) has made it a priority for the early part of Demna’s tenure, seeing it reopen this month as Palazzo Gucci with its inaugural exhibition titled ‘Gucci Storia’. Like the set for his first runway show, which was a marble-clad simulacrum of a historic art gallery, complete with hand-crafted recreations of classical statuary, Demna says that the display is based on the ‘idea of a museum of museums, a sequence of spaces in which distinctive worlds converge’.

At the heart of this is a series of tapestries, first shown as part of Fuorisalone in Milan earlier this year, which depict the house’s 105-year history – from founder Guccio Gucci’s time at London’s Savoy Hotel as a bellboy to the ensuing tenures of Tom Ford, Frida Giannini, Alessandro Michele, and even Demna himself. ‘Gucci’s history in the 105 years since it was founded is filled with ups and downs. It has such a colourful past with lot of stories to tell,’ Demna told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘You see all the different eras of Gucci represented in these scenes, either literally or symbolically. The good times, the bad times, the drama; and the scenes are super elaborate; there are lots of symbolic details that tie back to Gucci’s codes.’

Other rooms include a gallery-like display of Catherine Opie images from his debut La Famiglia collection (he showed the S/S 2026 collection via lookbook the season before his runway debut); the ‘Archivio’, which displays objects from Gucci’s history as one might find curiosities in a ‘natural history museum’; a cinema, showing various short films from his tenure so far; alongside spaces dedicated photography, manufacturing, and more playful immersive scenes, like a digital ‘oracle’, promising to tell guests ‘as much about the house as themselves’.

Alongside Gucci Storia, the Gucci Osteria restaurant enters a new era: still overseen by Massimo Bottura, former executive chef Karime López has departed to pursue her own projects, and her former co-executive chef, Takahiko Kondo, has taken over. Born in Japan, Kondo’s menu is inspired by ‘personal memories, travels, and shared creativity’ (he spent 17 years at Bottura’s three-Michelin-star Osteria Francescana in Modena before taking the Gucci Osteria role). Expect riffs on Italian classics in inventive style: these include Bottura’s famous Journey to Modena, a veal and pork tortellini in 24-month aged Parmigiano Reggiano sauce.

Gucci Storia is on view at Palazzo Gucci, Florence, now. Piazza della Signoria 10, 50122 Florence, Italy.

gucci.com

The house of Gucci is no stranger to the flare of the flashbulb: from princesses and first ladies to Hollywood ingenues and soccer stars, the Italian brand's clothing and emblematic accessories have long been immortalised by the glare of the paparazzi.

Current creative director Demna, who made his name at Parisian label Vetements before a ten-year tenure at Balenciaga, has no qualms about courting such attention: the Georgian designer's debut collection for the house, revealed in a short film starring actress Demi Moore last September, heralded (in his words) a ‘bold, unapologetically sexy' era for Gucci. Meanwhile, his first runway show, held a season later in Milan last February, saw models – from It-girl Emily Ratajkowski to rappers Fakemink and Nettspend – traverse a vast, marble-clad runway in the type of spectacle that recalled the high-voltage shows of the house under Tom Ford, who was creative director from 1994-2004. It ended with perhaps the most memorable (and the most photographed) moment of the A/W 2026 season: Kate Moss in a backless dress that revealed a double-G thong, recalling a Ford-designed G-string first shown on the runway in 1997.

Gucci’s Paparazzo bag is ready for its close up

It is little surprise, then, that one of Demna's new handbags – part of a wider ‘Generation Gucci' capsule collection, revealed in December last year – is titled the ‘Paparazzo', a nod to the slouchy styles wielded by LA starlets in the 1990s and 2000s. Indeed, the handbag mines codes from the house's various eras, from the emblematic green and black webbing – introduced in the 1950s, it was designed to recall that found on saddle girths – to the metal horse bit, a perennial Gucci motif that has appeared on everything from loafers to the waistband of a pair of jeans.

Designed to be slung under the arm (Demna's Gucci has an insouciant, morning-after-the-night-before mood), it comes in two sizes: a roomy medium or a carry-all large, and in soft suede or leather iterations, as well as Gucci's symbolic double-G monogram canvas. Completed with a Made in Italy luggage tag and cross-body strap, it captures both Gucci's synonymy with functional elegance (the house began life as a Florentine leather and luggage workshop) and Demna's unabashed new vision. ‘I want Gucci to become an adjective,' he says.

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A version of this article appears in the July 2026 Design Directory Issue of Wallpaper*, available from 4 June in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

It has been a busy 12 months for Demna, the Georgian fashion designer who took the reins of Italian fashion house Gucci in July 2025 after a ten-year stint as creative director of Balenciaga. In this time, he has drafted Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn to direct The Tiger, a short film starring Oscar-winner Demi Moore, to introduce his first collection; staged a debut runway show amid a monumental marble set reminiscent of Florence’s Uffizi Museum; and hosted a Salone del Mobile installation that reimagined the Gucci story as a series of tapestries. And, earlier this month, he shut down Times Square in New York for a Cruise 2027 show watched by Mariah Carey, Kim Kardashian and Playboi Carti, among others (meanwhile Paris Hilton, Tom Brady and Emily Ratajkowski walked the show).

Today, he continues to shore up his vision of Gucci as a cultural behemoth with the announcement that the house will serve as the primary sponsor of Formula One team Alpine, which currently sits at number five in the overall team standings for the 2026 season (its drivers are Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto). Starting from the 2027 season, Alpine will be known as the ‘Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One Team’ and will compete in Gucci’s signature red, green and gold colours. There will also be a dedicated logo for the partnership (an interlocking double-G with the word ‘Racing’ underneath). According to a statement from Gucci, the collaboration is built on shared values of ‘performance, precision, discipline, and excellence at the intersection of luxury and sport’

‘This partnership with Alpine Formula One Team writes a new chapter: Gucci becomes the first luxury fashion house to serve as title partner in Formula One,’ says Francesca Bellettini, president and CEO of Gucci. ‘[It] reflects our ambition for the brand and the role we want Gucci to play on this stage. Formula One represents today a unique convergence of performance, culture, and global reach, and Alpine Formula One Team is the right partner to bring this vision to life. Gucci Racing is more than a presence on the grid: it is an expression of who we are and where we want to take the brand. And there is much more to come. We are grateful to Alpine and the entire Renault Group for sharing this ambition with us.’

François Provost, CEO of Renault Group, adds that he hopes the partnership will ‘reach new audiences and young generations’. Flavio Briatore, executive advisor of Alpine Formula One Team, adds: ‘With the improved performance on track, and Alpine having its best-ever points total to start a season, this new collaboration with Gucci shows the growing momentum behind the team.’

It is not Gucci’s first dalliance with sport: both Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka, world number ones in men’s and women’s tennis, respectively, are current global brand ambassadors for Gucci, with both players carrying Gucci bags on court with them before their matches. Prior to the French Open, which began this past weekend, Italy-born Sinner featured in a new campaign from the house, running with the playful tagline ‘The Original Sinner’. ‘Gucci continues its enduring dialogue with the world of tennis through Jannik Sinner, reimagining the sport’s iconography in a playful nod to his name while celebrating an athlete whose distinct approach to the game defines what it means to be an original,’ the house said at the time.

gucci.com

At Wallpaper*, we champion the design-led, forward-thinking and impeccably executed. We’re always on the lookout for compelling creations – from objects and accessories to jewellery, fashion and tech – and aim to bring you pieces that subvert, surprise and delight.

In The Design Drop, we highlight the most striking objects to land that month. Think of it as a wish list for the design-discerning: browse, admire – and, if tempted, acquire.

Read on to discover April's standout pieces from our favourite brands and studios.

In February 2026, for his debut runway show as creative director of Gucci, Georgian designer Demna created a monumental, marble-clad runway set evocative of a museum, populated with recreations of ancient sculpture (each had been 3D-scanned from original Roman and Hellenistic statuary, before being remodelled in plaster by Tuscan artisans). At the time, he said it was a recognition of Gucci’s looming status in Italian culture: a behemoth of style and craft, ‘a house that has lived many lives, a brand that has defined and redefined what luxury means’, he said in a letter on Instagram prior to the show.

‘Last year, I immersed myself in understanding the Gucciness of Gucci,’ he continued. ‘I went to the Uffizi museum to see Botticelli’s Primavera, the painting that inspired Gucci Flora. On my way, I encountered Botticelli’s other work, The Birth of Venus. I had known it from books, but never seen it in real life. Standing in front of it, I felt overwhelmed. The beauty in it was unconditional; it was absolute. When I returned and stepped into Piazza della Signoria, the first thing I saw was Palazzo Vecchio. In that instant, I understood the place Gucci holds within Italian culture. It has become clear to me what my mission here really is. Above the product, Gucci is culture, it is a way of thinking and a way of being.’

Revealed today (20 April), a new installation at Fuorisalone 2026 continues Demna’s veneration of Gucci as part of Italy’s cultural iconography with a series of 12 tapestries displayed in the Chiostri di San Simpliciano in Milan’s Brera neighbourhood. They begin with founder Guccio Gucci’s time at the Savoy Hotel in London in the late 1800s, where, while working as a bellboy, he realised the growing need for trunks and cases among the burgeoning travelling classes. He would return to his home city of Florence and found the eponymous house in 1921, opening a leather goods store and workshop on Via della Vigna Nuova, the foundation for what would become a global fashion empire.

Further scenes depict other moments in the Gucci story, from the creation of the ‘Bamboo 1947’ and ‘Jackie 1961’ bags (the latter takes its name from Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who popularised the handbag, which was originally called the ‘Fifties Constance’) to the subsequent tenures of Tom Ford, Frida Giannini and Sabato De Sarno, the creative directors who preceded Demna. Reminiscent of Renaissance tapestry, the various scenes are interrupted with idiosyncratic moments of modernity, like a leather gaming chair that sits in the background of a tableau featuring Demna perfecting a red coat from his debut S/S 2026 collection (the designer himself features in a baseball cap and leather biker jacket).

‘Gucci’s history in the 105 years since it was founded is filled with ups and downs. It has such a colourful past with lot of stories to tell,’ Demna tells Wallpaper*. ‘This being my first Fuorisalone, I wanted to tell the entire story of the house from the beginning, so we made these tapestries that take inspiration from the style of Botticelli to tell Gucci’s story. You see all the different eras of Gucci represented in these scenes, either literally or symbolically. The good times, the bad times, the drama; and the scenes are super elaborate, there are lots of symbolic details that tie back to Gucci’s codes.’

Also in the cloisters, which were first constructed in the 15th century and are an example of early Renaissance architecture, is a garden inspired by Gucci’s Flora motif. Perhaps the house’s best-known print, the Flora design was created by illustrator Vittorio Accornero for Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco, after she visited the house’s flagship store in Milan in 1966 (the motif would adorn a silk scarf, which became a part of Kelly’s uniform). It features 43 different flowers and botanicals, inspired by Botticelli’s 1482 masterpiece Primavera (Allegory of Spring). For Fuorisalone, the Flora is reimagined as a field of seasonal wildflowers, including several of those that feature in the original design (corresponding with the installation, a series of limited-edition bags will also feature the Flora motif).

Elsewhere, in a typically Demna-esque flourish, is a series of Gucci-branded vending machines dispensing cans of soda inspired by ‘La Famiglia’, a series of Gucci archetypes he established in his first collection for the house (Demna, who was previously at Balenciaga, is known for an irreverent, often ironic, approach to fashion and luxury). ‘Different facets of Gucci’s personas’, he called the various figures at the time, which spanned ‘La Bomba’ (a glamazon in a tiger-striped ‘fur coat’), ‘La Principessa’ (clad in a sugary pink gown with ostrich-feather cuffs), alongside ‘La VIP’, ‘Nerd’, ‘Gallerista’ and ‘L’Influencer’.

In the vending machines, these archetypes are reimagined as a series of branded drinks, each created by Gucci Giardino, a café and cocktail bar owned by the house in Florence. Distributed randomly to guests at the installation, they include ‘Fashion Icon’, ‘Drama Queen’, ‘Super Incazzata’, and ‘Mega Pesantone’. After the exhibition concludes, the Gucci store on Via Montenapoleone will hand out floral bouquets taken from the Flora installation, ‘continuing the narrative through the reuse of its material elements’.

‘Gucci Memoria’ is open to the public from 21 to 26 April 2026 at the Chiostri di San Simpliciano, Piazza Paolo VI, 6, Milan. Registration is available on Gucci.com.

Earlier this year, in February, Georgian designer Demna – who rose to prominence with his Paris-founded label Vetements before a decade-long tenure at Balenciaga – held his debut show for Gucci, where he was appointed creative director in March 2025. The show, which featured an eclectic cast of muses, from model Kate Moss to musician Fakemink, took place amid a monolithic, marble-clad set replete with painstaking recreations of classical statuary (spanning Roman and Hellenistic eras, and featuring figures from Aphrodite to Artemis, the original sculptures were 3D-scanned before being constructed in plaster by Tuscan artisans).

In a letter distributed before the show, he said it was a nod to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, where Guccio Gucci founded the house in 1921. Travelling to the Renaissance city in a search for the ‘Gucciness of Gucci’ at the start of his tenure, Demna found himself in front of the museum’s most famous work, Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. ‘Standing in front of it, I felt overwhelmed – 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,’ he said. ‘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.’

Gucci: The Art of Silk

Now, a new project, ‘Art of Silk’, sees Demna make his mark on perhaps Gucci’s best-known export, the silk scarf. First introduced in the 1950s, it was a decade later, in 1966, when Gucci created a custom silk scarf for Grace Kelly after her visit to the house’s flagship store in Milan, that the accessory would become an emblem of Italian style (by that point, Kelly had been the Princess of Monaco for ten years, after her 1956 marriage to Prince Rainier III). It was adorned with the ‘Flora’ print, a design by illustrator Vittorio Accornero created specially for Kelly, featuring 43 different flowers, botanicals, and insects, and 37 different colours (an impressive feat, considering each colour required a separate screen to be printed). Accornero had drawn inspiration from another Botticelli masterpiece, Primavera (Allegory of Spring), which depicts the nymph Chloris transforming into the goddess of spring, Flora (like Birth of Venus, it is also housed in the Uffizi Gallery).

Indeed, interpretations of the Flora motif feature on two of the ten silk scarves in the ‘Art of Silk’ collection, alongside eight other designs drawn from the house’s archive (as well as the floral and botanic designs, there are also nautical, animal and equestrian motifs). The two Flora scarves were created exclusively for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the opening of the Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries this month. Also in Los Angeles, in the house’s Rodeo Drive store, a collaboration with the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Firenze sees students reproduce the ten designs as artworks to decorate the space.

The Flora scarves, which will be available in limited-edition numbers, also feature a collaboration with Nido di Seta, a Calabrian agricultural collective, and Ongetta, a producer of silk yarns, who are working together to revive Italy’s silk supply chain (once thriving, it has significantly reduced production in recent decades). The project is centred on the production of mulberries – mulberry silk is made by feeding silk worms white mulberry leaves – using once-abandoned land and renewable energy. Gucci says these Flora scarves ‘embody a true rebirth of Italian silk production’ (they will be available exclusively at the LACMA Store and the Gucci Beverly Hills flagship).

The accompanying ‘Art of Silk’ campaign, meanwhile, sees the styles worn in various ways, including as handkerchief tops, belts, and headbands (‘[the campaign] explores the silk scarf as a dynamic element of personal expression, presenting multiple ways of wearing it’, says Demna via the collection notes). It is the second Art of Silk campaign since the project’s launch in 2025: in April of last year, the house drafted nine artists to reinterpret the 90 x 90 silk scarf, captured on actress Julia Garner in a campaign by Steven Meisel.

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From abstracted plays on domestic spaces at Prada and Marni, to sets celebrating icons of urban architecture at Burberry and Dior, the A/W 2026 season offered much in the way of innovative set design.

As always, these temporary constructions can tell us as much about a designer’s current preoccupations as the garments they send out into them. For Loewe’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez it was an invocation of play, at Prada Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada are thinking about what is revealed when the surface layer is stripped away, and for Demna, it was investigating the ‘Gucciness of Gucci’ – a quest which, ahead of his first outing for the brand, led him back to Florence, the city in which it all started. Discover some of the stand-outs from fashion month below.

The standout show sets of fashion month A/W 2026

Burberry

Midway through February, it was reported that it had rained every day of 2026 in the UK – a news story that Daniel Lee might have had in mind whilst conceptualising the set for Burberry’s A/W 2026 collection. Trompe l’oeil puddles of resin scattered the tarmac-effect runway at Old Billingsgate Market, which was transformed into a night-time vignette of Tower Bridge, replete with that most familiar urban sight: scaffolding.

If a former 19th-century fish market seems an unlikely venue for London’s most high-profile luxury brand to show a collection, consider that gabardine, the fabric created by Thomas Burberry in the 1870s, is to this day a mainstay of angling attire – indeed, a quote singing the praises of Burberry from the Fishing Gazette was used in early advertising for the brand. The infusion of that practical, outdoorsy heritage with contemporary cosmopolitan glamour translated into a collection of opulently finished outerwear – from signature trench coats reimagined in silk or with ruffled lapels, to rich swathes of shearling.

READ: A first look at Burberry’s A/W 2026 show set, which depicts London landmarks ‘under construction’

Diesel

Diesel’s A/W 2026 runway set consisted of around 50,000 pieces of memorabilia from the brand’s archive, a monumental time capsule dedicated to almost 50 years of partying. Displayed under bleached lighting, the installation was awash with high-voltage colour, with objects ranging from a fringed parasol and inflatable beach doughnut, to a coffee machine, motorbike, and lava lamp. Creative director Glenn Martens described the season’s mood as ‘waking up in a place, with no idea what happened last night’: think crinkled denim and ripped hems. Judging by the contents of the eclectic clutter, the place could be anywhere from a roadside motel, MTV Beach House, or a teenager’s bedroom. Pick your poison.

Marni

If ‘familiar’ is a recurrent, self-confessed description of Meryl Rogge’s aesthetic tastes, it’s certainly not meant as a synonym for ‘samey’. There is always a little surprise, a fun tweak, or a new addition that keeps things fresh and exciting. For Rogge’s debut collection for Marni, this took the form of palm-size sequins, pointed mules with laces on the toes, and pants with two sets of stacked belt loops. And in the set design – a collaboration with Wallpaper*’s Designers of the Year 2021 Formafantasma – it meant something that looked ‘as if a room has been carefully disassembled and reassembled in another order,’ as Formafantasma’s Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin told us before the show.

The bones of the space were augmented with wood-effect panelling and fabric-covered benches, and a giant door mat in lieu of carpet. Mirrored panels, which were hand-painted with ‘fragments drawn from quotidian life’ like car headlights and office chairs, played with perception. Are they images? Or are they portals?

‘The decision to carefully hand-paint these ordinary details was important,’ say Trimarchi and Farresin. ‘Spending time rendering something banal gives it attention without turning it into spectacle. In a moment when most images are produced and consumed quickly, the act of painting introduces care and slowness. It allows us and hopefully others to look again at things we normally overlook, to pause for a second longer than usual.’ It’s a message that carries through to Rogge’s attitude toward design: robust, realistic and resonant.

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

Gucci

A few hundred metres from the Palazzo Gucci in the Tuscan city of Florence sits one of Europe’s most prominent art museums – the Uffizi, in an architectural complex begun by Giorgio Vasari in the year 1560. It is home to such illustrious works from the Western canon as Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, da Vinci’s The Annunciation, and Caravaggio’s Medusa. It was also the starting point for Demna, the Georgian designer who took the helm of the 105-year-old brand in 2025, when the shape of the A/W 2026 show space began to form in his imagination.

‘When I left the museum and stepped into Piazza della Signoria, the first thing I saw was Palazzo Gucci,’ the designer wrote in a letter published online the day before the show. ‘In that moment, I understood the place Gucci holds within Italian culture.’

His recreation of something resembling the storied museum, in Milan's Palazzo delle Scintille, was executed with typical Demna-like innovation: all hard edges and ultra-modern materials. The slick geometric hall was clad in travertine Stoneleaf, made from ultra-fine sheets of Italian marble bonded onto sheets of fibreglass and transparent resin. Classical sculptures were made out of plaster using 3D scanning, and then treated to look like aged marble. The runway itself was marked out by a skinny beam of fluorescent light, through which models sauntered and languished at a museum-appropriate pace.

READ: Demna’s first runway set for Gucci is an imagined museum filled with sculptural greats

Prada

If Prada’s A/W 2026 show was, as Wallpaper’s Jack Moss described, ‘an exercise in extreme layering’, the Deposito of the Fondazione Prada, where 15 models showed a total of 60 looks, was in many ways its antithesis – or perhaps its logical conclusion. The collection itself was cleverly conceived to reveal itself through the gradual stripping away of garments, so that by the time each model had taken her fourth turn about the room, coats and scarves had given way to light cotton pinafores and bloomers. However, the set had been stripped already, leaving only an eerie whisper of what might have been there before, like when you see a partially demolished house. Fireplaces exposed to the elements. Masonry jaggedly revealed. Interior made exterior.

In a continuation of the sliced-open palazzo created by OMA for the menswear offering in January, artefacts which spanned five hundred years – from 16th-century tapestries to modernist lampshades – were effectively suspended around the perimeter of the room, each level an echo of a floor without a floor. Walls were delicate pastel shades with intact wainscotting juxtaposed against the imprint of former joists, or the patinated shadow of where a dividing wall once stood.

‘Their meaning is layered [and] inherently personal,’ explains Prada of the mish-mash of objects within the space: a Venetian mirror, various consoles, paintings from different periods and more. The house’s co-creative directors and their respective tastes and preoccupations are keenly visible in this selection, but they also leave room for imagination. By revealing so little, we are left to fantasise for ourselves about who the inhabitants of this dilapidated, but once grand, former dwelling might have been.

Dior

What more appropriate way to kick off Paris Fashion Week than a promenade in the Jardin des Tuileries? And for Dior, no less. The 1st arrondissement park has been open to the public since the late 17th century and has been a fixture of Parisian life ever since, not to mention a favourite subject of Impressionist scenes and a backdrop for revolution. This March, it became the site of Jonathan Anderson’s second womenswear collection for Dior, in a show space described as ‘an imitation of a park, within a park’.

Designed around Le Bassin Octogonal was a structure which drew from the familiar grass-green garden furniture that is scattered throughout the park, with a runway which snaked 360-degrees round the perimeter of the water, and across its centre (water which was filled with imitation water-lillies, an unmistakably Andersonian touch, and a nod to the eight murals by Monet which are housed at Musée de l’Orangerie in the western-most corner of the Tuileries).

In a conversation which aired before the show, Anderson told his friend, designer and podcaster Bella Freud that he ‘will always feel like a tourist in Paris’ and yet the city itself seemed to look upon him as a treasured friend this A/W 2026: the early-spring sun shone brightly, and the water reflected dappled light throughout the scene.

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s latest Dior show was a walk in the park

Saint Laurent

Now in his tenth year at Saint Laurent, for A/W 2026 Anthony Vaccarello chose to focus ‘on the house at its most foundational’. For the collection, this meant mega-watt sex appeal, body contouring, and the glorious revival of Le Smoking. And for the setting – it could only mean Paris, and that perpetual, romantic emblem of the French capital, Le Tour Eiffel. Gustave Eiffel’s iconic landmark has been a mainstay visual for what is arguably the city’s most illustrious house since the days of the maison’s namesake. Vaccarello himself has regularly used it as a backdrop for his work with the brand – sometimes with the runway literally beneath its iron frame.

This season, the glittering structure was glimpsed through vast windows, part of a set designed to evoke the apartment once inhabited by Yves Saint Laurent himself, with his partner Pierre Bergé. That duplex, at 55 rue de Babylone, is now the stuff of legend, its contents scattered to the four winds after Yves’s death, but once upon a time it was home to a vast collection of artworks (from Burne-Jones to Mondrian), furniture, and books. Archival photographs of the space show the same wood panelling and thick-pile carpet that we saw at the show space, which also featured a replica of a bust owned by Saint Laurent and Bergé, blown up to oversize proportions.

Loewe

How better to dress the backdrop to a collection foregrounding ‘joy, experimentation and play,’ than with toys? The work of Cologne-based artist Cosima von Bonin was a key influence for Loewe’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez this season, finding its way into both the ready-to-wear and the mise-en-scene. Known for creating larger-than-life plushies and other animalistic sculptures, often fabricated in textiles or constructed from found objects, von Bonin’s mark was left in the show space by a host of black velveteen sea creatures who rubbed up against journalists on the high-gloss, oversize shoebox style seating. These critters and creatures (the soft toys, not the journalists) were dramatically shrunk down too, appearing as hard-shelled minaudièrs and dinky bag charms throughout the show. The room itself, at Château de Vincennes on the very fringes of the city, featured high-contrast, optimistic decor: stark white walls and vivid vinyl yellow floor which echoed the sheen of moulded latex and lacquered leather seen on the runway.

Chanel

‘Matthieu Blazy does it again’ was Wallpaper’s first reaction to Chanel’s A/W 2026 show. After last year’s electrifying debut, Blazy had set the bar at lofty heights for himself, heights he cleared with no trouble in this latest go-around. Drop waists, metallic hair, and some of the most coveted shoe of the 2020s were all part of the magic, but as we’ve already come to expect from Blazy’s tenure, so was the set design. Where his first two outings, for ready-to-wear and couture, saw an immersive take on the solar system, and then something rather more down-to-earth in the form of sugary pink mushrooms, respectively, A/W 2026 featured enormous cranes in Playmobil primary colours, piercing the space within the Grand Palais’ main atrium.

With their resemblance to stage rigging, these monumental installations were assembled on a glitter floor to evoke the joy of dance – reinforced through a soundtrack of Lady Gaga remixed with dialogue from Billy Elliot. The whole effect was a glorious reminder of what Blazy’s Chanel is to be: totally joyful.

READ: Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore Chanel collection is made for ‘women to be unapologetically who they are’

A review of the beauty looks from the A/W 2026 season, which finished in Paris earlier this week, contains a surprise: a lot of it was a mess. That’s not a put-down. Rather, the intriguing messiness of the season was deliberate, with even some of the most consistent purveyors of sleek, minimalist beauty, like Hermès and Alaïa, featuring hair that had a ‘I just got out of bed’ quality.

A similar look was seen on the Prada runway, with models in smudged raccoon-eye make-up and hair in half-done ponytails that had strands haphazardly escaping. The show had a novel concept: 15 models, wearing 15 looks, with each model changing four times throughout the show to create a new composition of the previous look. The beauty complemented the idea by suggesting a woman always in motion, always in a rush, too busy to refresh her make-up or even redo her ponytail over the course of the day.

The best beauty looks of A/W 2026

In New York, Collina Strada took messy hair to the next level with hairstylist Mustafa Yanaz giving models bed-heads that looked like they took many sleepless nights to achieve. While in London, the teased, matted hair at Simone Rocha was paired with punk details in, of all places, the eyebrows, such as multiple eyebrow rings and a black-pencilled eyebrow that curved dramatically at the edges. The result was an unkempt, delinquent appearance that complemented the bow, taffeta and glitter-heavy femininity of the clothes.

Yet, when it comes to this season’s messy beauty, no one did it better than the contingent of Japanese designers who show at Paris Fashion Week each season. At Comme des Garçons, hair by Takeo Arai and headpieces designed by HIZUME, combined to create a fascinating, strange beauty, with matted worms of hair – for lack of a better term – emerging from what looked like ripped sheer tights or oily bird’s nests.

At Yohji Yamamoto, black lips were paired with excessively gelled, Siouxsie Sioux-style hair. While at Junya Watanabe, hair stylist Eugene Souleiman and make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench created plastered-down, finger-wave wigs and streaming black eye makeup for a memorable 1920s-flapper-after-a-really-terrible-night look.

A similar look was also seen on the Saint Laurent runway, although more sleekly done, with hair gelled to helmet-like perfection and a flawlessly executed smoky eye and dark red lip (here, though, the inspiration seemed to be the severe beauty of Helmut Newton’s photographs of Saint Laurent in the 1970s). Demna’s first Gucci show also featured contoured cheeks, saturated red lips, and fanned-out smoky eyes. The most noteworthy saturated lips and smoky eye combination, however, was perhaps those at Tom Ford, where the velvet lips engineered by Lucy Bridge were so richly pigmented they looked almost fake.

Speaking of fake, there were those like Matières Fécales and Rick Owens who ostentatiously subverted beauty conventions with the use of prosthetics. The Matières Fécales collection, which satirised the style of the one per cent, translated the ideas behind its clothing into fake black eyes and faces practically deformed by plastic surgery.

While Owens, always one for bold beauty, built on the codes he’s been developing for years with make-up artist Daniel Sällström, to create eyes obscured by colour contacts and extra-long fake lashes that were emphasised by painterly strokes of neon eyeshadow. Sällström was also the make-up artist behind Vaquera’s white painted faces and multi-winged cat eyes, which combined to create a kind of modernised 18th-century aristocrat. The show also featured one model with lime-green pubic hair, which was, if nothing else, memorable.

But when it comes to the most memorable beauty look of the A/W 2026 runways, the winner might be a brand that was more playful than provocative. We are, of course, speaking about one of the most lauded shows of the season: Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore ready-to-wear outing at Chanel.

As the show progressed and the clothes transitioned into more iridescent evening wear, the subtle beauty of the runway looks began to take an iridescent sheen as well. Models’ slicked-back hair appeared covered in a glittery, chromatic coating with matching metallic eye make-up, while one particularly noteworthy look featured long, mermaid-style pastel locks with matching pastel eyeshadow. All in all, a shining end to the season.

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

In March 2025, it was announced that the mononymous Georgian designer Demna – who rose to prominence with his 2014-founded label Vetements – was to step away from his decade-long tenure as creative director of Balenciaga. His next move? Heading up Italian powerhouse Gucci: ‘a brand that has defined and redefined what luxury means and what luxury dares to become’, as he wrote in a letter published to Instagram last night (26 February 2026) on the eve of his first runway show for the house.

In that letter, he explained that he has spent the last year or so as a scholar of the brand, seeking out what he calls the ‘Gucciness of Gucci’. It was a journey that led him to the ancient Tuscan city of Florence, where Gucci was founded 105 years ago by Guccio Gucci (born in Florence, he conceived the leather goods brand after a stint at London’s Savoy Hotel as a bellboy, identifying a need within the burgeoning travelling classes for sturdy luggage). There, Demna visited Gucci’s factories and archive, but also the Uffizi galleries, which are just a few hundred metres from the Palazzo Gucci on Piazza della Signoria (the latter, housed in the 14th-century Palazzo della Mercanzia, is home to a museum that catalogues the house’s century-long history).

It was within the Uffizi that he found himself in front of an artwork he had long been aware of (it is one of the most reproduced images in Western art) but not seen in real life: Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, a defining work of the Renaissance. ‘Standing in front of it, I felt overwhelmed,’ he wrote. ‘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,’ he continued. ‘In that moment, I understood the place Gucci holds within Italian culture.’

The experience of entering a museum was the inspiration behind the runway set for the A/W 2026 runway show, held at Milan's Palazzo delle Scintille today (27 February), a hall designed for sporting events by Paolo Vietti-Violi in 1923 (it would later host performances from La Scala when the theatre was damaged in the Second World War). Upon entering the show space and ascending a staircase, guests were greeted with a vast hall clad in travertine Stoneleaf. Made from ultra-fine sheets of Italian marble bonded onto sheets of fibreglass and transparent resin, the innovative material – which replaces the need for heavy blocks of stone – came to market when Stoneleaf was founded in 2013.

Populating this imagined museum were a series of sculptures replicating those found in the Uffizi museum and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (subjects included Aphrodite and Artemis, and spanned Roman and Hellenistic eras). Each one was 3D-scanned before being recreated by Tuscan artisans in plaster, which was then treated to look like marble.

The space, according to Demna, was designed to represent Gucci’s own importance in Italy’s cultural canon. ‘My vision of Gucci is the coexistence of heritage and fashion,’ he said. ‘Here, they are not opposites, they are lovers. This first Gucci show introduces a universe of people, archetypes, consumers and dress codes that will shape my design language going forward. It is a foundation that begins my story at Gucci.’

Follow our live coverage of Milan Fashion Week A/W 2026.

The Year of the Fire Horse – heralded by Lunar New Year on 17 February 2026 – apparently signals optimism and opportunity and comes around only once every 60 years (the horse sign's pairing with the element of fire distinguishing this from other horse years in the Chinese zodiac’s 12-year cycle), so we are saddling up to make the most of it, at least on the design and style front.

With all things equestrian a classic source of inspiration for creatives and luxury brands – some of which, such as Hermès and Gucci, have saddlery in their DNA – there is no shortage of horsey-in-a-good-way accessories for you and your home. And plenty of brands are embracing the theme with specially introduced products and campaigns – see Giorgetti’s collection of horse-shaped leather home accessories; Swatch’s horse-adorned watch; and Prada’s campaign-fronting geometric red steed.

We’ve picked out a few designs we’re sure have staying power, from Abask’s exquisite hand-glazed dinner plates to Jonathan Anderson’s bookish new take on Dior’s ‘Saddle’ bag. If you are inclined towards the subtle, horseshoe earrings by Awe are neat and discreet. For the uninhibited and spatially unchallenged, Front’s lamp for Moooi – essentially a horse with a shade on top – has been a statement-making stablemate since 2006. Happy horse hunting.

12 horse-inspired designs for equestrian chic

For the S/S 2026 season, the spotlight fell on 15 creative directors. After many months of abrupt departures, sudden arrivals and judicious role-swapping at Dior, Chanel, Balenciaga, Celine, Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Carven – plus new placements at Versace, Jean Paul Gaultier, Mugler, Maison Margiela, Loewe, Jil Sander, Area and Proenza Schouler – those in question unveiled debut collections to an audience that had eagerly coined this unprecedented shift as ‘fashion’s great reset’. But every new beginning comes from another beginning’s end, as the saying goes. And across these debuts, it was the past that would define the future.

However, it was neither sycophantic nostalgia nor a simple rehashing of familiar codes that swept the runways. As the show notes written for Jonathan Anderson’s inaugural ready-to-wear womenswear collection at Dior stated: ‘Daring to enter the house of Dior requires an empathy with its history, a willingness to decode its language, and the resoluteness to put all of it in a box. Not to erase it, but to store it, looking ahead, coming back to bits, traces or entire silhouettes from time to time, like revisiting memories.’

Anderson, who bade farewell to Loewe in March 2025 after 11 years at its helm – a period in which he transformed the languishing Spanish brand into a zeitgeist-defining institution – chose Paris’ Jardin des Tuileries as the location for his highly anticipated reveal. Conceived by longtime Anderson collaborators, director Luca Guadagnino and production designer Stefano Baisi, the white cube-like set featured a pyramid at its centre, on which a video by Adam Curtis was projected. The British documentarian had applied his signature collaging technique to archival recordings of every creative director who had preceded Anderson. And the collection itself also traversed the house’s illustrious history. But whether a restructuring of the Bar jacket, its flared waist manipulated into a blossoming bow, or the cleverly skewed, shrunken proportions of the New Look silhouette, signature Andersonisms (abstracted shapes, off-kilter detailing, surrealistic millinery) made it clear that an ‘inevitable change’ had arrived.

At Celine, Michael Rider followed a similar tack for both his spring 2026 resort collection, which marked his debut, and the ready-to-wear that followed. Speaking backstage after the first presentation, the designer stressed that Celine’s new chapter wouldn’t be marked by ‘a sense of erasure’. He said, ‘There was a foundation to build on. That, to me, felt modern, ethical, strong.’ So, in both offerings, Céline Vipiana’s quintessential silks and entrenched house prints melded with a pinch of Phoebe Philo (oversized shoulders and soft draping, for example), with whom Rider worked during her tenure at the house. There was also a touch of Hedi Slimane’s youthful Parisian sensibility: denim jeans, leather biker jackets and a nod to the dress codes of the 1960s Left Bank. Equally, the Washington DC-born Rider, a former creative director at Polo Ralph Lauren, was claiming Celine as his own with design tropes belonging to preppy Americana: oversized varsity jerseys, leather lace-up pumps and white socks, and knits emblazoned with the brand’s equestrian logo.

At Maison Margiela, Glenn Martens said his S/S 2026 ready-to-wear offering would see ‘new design suggestions appear alongside reintroductions and evolutions of archival ideas’. Like Martin Margiela and the house’s late co-founder Jenny Meirens, Martens is Belgian, and his avant-garde approach was honed at Antwerp’s Royal Academy before taking the reins at Y/Project and Diesel. In the wake of former creative director John Galliano’s lauded era of dramatic spectacle, a gritty ambience returned. For the runway show’s soundtrack, Martens referred to Martin Margiela’s S/S 1990 presentation (held in the Paris suburbs, where local children ran freely among models’ Tabi-clad feet), while his collection put a slant on deconstructed tailoring, slashed and reworked denim, and slope-shouldered leather outerwear, worn by open-mouthed models, their lips stretched using metal mouthpieces evocative of the house’s signature four-stitch motif.

A sort of fashion relay took place at Gucci, Valentino and Balenciaga between Alessandro Michele, Pierpaolo Piccioli and Demna: Michele, formerly at Gucci, handed the baton to Demna, previously at Balenciaga, a house that Piccioli now heads up. For Gucci’s S/S 2026 presentation, Demna chose to save the runway for March this year, instead opting for a lookbook shot by Catherine Opie, titled La Famiglia. ‘La Famiglia is a study of the “Gucciness” of Gucci, an expression of the brand as a mindset and a shared aesthetic language,’ he said. Heritage – the Horsebit loafer, the Bamboo bag, the GG monogram – were now viewed through shades of previous creative directors Michele, Frida Giannini and Tom Ford, with Demna’s unmistakable witticisms the mark of fresh design territory.

Piccioli’s proposition for Balenciaga began with Cristóbal Balenciaga’s ‘minimalist maximalism’, taking the 1957 Sack dress as a starting point from which to unfold history. ‘It would be stupid to deny who has been here before: Demna, Nicolas Ghesquière, Cristóbal,’ he said of the collection, which infused his trademark romanticism with voluminous, cocooning shapes, peppered with a more austere, Ghesquièrian aesthetic.

Matthieu Blazy left Bottega Veneta towards the end of 2024, with Louise Trotter announcing she would be exiting Carven to replace him. Blazy was quickly named as Chanel’s new creative director. Both showed their first collections across September and October. And at Bottega Veneta, Trotter, in her words, ‘return[ed] to the beginning to find the present’. ‘The language of Bottega Veneta is intrecciato. And it is a metaphor,’ said the designer of her vision for S/S 2026. ‘It is two different strips [of leather] woven together that become stronger – the two things make a stronger whole.’ Bottega Veneta is rooted in Italian craft, and Trotter explored this with flair, manipulating fabrics in a continuation of Blazy’s love of movement and texture. Backstage after the show, Trotter also said that one of her inspirations for the collection was Laura Braggion, Bottega Veneta’s first female creative lead, who worked for the house from the 1980s to the early 2000s.

‘I was imagining her journey,’ she said. ‘Her freedom of being an Italian woman, an archetypal Italian woman, moving to New York. And what that experience meant. It was a liberation for her. And that’s what I wanted to capture – a feeling of liberation.’ In billowing trench coats, skirts and dresses, and the undulating, glistening fringing of ombré skirts and ‘sweaters’ formed from recycled fibreglass, the feeling was palpable.

And then, Chanel. Blazy’s invitation to the French fashion house marked the first time that a designer outside of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld’s inner circles would enter its ateliers (Virginie Viard, who had worked closely with Lagerfeld from the 1980s up to his death in 2019, would step down for his arrival). So whether to maintain or disrupt the status quo was a predicament for Blazy. ‘Either we do a clean, modern, by-the-codes, by-the-book Chanel show, and it’s a first step. Or we do this show as if it was our last,’ he told The Business of Fashion. ‘I took the last option. Let’s do a show as if it were the last one.’ Against a vast interplanetary set – an ode to Coco Chanel’s fascination with the cosmos – Blazy cast any staid or fusty remnants of Chanel aside. In their place, lightness and liberation; a breath of fresh air. ‘Above all, there is an idea of freedom, of a new universal dress and a borderless blending of styles,’ he said. ‘The inheritance of not just one Chanel woman, but rather, of Chanel women.’

Across 77 looks, there was a subversion of tailoring, with cues borrowed from Boy Capel, Coco Chanel’s English lover, with whom she would sometimes share a wardrobe; there was also a reimagining of the classic 2.55 bag, which appeared softer, as though crumpled under the weight of history. In a continuation of the trompe l’oeil trickery that Blazy was so fond of at Bottega Veneta, tweed was, in fact, not tweed at all, but thousands of tiny glass beads. The final look – a louche ecru silk T-shirt worn with a cascade of confetti-like organza flowers in the shape of a floor-length skirt – was met with rapturous applause.

The S/S 2026 season has seen fashion grapple with a wider question that it has, perhaps, been trying to avoid in recent years: in a culture of short attention spans, what does ‘newness’ even look like? The answer, for now at least, doesn’t seem to lie in the ‘gimmick’ or the ‘redux’, but in acknowledging the design methods of those who came before as a means to move forward. It’s a return to the art of making clothes and the importance of knowing history well enough to alter it.

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

Model: Bernie Ross at Elite Model Management Actor: Vaslov Goom at Birdston Talent Management Casting: Lucy Rogers Hair: Michael Harding at Blend Management using Oribe Make-up: Sandra Cooke using Chanel Denim Collection and No.1 de Chanel Body Serum Manicure: Megan Cummings at Snow Creatives using Dior Manicure, Le Baume and Vernis Digi tech: John Cronin Photography assistants: Louise Oates, Tamibe Bourdanne Fashion assistant: Lucy Proctor Production assistants: Archie Thomson, Ady Huq, Indy Davy Photographed on location at The Lanesborough, London.

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.

So the story goes, in 1936, when the Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim displayed a cup and saucer covered in gazelle fur as part of an exhibition at New York’s MoMA, such was the impact of the surrealist object that a woman fainted right in front of it. ‘She left no name with the attendants who revived her – only a vague feeling of apprehension,’ reported the New Yorker of the incident at the time.

This is fur’s visceral power: 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. It can provoke equal outrage and desire, but also an underlying perversity – the surreal wrongness of wearing another’s skin, one which Oppenheim‘s work duly captures. ‘[It is] one of the perverse and pleasing sculptures of the 20th century,’ wrote the critic Andrea K. Scott.

And, Oppenheim’s legacy lives on: as part of the recent Frieze week in London, the buzzy Irish-Australian artist and jeweller Leo Costelloe presented a deer-pelt-covered jug as part of his exhibition ‘Kitchen’ at The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ. He called it his ‘ode to Meret Oppenheim’, part of a series of works which mind the ‘fantasy and unease’ of the domestic realm. ‘I’m naturally drawn to themes that tread the line between aspirational fantasy and desperate reality,’ he told Wallpaper*.

Fur was all over the A/W 2025 runways, too – in illusory form, at least. For the past decade, fashion’s luxury houses have largely done away with the use of fur in their collections: in 2021, the Kering group – which owns Bottega Veneta, Gucci and Balenciaga, among others – banned fur, alongside brands like Prada, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana and Valentino. Whether evoked through hyper-realistic imitation furs, cleverly manipulated shearlings (shearling is a by-product of the meat industry, rather than farmed) or fluffy fronds of feathers, it was the undeniable material of the season, appearing on both the men’s and women’s runways.

In the collections, designers mined fur’s connotations, suggesting at once a heady, bygone glamour, but also a want for protection against the elements – whether real or existential. At Prada, which featured shearling ‘fur’ trapped under layers of clear plastic or erupting into strange protrusions at the neckline of a coat, co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons said the material evoked the ‘raw glamour’ at the heart of the collection. ‘Glamour was something we were attracted to, instinctively, and its connection to femininity,’ said Mrs Prada at the time. ‘We asked ourselves – what is feminine? What is feminine beauty? What is femininity today? It is a constant questioning, an examining of femininity – what does it mean?’

Here, as selected by the Wallpaper* style team, ten imitation fur and shearling pieces – from classic coats to bandeau tops and accessories – which capture the raw, twisted glamour which ran through the A/W 2025 collections.

The first look of Demna’s debut collection for Gucci does not feature clothing, but a human-sized monogram trunk, immortalised in a gilded frame and subtitled ‘L'Archetipo’ – the archetype. The trunk, after all, is where Gucci began: after working as a porter in London’s Savoy hotel – and witnessing the growing need for luggage amid the burgeoning travelling classes – Guccio Gucci would return to Florence to begin the leather atelier which would become an empire.

The image is photographed by radical American photographer Catherine Opie, and introduces a catalogue of other archetypes that the Georgian designer and former creative director says encapsulate the ‘different facets of Gucci’s personas’ (one might imagine them having stepped out of the trunk, as if Demna is unpacking his vision for his tenure ahead). What unites them, he says, is that they are ‘unapologetically sexy, extravagant, and daring’ – a departure from previous creative director Sabato de Sarno’s more restrained vision, which focused on refining the everyday wardrobe over bold design statements.

La Famiglia: Demna’s first collection for Gucci

Some of Demna’s ‘La Famiglia’ are distinctly Italian: there is ‘La Bomba’ (legs bared and clad in a tiger-striped ‘fur’ coat), ‘Ragazzo’ (black Speedos, sunglasses, and a pair of Gucci sandals), and ‘La Principessa’ (a shimmering pink gown with ostrich-feather cuffs), while others capture more universal archetypes: ‘La VIP’, ‘Nerd’, ‘Gallerista’ and ‘L’Influencer’ all feature in the line-up. There are also moments of irony and irreverance typical of the designer: ’Miss Aperitivo’, who wears a micro sequinned mini and monogram tights, ‘is simply preoccupied with having the time of her life,’ he says.

Elsewhere, there are nods to the Gucci archive: a dress is adorned with a version of the house’s ‘Flora’ print, first featured on a silk scarf made for Princess Grace of Monaco after a visit to the Gucci store in Milan in 1960, while the Bamboo 1947 bag and the Horsebit loafer appear in new iterations. In its unabounded sensuality – several of the looks see models bearing skin – it recalls the tenure of Tom Ford in the 1990s, which would see the American designer reverse Gucci’s fortunes with his erotically charged vision of Italian glamour. Demna will, no doubt, hope he can perform his own turnaround of the label.

This is the first of the major creative director debuts this season: later this week in Milan we will see first collections from Simone Bellotti at Jil Sander and Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, with a slew of other big names to follow in Paris, including Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, Jonathan Anderson’s first womenswear collection for Dior and Pierpaolo Piccioli’s debut at Balenciaga, where he takes over from Demna (the handover was more than amicable: Piccioli came out to support Demna’s final haute couture show for the house). Eschewing a runway show this season might be a canny move: with this release, the designer feels ahead of the noise.

That said, tomorrow in Milan, Demna will offer a further glimpse into his vision for the house: a presentation, heralding the start of the city’s fashion week, will take place at 7pm at Palazzo Mezzanotte. What this comprises of, Gucci remains tight-lipped, though a short film is expected (looks from the collection will also go on sale in ten Gucci stores worldwide). His debut runway show, meanwhile, is slated for February next year.

gucci.com

Summer is a time for living with abandon; for freeing yourself from quotidian routines and making straight for the nearest beach. Dressing for the season should be approached with a similarly liberatory spirit: the heat of summer calls for embracing your instincts for the playful and the brightly hued, a more is more aesthetic befitting a mood of escapism, where, for a tantalising brief few months, you can reveal a whole different side of yourself (both metaphorically, and, for the brave, physically).

As seen in the Wallpaper* June Travel issue, Bulgaria-born, London-based photographer Irina Shestakova and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture this spirit of playful abandon, proposing a pile-up of accessories that look best on the beach. From raffia totes, bag charms and candy-like strings of necklaces to barely-there swim trunks and fluoro T-shirts – as well as bikes and snorkels – this is our directive to let go this summer, and give into your desire for escape.

Explore the story below.

Splash out! This summer’s best accessories

Models: Mia and Tsion at Next, Nikita, Adam and Eden at IMG, Chanula at Milk. Casting: Nico at Ikki Casting Hair: Christos Bairabas. Make-up: Victoria Martin using Haus Labs. Manicure: Olivia Gane using Chanel Le Vernis and Chanel La Crème Main. Photography assistants: Federico Covarelli and Sam Sorabjee. Fashion assistant: Lucy Proctor Hair assistant: Malita Nagelyte. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

A version of this article appears in the June 2025 Travel Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, 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.

‘What does it mean for a luxury brand – a fashion brand – to enter the domain of design? That is the fundamental question,’ says Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, a former OMA partner and the founder of Milan-based interdisciplinary studio 2050+, who for this year’s Fuorisalone has united with Gucci on an ambitious new project.

His answer is ‘Gucci Bamboo Encounters’, which has seen Pestellini Laparelli draft seven international artists and designers to respond to bamboo – a foundational material for Gucci, and a longstanding motif in the house’s collections – in a series of distinct installations. They unfold during Milan Design Week 2025 in an exhibition, designed and curated by Pestellini Laparelli, at the 16th-century Chiostri di San Simpliciano in Milan’s Brera neighbourhood.

‘Gucci Bamboo Encounters’ at Fuorisalone 2025

‘Bamboo has been linked to Gucci since the 1940s,’ explains Pestellini Laparelli to Wallpaper* in the run-up to the exhibition’s opening. ’The iconic bamboo-handled bag was launched in 1947, which was an interesting story – leather was scarce after the Second World War, so they used bamboo from the banks of the River Arno in Florence. After that, it became a code: a pattern on clothes, jewellery, even home design.’

This idea of re-interpreation lies at the heart of the project, which asked the seven artists to respond to the project in an open-ended brief, which Pestellini Laparelli likens to a ‘research platform’ rather than an attempt to create saleable objects. ‘We told Gucci it wouldn’t be interesting for us to produce objects or commodities. We are drowning in objects,’ he smiles. ‘Nobody needs more objects.’

’Instead, we wanted to turn the project into a kind of research platform, around bamboo,’ he continues. ‘Not necessarily as a material per se, but: what does it mean from a cultural perspective? What does it mean across multiple geographies? It’s a plant that grows everywhere around the world, so obviously there are different epistemologies.’

As such, the artists and designers hail from around the world and span generations: there is Swedish-Chilean artist Anton Alvarez, London-based Palestinian artist and academic Dima Srouji, Dutch collective Kite Club, Rotterdam-based Austrian designer Laurids Gallée, Korean designer Sisan Lee and Eugenio Rossi and Yaazd Contractor’s The Back Studio, which is based between Turin and Mumbai. Finally, French artist Nathalie Du Pasquier – a founding member of the Memphis Group – is the only participant living and working in Milan.

‘We didn’t ask anyone to produce a chair or a specific object,’ says Pestellini Laparelli. ‘The point was to look at their practice through the lens of bamboo in general with an open brief. The objects they developed extended the codes of bamboo at Gucci, but in very personal, unexpected ways.’

Much of the focus remains on material. ‘Gallée, for example, is known for his work in resin,’ he continues. ‘So he invented a way to cast bamboo within raising blocks and then removing it, so you have these blocks in which bamboo appears as an excavation so you only see the “ghost” of it.’ A similar act of casting was undertaken by Lee, though in aluminium, while Srouji took found bamboo objects – a series of historic woven baskets – and ‘intertwined’ them with balloon-like glass adornments, hand-blown in Palestine.

‘She normally works in glass, and she produces glass objects in collaboration with artisans in the West Bank in Palestine,’ says Pestellini Laparelli. ‘She found a number of objects in bamboo, coming mostly from vernacular crafts – everyday objects, mostly caskets and baskets, and “hacked” them with the glass pieces. The result is something super beautiful – an everyday object changing function. But they also have a different layer coming from Palestine at this very historical moment; it changes the meaning of these objects.

Elsewhere, the Kite Club created a series of kites which flutter in the historic cloisters, featuring bamboo motifs as a ‘thank you’ to the material (‘without you, kite flying would not be what it is today... your strength, flexibility and lightness have been crucial to the development of kites worldwide’, they say), while Du Pasquier used the bamboo screen as a medium for her distinct graphic paintings. Finally, The Back Studio has created an intriguing object which mimics the extraordinary growth rate of bamboo (Chinese moso bamboo can grow up to a metre in a single day; The Back Studio’s accounts for about 0.6 millimetres every 15 minutes).

The show unfolds in a space designed by Pestellini Laparelli, which sees the Chiostri di San Simpliciano – a ’perfect square’, as he describes – divided in half through an intervention by his creative studio. As such, one half is a vast platform, on which the objects are displayed in a gallery-like setting; on the other, a dense bamboo grove. A modernist riff on the Renaissance pavillion stands in the centre of the space: ‘a perfect octagon in steel and bamboo,’ where a series of public talks will be held across the week.

‘We want to platform these designers – platform their research without delivering anything that can be simply sold on the market,’ he says. ‘These are all, in a way, research objects – research through design – that eventually we hope will lead to something else.’

‘Gucci Bamboo Encounters’ runs from April 8-13 2025 at Chiostri di San Simpliciano in Milan. A series of accomapnying talks can be booked here.

gucci.com

‘90 x 90’ is the title of a new project from Gucci, a reference to the proportions of the Italian house’s silk scarves, which came into style in the 1960s after their adoption by the glamorous, country-hopping jet set. Boldly decorated with its signature motifs – from the classic metal horsebit to lush depictions of flora and fauna – the silk scarf has become one of Gucci’s foundational accessories, endlessly riffed upon by the house’s creative directors, from Tom Ford to Alessandro Michele.

Transforming the 90cm by 90cm square of silk into a canvas, ‘90 x 90’ invites nine international artists to respond to five thematic prompts that run through the brand’s archive: flora, fauna, nautical, equestrian and signature double-G monogram, an emblem which this year celebrates 50 years since its creation by Aldo Gucci. Flora, meanwhile, references the 1966 Botticelli-inspired illustration by Vittorio Accornero de Testa, which adorned a silk scarf gifted to Princess Grace of Monaco on her visit to the Gucci store on Milan’s Via Montenapoleone that same year (the neck scarf would remain one of her style signatures).

Gucci: The Art of Silk – The 90 x 90 project 

The roster includes conceptual American artist Robert Barry, whose version of the scarf features elegant twists of nautical ropes and chains, and Jonny Niesche, an Australian painter who reimagines the Gucci monogram through a saturated use of colour reminiscent of his own abstract words. The rest of the line-up encompasses performance artist Sara Leghissa, graphic designer Currynew, illustrator Gio Pastori, animators Yu Cai and Inji Seo, and cartoonists Everett Glenn and Walter Petrone.

Numbering 37 designs in total, with each collaborator creating more than one scarf across the various themes, the spoils of the project will be collated in a new book, Gucci: The Art of Silk, The Story of Gucci Scarves, published by Assouline. The colourful tome promises an unprecedented look into Gucci’s silk archive that the house likens to a ‘storybook’, a kaleidoscopic catalogue of artworks and narratives – which, despite their eclecticism, remain deeply rooted in Gucci’s evocative and enduring visual symbolism.

The 90 x 90 project scarves will only be available, in a limited run, in seven Gucci stores (one in London, Milan, Rome, Florence and Dubai, and two in Paris), as well as online at gucci.com.

The 90 x 90 project is part of a wider ‘The Art of Silk’ initiative by the house, which was revealed today (1 April 2025) in a new campaign photographed by Steven Meisel and starring actress Julia Garner. Titled ‘Keep It Gucci: The Art of Silk’, she wears various silk scarves inspired by Vittorio Accornero de Testa’s ‘Flora’ motif.

A version of this article will appear in the May 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands from 3 April 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Set design: Caroline Nedelec. Set design assistant: Dominyka Proškenaite. Photography assistant: Lucas Matichard. Production: Melissa Phaisavath.

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.

After much speculation about who might be next in line at Gucci, the wait is finally over. Today, news came that Demna is to become the Italian house’s new creative director. His arrival follows Sabato De Sarno’s two-year spell at the brand, which has been without a creative lead since September 2024.

Demna leaves a decade-long stewardship at Balenciaga for the role. Taking the reins of the Parisian house in 2015, the Georgian designer's tenure at Balenciaga has been one of the most distinctive in its history. Blending alternative ideas of beauty with streetwear, irony, celebrity and political commentary, Demna (formerly known as Demna Gvasalia) transformed the storied brand into a pop cultural juggernaut.

Demna is heading to Gucci

Gucci’s appointment of the designer marks its latest attempt to secure a strong leader following Alessandro Michele’s departure in 2023. Michele’s extravagant, kitschy brand of romanticism saw the house enjoy several years of creative and commercial growth, and it has been in a state of flux since his exit. Having successfully steered a heritage luxury house into contemporary relevance, Demna’s decade at Balenciaga could indicate that he’s at Gucci for the long run.

Demna was born in Soviet Georgia in 1981 and fled to Germany as a refugee during the Georgian Civil War – an experience that he says has deeply influenced his work. He studied fashion at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp before co-founding Vetements and later becoming the creative director of Balenciaga. From Ikea dupes to trashed sneakers, Demna has consistently challenged what luxury means, making the ugly or mundane desirable, while twisting design traditions from tailoring and couture to oddly beautiful new extremes.

His haute couture collections for the house have proved particularly arresting, applying centuries-old technique to his provocative and contemporary designs. ’We’ve become numb to the beauty of the world. Why don’t we see the beauty anymore? We need it to survive,’ he told Wallpaper* in 2024, discussing his ‘52nd’ couture collection with Dal Chodha.

Under Demna’s direction we can expect an experimental, provocative interpretation of Gucci’s codes – a vision that might retain glimmers of the eclectic playfulness of Michele’s era, but in the designer's own irreverent style. His first collection for Gucci will likely be unveiled this September in Milan, following the brand’s leaderless A/W 2025 runway last month, which was crafted by the many minds and hands that make up its immense design studio.

Presenting a foundational wardrobe of varied, horsebit-gilded glamour that plucked freely from its eras and icons, the co-ed collection was shown on an interlocking double-G runway, which was established by Guccio Gucci’s son – Aldo Gucci – exactly 50 years ago. This appointment will see Demna take these histories into his hands – all eyes will be on Milan to see how he remoulds them anew.

‘I am truly excited to join the Gucci family. It is an honour to contribute to a house that I deeply respect and have long admired,’ Demna said in a statement. ‘I look forward to writing a new chapter of Gucci’s amazing story.’

gucci.com

Following a quiet week in London, Milan Fashion Week arrived in a state of flux: with two of its biggest houses, Gucci and Fendi, without creative directors (the latter for its womenswear collections, with Silvia Venturini Fendi still heading up menswear and accessories), there was the feeling of an in-between season as its major players reorientate themselves in the hunt for new creative leads. That said, Fendi had plenty to celebrate – 100 years, in fact – which it marked with a blockbuster co-ed show on Wednesday evening (26 February) designed by Silvia Venturini Fendi (afterwards, seats were pushed back for a party). Meanwhile, Gucci, who opened proceedings on Tuesday afternoon (25 February), also hosted a co-ed show, which took place on an enormous mirrored runway in the shape of the house’s Aldo Gucci-designed interlocking-G logo – a perennial symbol of Italian luxury.

Elsewhere, the city’s powerhouses Dolce & Gabbana, Emporio Armani, Ferragamo, Dolce & Gabbana and Prada each showed their latest collections (at the latter, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a collection of ‘raw glamour’ amid a scaffold-and-carpet construction introduced at the house’s A/W 2025 menswear show earlier this year). Finally at Missoni, a new era awaits as Alberto Caliri – a longtime fixture of the Italian knitwear house – stepped into the spotlight as creative director on Friday evening (28 February).

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss – with additional reporting by Orla Brennan – unpacks the best of Milan Fashion Week A/W 2025.

Giorgio Armani

A change in location this season saw Giorgio Armani swap the intimate showspace in his headquarters on Via Borgonuovo for the larger Tadao Ando-designed Armani/Teatro in south-west Milan, where the designer usually presents his Emporio Armani collections (as he did earlier this week). Inside, seating was evocative of restaurant booths or a particularly luxurious airport lounge, like that at the special show the house held in New York last year to celebrate the eponymous designer’s 90th birthday.

This latest collection, for A/W 2025, was described by Mr Armani as a return to his roots, ‘a reaffirmation of an authentic style that evolves, drawing on itself, while remaining firmly anchored in reality’. As such, it centred on louche silhouettes inflected with moments of glamour – including a particularly sparkling closing act, whereby diaphanous gowns and floating layers of tulle were adorned with thousands of light-catching crystals. Meanwhile continuing what has been a defining trend of Milan so far, ‘fur’ coats and stoles were actually crafted from specially manipulated shearling. Colours, Mr Armani elucidated backstage, were drawn from nature, a typically seductive palette of earthy, ‘volcanic’ hues and those evoking crystals and minerals, from quartz blue to emerald.

Afterwards, guests were ushered into another room for a ‘light lunch’ of sashimi, saffron risotto and champagne – another flourish of Armani-esque glamour and Italian hospitality. JM

Dolce & Gabbana

Dolce & Gabbana’s latest show played out in two halves – the first, introduced with a short film starring the model Vittoria Ceretti in London, was inspired by the off-duty uniforms of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s favourite contemporary models (among them Ceretti, but also Mona Tougaard and Irina Shayk, the latter two who appeared in the show). The pair said it was about an ‘approach to dressing’ defined not by a ‘singular item’ but the way pieces are combined together, like a shearling trimmed parka over a negligee, knee-high-socks and boots, or a pair of slouchy cargo pants with a lace top and enormous furry bag. The second part was an expression of Dolce & Gabbana’s high-octane eveningwear, here largely comprising super-abbreviated mini dresses adorned with crystals and feathers, though still instilled with what the designers called a ‘cool girl’ attitude (several of the looks were worn with chunky leather boots, albeit adorned with gobstopper gems). As if to prove the collection’s real world appeal, models strode out of the building onto a special runway on the Viale Piave, where DJ Victoria De Angelis – a member of Maneskin – was crafting the booming soundtrack, which continued to reverberate streets away. JM

Ferragamo

The work of Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater – the German expressionist dance movement which began in the 1920s but found new international renown under Bausch in the 1970s – has proved fertile ground for fashion designers. Yesterday’s Ferragamo show saw creative director Maximilian Davis look towards Tanztheater’s ‘unbound expression’ and ‘liberated choreography’ for an A/W 2025 collection staged on a runway sprinkled with thousands of red rose petals (the visual impact was similar to that of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s productions, whereby an otherwise sparse stage might sprout with flowers, or be transformed into a vast pits of dust of mud).

In looking towards the medium of dance, it was a continuation of his S/S 2025 collection, which was inspired by ballet, though here that lightness had been replaced by a rawer sensuality – a nod towards Tanztheater’s experimental roots in Weimar Germany. Retaining the sharply defined wardrobe of his tenure so far (crisp tailoring and overcoats remain a highlight), Davis found new expression in sultry flourishes, from featherweight sheer knits to adornments of feathers, tassels, fur-like shearling and 3D flowers, while a visceral red ran throughout. ‘The twenties were a moment of freedom, of people rebelling and creating spaces for themselves,’ Davis explained of the liberated collection. ‘[I wanted] to create a sense of discomfort in the expected.’ JM

Versace

This season’s Versace show arrived with questions about the future of the Italian house: Capri Holdings, the company which currently owns Versace, is looking to sell, with parties from Renzo Rosso’s Only The Brave (owner of Diesel, Maison Margiela and Marni, among others) to the Prada Group expressing interest (Miuccia Prada said the deal was ‘on everyone’s table’ backstage at her own show earlier this week).

Despite the intrigue, the show – which took place on a marathon-length runway at a working tram depot – saw Donatella Versace remain steadfast in her vision of sensually charged glamour, drilling into house codes through the collection’s melange of colourful, baroque-inspired prints (one inspiration was Gianni Versace’s A/W 1997 collection, his last before his death). ‘Be yourself. Believe in yourself. Break the rules,’ said Donatella Versace of the collection’s mood, noting that the men’s and women’s collection ‘affirms the house’s eternal ethos’.

She noted an inspiration from Versace homeware – a series of duvet-like dresses and jackets appeared like the model had grabbed a set of Versace bedsheets for modesty – while studded black leather and distressed jeans provided a punky counterpoint to the all-out drama elsewhere. Tailoring swerved from nipped-waist to broad-shouldered and oversized, while looks in chainmail (one worn by Romeo Beckham) were an expression of the Versace vernacular. A trio of flared-waist mini dresses provided the show’s final tableau, as a smiling Donatella Versace took her place next to the models for her finale bow. Will it be her last? It’s hard to imagine Versace – or indeed fashion – without Donatella. JM

Tod’s

The model, musician and former French first lady Carla Bruni provided a surprising opening act at Tod’s, the star of a static artwork by Chicago-based artist Nelly Agassi. Stitched into a metres-long patchwork leather gown and brandishing an enormous gold needle, the slightly surreal tableau – which saw Bruni erected at its centre for over half an hour as guests trailed in – was titled ‘Artisanal Intelligence’, a nod to the house’s roots in craftsmanship. If aesthetically it didn’t have a whole lot to do with Matteo Tamburini’s third collection – a contemporary imagining of the Italian wardrobe – the idea of craft ran throughout, particularly in the collection’s textures, from buttery leather, suede and shearling to lightweight wool knits, fuzzy alpaca, and woven fabrics left purposely frayed at the edges. Other pieces had a uniform precision (crisp poplin shirts, pressed trousers, button-up cardigans) and felt fresh – it was the best iteration of Tod’s, a house which has occasionally struggled to find its fashion identity, in some time. JM

Missoni

After a number of seasons whereby Missoni has struggled to find its identity, Alberto Caliri – a veteran designer of the house who has been there three decades – stepped back into the spotlight with an astute collection which returned to the knitwear house’s roots. ‘The feeling was not one of radical change, but rather of return,’ he told Wallpaper* prior to the show, which comprised a series of layered-up looks which drew inspiration from the ‘instinctive and free’ vision of Ottavio and Rosita Missoni, the house founders. Knitwear, of course, was a focus, with silhouettes tending towards the enveloping – a series of oversized cardigans with enormous ribbed collars were a highlight – while patterns, a longtime hallmark of Missoni, largely centred on a melange of checks befitting the collection’s outdoorsy mood (a play on the Wellington boot was one of this season’s footwear offerings). Though it was the shimmering knits which came towards the end of the show which impressed: slouchy bell-sleeved cardigans, jackets dotted with crystal sparkle, and a play on the tuxedo in a lurex-like knit captured a mood of insouciant glamour. It was a great start. JM

READ: Alberto Caliri’s new vision for Missoni: ‘It’s about getting back to an essence’

Sportmax

Sportmax’s latest show took place in the light-filled Rotonda della Besana on Friday morning, introducing a collection of new focus for the label, which is the younger, more trend-driven offshoot of the Max Mara family. Led by an anonymous design team, the ideas-driven collections have tended towards the experimental, though here there was something more stripped-back, offering a highly desirable line-up of real-world clothing (albeit with satisfying flourishes of innovation and strangeness). The collection notes described it as one of ‘hyper-reinvention – where the ordinary become extraordinary,’ inspired by ‘the artisans, designers, colleagues, mothers and friends who infuse Sportmax’s intellectual design language with realistic intention’. Tassels were a feature – in extra-long lengths they transformed the silhouette of handbags and gloves – while clever faux fur jackets had been cut to give the illusion of crocodile skin. A series of dresses, meanwhile, were cleverly crafted to appear like a single roll of fabric had been wrapped around the body. JM

Giuseppe Di Morabito

Born in the mountains of Calabria, southern Italy, Giuseppe di Morabito grew up seeing nuns weave lace on looms – the art of tombolo – and local tailors craft beautiful custom suits for the village’s men. He founded his namesake brand with a respect for these traditions while drawing inspiration from the masterpieces of Caravaggio and Canova, whose frescoed ceilings and sculptures he pored over in Rome before studying at Istituto Marangoni in Milan. Informing a wardrobe of Italian glitz – corsetry, tailoring, and opulent evening gowns, his bread and butter – Di Morabito’s taste for the classics made the set of his A/W 2025 show all the more surprising. A cyborg positioned in the centre of the room introduced his latest collection with a surreal speech about technology and human life, after which model du jour Amelia Gray opened the show in a crinkly black bustier and matching scrunched leather trousers. Looking to ideas of armour through the ages, a series of high-voltage looks then followed. Silver breastplates sat atop shirting, and severe suiting cinched waists with hidden corsetry and mini crinolines. Heavy wool trenches and voluminous faux fur overcoats came in shades of deep brown and taupe, while head-to-toe glittering looks referenced the burlesque attire of the 1920s for women and the streetwear shapes of the 2000s for men. The designer dubbed the display ‘artisanal intelligence’ after the show. OB

Prada

Unfolding in the same scaffolding structure as the house’s menswear show earlier this year, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons titled their latest womenswear collection ‘Raw Glamour’. ‘Glamour was something we were attracted to, instinctively, and its connection to femininity,’ said Mrs Prada. ‘We asked ourselves – what is feminine? What is feminine beauty? What is femininity today? It is a constant questioning, an examining of femininity – what does it mean?’ These questions are foundational to Prada, a house which has long interrogated notions of conventional beauty. This season, though, there was new urgency: ‘It is not my job to be political but when you open a newspaper – oh my God!’ Mrs Prada exclaimed backstage post-show. ‘Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

What followed was a collection which, like the pair’s previous menswear and womenswear outings, was driven by their instinctual attraction to ideas rather than more defined thematics. After the menswear show last month, Mrs Prada cited ‘a liberating instinct… it’s the season of artificial intelligence, and this is our move again towards humanity. Towards instinct, passion and romance.’ This collection followed a similar track: Simons said that the collection began with the pair thinking about constriction, how women’s fashion has been defined by garments like the corset which are designed to narrow and reshape the body. So here they blew up 1960s-style dresses and sliced them raw at the hemline, their narrowed waist expanded into roomy proportions (other pyjama-like shorts were pinched and gathered at the waist, as if wearing something several sizes too big). Meanwhile suggestions of nostalgic glamour – like the fur coat or handbag – were here subverted, the former with protrusions of faux fur around the neckline, or reimagined through trompe l’oeil prints. A feeling of dishevelment ran throughout – not least the hair, which had been teased and ruffled, as if at the end of a long evening (or, indeed, rolling out of bed).

It felt like a provocation from the designers, a welcome jolt of dissonance in a fashion month which has largely skirted conversations of the tumultuous political backdrop on which these collections unfold. Here was their own pitch for liberation, though not without an undercurrent of danger (there was a kind of violence to the way garments were chopped and sliced). ‘Within feminine beauty, when you think of its archetypes, there is lots of restriction of the body – here, it is free,’ said Simons. ‘And ideas can be liberated also. In turn, we didn’t want to limit ourselves, with a narrative or a theme. We like to take a risk – we like to try to create something different.’ JM

Max Mara

For his latest outing at Max Mara, British designer Ian Griffiths transported attendees from Milan’s Palazzo del Ghiaccio to the Brontë sisters’ windswept Yorkshire moors – albeit in the elegant, reduced style which has become his signature at the Reggio-Emilia founded house. It was by no means period attire: instead, Griffiths imagined a contemporary protagonist craving the tempestuous passions of Jane Eyre or Catherine Earnshaw, ‘sleek, self-assured and elegant… but she cannot contain her passions forever. She craves romance, deep and dramatic.’

As such, the collection teetered between strictness and romance, whether fuzzy overcoats cinched at the waist with double leather belts, cloak-like knitwear, or a tendency towards the full-length silhouette, like a series of woollen skirts and coats which grazed the ankle (the latter also suggesting protection against the elements). Meanwhile, knitted wool tops were structured to evoke a Victorian corset or bodice, though without boning or structure they retained the feeling of ease which is synonymous with Griffiths’ work.

Textures, meanwhile, felt a return to the designer’s British roots (he was born in Windsor, Berkshire, before moving to London to study at the Royal College of Art), with worsted wools and tweeds adding satisfying tactility and weight. JM

Emporio Armani

Giorgio Armani titled his latest collection for Emporio Armani ‘All In’, a reference to the way in which he can use the label as a space for experimentation and play (a spritely finale bow showed the 90-year-old designer was in no danger of resting on his laurels). Playing cards were an influence, he said, becoming a motif on outerwear or abstracted into details like enormous heart-shaped pockets on a red velvet suit. But ‘All In’ also referred to the vast breadth of garments which fall under the Emporio Armani umbrella; since its founding in 1981, it has continually sought to create a comprehensive wardrobe for the demands of its customer, whether town or country, ski slope or beach. Here, he impressed through textural interest – rich layers of velvet and silk jacquards met shaggy yeti furs, tailoring wools and lustrous organza – while silhouettes drew inspiration from louche, fluid tailoring which interrelated masculine and feminine in typical Armani style. Meanwhile a closing section of looks in black saw Mr Armani explore new expressions of eveningwear: notably, a crinoline skirt dotted with buttons which closed the show – proof of the designer’s desire to continue to drive the label forward. ‘Dressing is always about taking risks,’ he said. JM

MM6 Maison Margiela

In one of the cosier setups at Milan Fashion Week so far, rows of sofas and armchairs draped in white sheets set the scene for MM6 Maison Margiela’s A/W 2025 show last night. The collection followed the anonymous fashion collective’s Pitti Uomo display in Florence this January – its first menswear-only presentation in the 30 years since Martin Margiela founded the diffusion line in 1997 – which paid tribute to the elusive Belgian designer’s strongest mens silhouettes through the decades. Last night’s show, however, took a more theatrical turn. Emerging from a circular spotlight, models stalked through the endless rows of couches, exuding a seductive energy in futuristic sunglasses, leather opera gloves, and pointed vinyl knee-high boots. Expressed in an earthy palette of deep browns, muddy greys, stark white and plenty of black, the collection itself twisted tropes of glamour into something more subversive. Dramatic cuts and exaggerated proportions saw overcoats and polos padded like duvets, sharply structured jackets paired with sultry leather mini skirts, and sheer shirting layered under lustrous black suits. As ever, Margiela’s deconstructed legacy was evident in the details – exposed silk panels on the backs of masculine wool coats, crushed organza second-skin dresses unraveling at the seams, and everyday staples pushed into sharp, dramatic new territories. OB

Fendi

Late last year, it was announced that Kim Jones was leaving his position as creative director of Fendi’s womenswear and haute couture collections. His replacement is yet to be announced, though the house’s current state of flux was not going to halt celebrations of Fendi’s 100th year in business (it was founded in 1925 by Edoardo and Adele Fendi in Rome).

Hosted at the house’s newly renovated Via Solari HQ – the runway showspace at its centre now nearly double in size – it was down to Silvia Venturini Fendi, granddaughter of the house’s founders, to design this season’s co-ed collection (prior to Jones’ departure she was in charge of menswear and accessories). Beginning with her twin grandchildren pulling open two vast doors – reminiscent of those on Via Borgognona in Rome, where the Fendi sisters had their atelier – the collection which followed signalled a return to the Cinecittà glamour long synonymous with the label, modelled by a cast of perennial Fendi muses, from Penelope Tree to Katen Elson. ‘Fur’ coats and stoles ran throughout (in a clever illusory trick, they were actually patchworked or intarsia shearling designed to recall fox, mink or sable), while hourglass silhouettes conjured a nostalgic elegance. Meanwhile moments of embellishment – from crystal and paillette embroidery to chantilly lace and plissé taffeta – reflected the evening’s celebratory mood (after the show ended, a stream of waiters with trays of champagne circulated to toast the occasion).

‘This show is so important to me,’ she told Wallpaper* after the show. ‘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.’ JM

READ: Fendi celebrates 100 years with an all-out runway show at its new Milan HQ

Marni

In preparation for this season, Francesco Risso spent a month with the Nigerian artists Olaolu Slawn and Soldier Boyfriend in a ‘residency’ he dubbed ‘The Pink Sun’. Having met in London, Risso said that his collaboration with the artists – which culminated not just with the collection but a selection of artworks which decorated the showspace at Marni’s Milan HQ – was ‘never a decision, it was a pull, an inevitability’, citing a ‘shared language built on instinct, on movement, on rebellion’.

Taking place in a surreal recreation of a Milanese café (complete with Martini vermouth spritzes and bar tables daubed with swirls of grey paint), the show itself was about the moment when a work is taken out of the studio and into ‘the salon’, where the spoils of the creative process are put on show. As the show began – soundtracked with a live performance by longtime collaborator Dev Hynes – models emerged from a slice in an enormous white canvas at the end of the runway, slinking between the room’s tables and chairs as if navigating a nightclub or bar. Their clothing continued the liberated, instinctual mood of the S/S 2025 collection in dresses made from a bold patchwork of fabric, brightly coloured faux fur stoles and fuzzy striped knits, with 3D flowers and winged sunglasses serving as playful adornment.

It made for perhaps Milan Fashion Week’s highlight thus far, a testament to Risso’s desire to seek the ultimate self-expression through clothing. ‘We make, design, conceive, we fantasise, we romanticise, we push it to the maximum,’ he told Simon Chilvers in the March 2025 issue of Wallpaper*. ‘Making clothes is like making emotions. That is actually how Marni exists, to allow people to express themselves easily, and incredibly, and loudly.’ JM

READ: Inside the unexpected collaboration between Marni’s Francesco Risso and artists Slawn and Soldier

Jil Sander

For some months, rumours have swirled that Lucie and Luke Meier, the wife-and-husband duo who have been co-creative directors of Jil Sander since 2017, were set to exit the Italy-based house. Yesterday evening, the departure was confirmed by OTB – the luxury goods conglomerate which owns the label – meaning that their A/W 2025 runway show, which took place that morning, would be their last. ‘A bright metaphor for love,’ they coined the collection, which unfolded in a series of cocooning corridors clad with vast black curtains. From this near-pitch-black darkness emerged the Meiers’ glimmering figures: dresses and skirts were adorned with gleaming black tassels, shirts with rows of iridescent paillettes, while shoes and leggings were studded with silver metal – an expression at once of delicacy and protect. In the collection’s focus on texture, it was a continuum of the Meiers’ vision for the house, which was founded by its namesake in Germany in 1968. Wanting to instil the rigorous minimalism synonymous with Jil Sander with a poetic sensuality, tactility has long been at the heart of their collections – with this latest outing, they once again created garments that begged to be touched. Meanwhile a striking series of pieces featured a degradé print which saw a delicate floral print fade away into black – or perhaps, more hopefully, the other way round. ‘[This is] a collection which turns darkness – the hues that seem to soak our times – into light, into the brilliance they invite us to capture,’ they said, via the collection notes. That evening, they hosted a party to celebrate the last eight years alongside longtime musical collaborator Benji B. It was titled ‘It’s All Love’. JM

READ: Lucie and Luke Meier exit Jil Sander

Diesel

It's been a bittersweet 2025 for Glenn Martens so far. In January, it was announced he would make the career-defining move to Maison Margiela, succeeding John Galliano in the dream appointment as the house’s new creative director. But one man can only do so much, and a few weeks later the news came that Martens’ mainstay Y/Project would shut its doors after 11 years of singular, chopped-and-screwed design.

Yesterday, at Diesel in Milan – where Martens has held the title of creative director since 2020 – it was, however, business as usual. Guests were invited down to a cavernous warehouse space, where gargantuan figurative sculptures covered in graffiti set the scene for a full-throttle runway that pushed Diesel’s Y-2K language to extremes. Unveiled to a thumping soundtrack, models with painted hair and clown-like smiles became spray-paint caricatures, adorned in looks that shredded heritage fabrics like tweed, herringbone and (faux) fur. The designer described the vibe as ‘Coco Chanel goes to Balmoral and gets trashed on sherry with The Queen.’

As usual, sex simmered throughout the collection. It was there in impossibly short skirts and the waistlines slung so low that bums peeked out; the strange kinky sheen given to denim and the coils of chest hair printed on rubbery T-shirts. The show exemplified Martens’ mastery in taking that which we know so well – from the prim formality of tweed to the pair of jeans you sling on every day – and ripping up all that makes it familiar to offer up something provocative, playful and completely new. Martens never holds back – let’s hope that’s true of his anticipated Maison Margiela debut in September, too. OB

Gucci

It is 50 years since Aldo Gucci – son of house founder Guccio Gucci – designed the house’s interlocking G emblem, based on his father’s initials. Yesterday afternoon (25 February), the symbol was blown up in size, becoming a vast mirrored runway for the house’s ‘unified’ A/W 2025 collection, which combined womenswear and menswear in a single show (in clever theatrics, depending on which size of the double-G you were on, you saw the men’s collection then the women’s, or vice versa).

It marked the first show since the departure of creative director Sabato De Sarno earlier this year, meaning the collection was conceived by the in-house ‘design office’ and served as something of an in-between collection while the house confirms De Sarno’s replacement. As such, the return to the symbol – a perennial motif that has survived through Gucci’s various iterations, from the era of Tom Ford to Alessandro Michele – had a steadying quality, with the collection notes speaking of a return to Gucci’s ‘foundational’ values. Namely, a mood of insouciant Italian elegance and ‘sprezzatura’, ‘stylised and sumptuous, character-driven and individually adaptable, and here, they are brought together once more’.

It lent the collection a retro, 1970s-inflected glamour: for women, chubby faux-fur coats over lace slip dresses, colourful bejewelled tights and leggings, and ladylike flourishes, from headscarves to leather gloves, while the menswear riffed on classic tailoring in a range of hues and textures, from wipe-clean overcoats to a fluffy mohair button-up. Given that this is a house in flux, it made for a desirable and largely cohesive outing, infused with a feeling of dynamism that sometimes felt missing during De Sarno’s tenure. At the end, the ‘design office’ came out for a shy final bow – how long they will remain collectively at the helm remains to be seen. JM

No. 21

This season, Alessandro Dell’Acqua said his latest collection for No. 21 began with a ‘rereading’ of three memorable Sofia Coppola films: Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette. The first, he said, inspired the collection’s plays on the little black dress that provided the show’s opening act (here refigured as a micro-mini or with two black bows on the chest); the second, clashes of girlish lightness and heavier men’s fabrics; the third, playful pastel hues and delicate embellishments that adorned the collection’s closing looks. The bow was a motif throughout – one also evoked in Coppola’s work – whether expanded into an enormous twist on a skirt, or as ribbon-like leather bows on the collection’s high-heeled pumps (‘It’s an element able to create the allure of surprise,’ he said). With No. 21 always a quiet highlight of Milan Fashion Week – it feels as if Dell’Acqua’s vision gains more clarity season on season – Coppola provided a fitting counterpart to the designer’s vision of womanhood: both evoke the overtly feminine to subversive effect. Perhaps a collaboration is on the cards. JM

Stay tuned for more from Milan Fashion Week A/W 2025.

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.

After just over two years at the helm, it has been announced this morning that Sabato De Sarno is set to leave his role as creative director of Gucci. The house’s upcoming runway show during Milan Fashion Week in March will be created by the Gucci ‘design office’.

‘I would like to express my deep gratitude to Sabato for his passion and dedication to Gucci. I sincerely appreciate how he honoured Gucci’s craftsmanship and heritage with such commitment,’ said Stefano Cantino, Gucci’s CEO, in a statement.

Replacing Alessandro Michele, De Sarno was announced as the Italian house’s creative director in January 2023, overseeing Gucci’s womenswear, menswear, leather goods, accessories and lifestyle collections. Beginning his career at Prada in 2005, before moving to Dolce & Gabbana, it was in 2009 that he would join Valentino – a formative move which would see him become the house’s fashion director.

Sabato De Sarno exits Gucci

A debut collection for Gucci would see him celebrate ‘the joy of life’, riffing on wardrobe classics with flourishes of embellishment and craft. Such an approach would become a hallmark of his tenure. ‘It’s a story of the joy of life, of passion, of humanity, of people,’ he said at the time. The collection also introduced ‘Ancora’ red, a deep oxblood red which would become his hallmark.

He would also forge links with the design world, hosting shows at Milan’s Triennale museum and reissuing a number of Italian furniture classics in Ancora red, including a Mario Bellini sofa, as part of Salone del Mobile in 2024. He would also hold his first Cruise show in the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Tanks in London’s Tate Modern (a ‘tapestry’ of plants would backdrop the show).

But falling sales would plague the designer, with Gucci reporting losses of 25 per cent in the final quarter of 2024. The critical reaction to his shows would also be mixed, though he introduced a number of high-profile ambassadors to the house, including the actor Paul Mescal.

The exit continues a period of flux for the fashion industry: just last week Kim Jones exited Dior, while Fendi remains without a creative lead. Gucci’s new creative director will be announced in ‘due time’.

’I sincerely thank Sabato for his loyalty and professionalism. I am proud of the work that has been done to further strengthen Gucci’s fundamentals,’ adds Francesca Bellettini, Kering deputy CEO in charge of brand development. ‘Stefano and the new artistic direction will continue to build on this and to guide Gucci towards renewed fashion leadership and sustainable growth.’

gucci.com

David Lynch, the unparalleled visionary behind canonical films such as Blue Velvet (1986), Wild At Heart (1990) and Mulholland Drive (2001), passed away this week (15 January 2025) at the age of 78. On Wallpaper.com, we pay tribute to the auteur by remembering his guest editorship at the magazine in October 2010.

Craig McClean has also written an obituary, recalling an anecdote from his meeting with Lynch: ‘That morning, we sat in the concrete cube that was this multidisciplinary artist’s painting studio, one of a series of similar structures slotted into the Hollywood Hills that comprised his home with his fourth wife, the actress Emily Stofle,’ he says. ‘We were, of course, drinking coffee,’ McClean continues. ‘And yes, it was damn fine, not least because it was a cup of David Lynch Signature Cup Organic House Roast (signature notes, according to my genial and welcoming barista from beneath a shock of silver quiff, ‘sweetness, smoothness, no bitterness even if it’s just pure, straight black espresso, packed with flavour’).

Lynch directed a four-minute-long commercial for his namesake coffee brand in 2011, featuring a close-up shot of a Barbie head held between his fingers. 20 years prior, he created a Twin Peaks-inspired series of adverts for the Japanese brand Georgia Coffee, featuring cast members from the TV series including Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Dale Cooper, Mädchen Amick as Shelley Johnson and Catherine E Coulson as the Log Lady.

Clearblue pregnancy tests and Alka-Selzer antacid tablets; Parisienne cigarettes and the PlayStation. These are just a few more products Lynch had a hand in marketing via short commercials. But here, Wallpaper* reflects on the times Lynch turned his signature surrealist lens to perfume advertisements for Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani, Lancôme, Jil Sander, Karl Lagerfeld, Dior and Gucci.

David Lynch’s dreamlike perfume commercials

Calvin Klein (1988)

Following on from the acclaim of Blue Velvet, David Lynch was commissioned to produce his first-ever commercial by Calvin Klein for its fragrance Obsession. Released in 1988 as a series of four black and white shorts titled Awake, Dangerous, Explore and Kissed, each tells the stories of four pairs of lovers (one of which is played by Heather Graham and Benicio Del Toro). Every film was inspired by a different novelist – Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, Gustave Flaubert and F. Scott Fitzgerald – and included a voiceover reading excerpts from their writing.

Giorgio Armani (1992)

Giorgio Armani selected David Lynch to create the campaign film for his 1992 fragrance Giò. According to lynchnet.com, Mr Armani ‘personally’ phoned up the director asking for a concept, which Lynch then sent to him in the form of a short poem. The resulting advert Who is Giò? is a Lynchian neo-noir, with model Lara Harris playing a mysterious femme fatale flitting in and out of parties and around the backstreets of an unnamed city, as the paparazzi follows her trail.

Yves Saint Laurent (1992)

Giorgio Armani wasn’t the only designer seeking the talents of Lynch, with Yves Saint Laurent calling on him to dream up a commercial telling the story of the best-selling house fragrance, Opium. This time using colour - alongside his quintessentially dream-like dissolves and double exposures - a woman in a gold dress, with long red fingernails complimenting the perfume’s lacquered bottle, ascends the stairs to an apartment. Upon applying Opium to the nape of her neck, she is overcome with ecstasy.

Lancôme (1993)

Isabella Rossellini became the face of Lancôme in 1982. She would meet David Lynch a few years later during the casting process for Blue Velvet, where he remarked on her uncanny resemblance to Ingrid Bergman (not knowing that Bergman was her mother). Rossellini and Lynch entered into a relationship, with Rossellini also playing the role of Perdita Durango in Wild at Heart alongside a cast that included Nicholas Cage, Laura Dern and Willem Dafoe. Although parting ways romantically in 1991, they remained life-long friends and collaborators, with Lynch capturing Rossellini on film once more in 1993 for Lancôme’s fragrance commercial for Trésor.

Jil Sander (1993)

The Instinct of Life, David Lynch’s 1993 campaign film for Jil Sander’s now-discontinued fragrance Background, is set in a vast, arid landscape. Amidst smoke machines and vivid coloured lighting, a lone protagonist chases a black panther throughout the night, ultimately befriending the animal as the sun rises. It seems as though Lynch was trying out techniques for Lost Highway (1997), which was shot in California at Silurian Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. (Lynch once said in a 1999 interview with Movieline that he liked to take on commercial work to ‘learn about the latest technology, tools that normally wouldn’t be available to me’ for later use in feature-length films).

Karl Lagerfeld (1994)

Daryl Hannah never worked with Lynch on any of his feature films. However, she did collaborate with the director as the 1994 face of Sun Moon Stars, a fragrance by Karl Lagerfeld created by the designer for his namesake brand. In the commercial, Hannah assumes a role reminiscent of the Marilyn Monroe-esque ‘Hollywood blonde’, a character trope so often used by Lynch. Here, the actor is seen in a dream-like state, swathed in lilac silk and floating around a cosmic backdrop as she longingly muses on the solar system.

Dior (2004)

In 2004, during his tenure as the director of menswear at Dior, Hedi Slimane tapped David Lynch to direct the fragrance commercial for Fahrenheit. Set to a snippet of As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls , a 20-minute-long jazz fusion track, Swedish actor Andreas Wilson is seen hurtling upward in a clinical chrome elevator as he begins to hallucinate, seeing visions of the natural world. When Wilson reaches the destination floor the doors open, revealing a heavenly expanse of orange sky. (Slimane’s long-time collaborator on make-up for campaigns and shows Aaron de Mey posted a tribute to Lynch on his Instagram, remembering this campaign shoot).

Gucci (2009)

David Lynch filmed his last perfume commercial in 2008 for Gucci (which also happened to by the first television ad for the Italian house). It starred models Raquel Zimmermann, Natasha Poly and Freja Beha Erichsen as the faces of new fragrance Gucci by Gucci. Above, watch the commercial in full, which was filmed in Paris and set to Heart of Glass by Blondie. Below, find a BTS look at the making of the campaign, which provides an intimate glimpse of the maestro at work and the uplifting atmosphere he cultivated on set. (He said in a 2017 interview with GQ that he never ran a working environment on fear). Highlights include Lynch smoking as he perfects a shot of cascading glitter and at a wrap party with the cast and crew – a moment in which their feeling of love and admiration for the director is palpable.

Since the beginning of his tenure as creative director of Gucci, Sabato De Sarno has used his role to forge a multidisciplinary approach, whereby his symbiotic vision for the Italian house encompasses not only fashion, but art, design, literature, publishing and architecture.

There was a series of Italian design classics by the likes of Mario Bellini and Tobia Scarpa reissued in De Sarno’s oxblood ‘Ancora red’ for Milan Design Week 2024; an art-filled flagship store on London’s Bond Street housed in a former gallery; ‘Gucci Prospettive’, an ongoing series of books curated by figures like Paola Antonelli and Stefano Collicelli Cagol; and a Cruise show that took place in the Herzog & de Meuron-designed tanks at Tate Modern (more recently, Gucci was principal sponsor for the ongoing ‘Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet’ at the institution).

Gucci: ‘Endless Narratives’

Now, a new project helmed by the designer sees De Sarno take this vision into Gucci stores, inaugurating an installation-like series of windows titled ‘Endless Narratives’. Reflecting his broad cultural fascinations, the windows feature shelves of books, artefacts and objets d’art, some arranged to appear like an endless infinity mirror, akin to a surreal and futuristic library. Interspersed are pieces from De Sarno’s recent collections, including his riff on the house’s Jackie handbag.

‘A vision that intertwines objects, ideas, and stories into infinite possibilities,’ says the house of the windows, which are currently installed in London, Tokyo and Milan. ‘More than a display, it is a journey into a kaleidoscope of culture, where books, artefacts, and treasures converge across time, branching from past to present to future.’

‘Endless Narratives’ also features a collaboration with Italian visual artist Luca Pignatelli, a former architect whose work explores concepts of civilisation, memory and time through use of classical motifs and antiquity (his work is often described as a ‘theatre of memory’). Here, Pignatelli has provided 80 limited-edition artworks to be displayed, each using his favoured techniques of sugar lift and collage, ‘transforming ordinary materials into objects of profound meaning’.

‘The artist’s exploration of historical and architectural references aligns perfectly with the display’s focus on timelessness and evolution,’ says Gucci of De Sarno’s choice of collaborator. ‘Every object, like Pignatelli’s art, invites infinite interpretations.’

gucci.com

While January might typically be a month of piety and abstinence, we have always been proponents of embracing the new year in a more celebratory fashion. Particularly when it comes to clothing – after all, in the year’s darkest months, there is still joy to be had in dressing up.

Here, taken from the January 2025 issue of Wallpaper* – a celebration of a new era of design – photographer Dham Srifuengfung and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture the best men’s and women’s looks from the Resort 2025 collections, which herald the beginning of a new year in style.

The best Resort 2025 fashion

Reflecting a wider shift in fashion, away from the quiet and the beige, the Resort 2025 collections are defined by a mood of nostalgia and eclecticism, with looks made to be mixed and matched with abandon – whether flourishes of animal print or faux fur, pussybows or neckties, or playful combinations, like a classic Dunhill tuxedo worn with MM6’s riff on the carpenter jean.

Each look comes complete with an equally sonic accessory: an assemblage of vintage music devices, from Walkmans and Discmans to dictaphones and iPods. It’s our nod to the season’s free-spirited mood: we imagine these looks as ones to pound the streets in (complete with your own soaring soundtrack) or for letting loose at your very own silent disco.

Models: Giovanna Pinho and Anick Chan at IMG, Valentin Haedecke, Raad Al Gabril and Abdallah El Farjani at Supa Management, Jamie Riselay, Kentha Kirezi and Marcello Chang at The Milk Collective, Zhou at Linden Staub. Casting: Hien Le Casting. Hair: Anna Cofone using Authentic Beauty Concept. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Surratt. Props stylist: Haleimah Darwish. Photography assistants: Emmet Banahan, Ben McManus. Fashion assistants: Lucy Proctor, Leonie Dennett. Hair assistants: Jessica Hau, Lee-Anne Willoux. Make-up assistants: Craig Hamilton, Lily Simmonds. Props assistant: Kash. Production assistants: Archie Thomson, Ady Huq.

A version of this article appears in the January 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.

2024 was a year of fashion ephemera, whereby designers spoke not only through the clothing they showed on the runway, but the objects which they chose to populate their universes. The result was a conveyor of printed publications, furniture, artist collaborations, edible produce and collectable invites, which were often as intriguing and illuminating as the collections themselves.

Here, we look towards seven objects which tell the story of fashion in 2024, none of which are items of clothing or accessories. Some speak of a newly intimate relationship between fashion and design, like Sabato De Sarno’s reissue of an Enzo Mari classic for Gucci, while others – like Willy Chavarria’s enormous American flag – symbolise an engagement with the wider political landscape. Others are simply gleefully surreal: Blonde Ambition Madonna wigs at Dolce & Gabbana, JW Anderson’s pint of Guinness, or a series of giant cats at Dior Men.

Collated by Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss, together they provide an unconventional but illuminating portrait of style in 2024.

Bottega Veneta’s beanbag animals

Matthieu Blazy said he wanted his S/S 2025 collection for Bottega Veneta to capture the ‘power of wow’, mining a mood of childlike wonder for a vibrant collection which featured animal motifs, colourful tasselled wigs, plays on corner-shop plastic bags, crocheted flowers and enormous tailoring, as if a child was playing dress up in their parents’ clothing. It captured a new mood of eclecticism that pulsated through the season – from Prada to Louis Vuitton – and was presented in Milan amid a menagerie of leather beanbag animals. Inspired by Zanotta’s Sacco easy chair, each guest had a different animal – from yellow chicks to killer whales and foxes – with Blazy saying that he was inspired by the scene in E.T. whereby the titular extra-terrestrial conceals himself in a closet full of soft toys. Looking through a child’s eyes, said Blazy, allowed him to take a creative leap. ‘In a kid’s world everything is possible. You can really approach reality in a different way.’ It would also prove to be his final show for the house: last week, he was announced as the new artistic director of Chanel (at Bottega Veneta, Louise Trotter will take the helm). Read more.

Gucci’s reissue of Enzo Mari’s perpetual calendar

Since the beginning of his tenure as creative director of Gucci, Sabato De Sarno has forged links with the design world: in 2023, just after his appointment, he collaborated with a slew of Italian furniture titans to reissue their most memorable pieces in his own signature shade of oxblood ‘Ancora’ red (the project included designs by Piero Castiglioni, Mario Bellini, Tobia Scarpa, and more). It fit with a wider embrace of the design world from fashion in 2024 – proved by the numerous houses which took over this year’s Salone del Mobile – and was complemented later in the year with a reissue of Enzo Mari’s perpetual calendar, which served as the invite for De Sarno’s S/S 2025 womenswear show in Milan. It reflected a collection he described as about ‘a precise moment in time... a moment to seize and live to the fullest. This collection is a tribute to those moments, and an invitation to stop, seek your own moment.’ Read more.

Dolce & Gabbana’s Madonna wigs

It was perhaps Milan Fashion Week’s worst-kept secret: Madonna, the queen of pop, would be turning up to Dolce & Gabbana’s S/S 2025 show (she is a longtime wearer of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s high-voltage clothing). Arriving clad in a black veil and evoking the house’s brand of Sicilian glamour, the show itself would prove an ode to the musician, with each and every model clad in a Blonde Ambition-esque wig and wearing riffs on Madonna’s signature outfits, including Jean Paul-Gaultier’s pneumatic cone bra. It was a reminder of the fashion show as entertainment, a joyous celebration of a figure who has long defined pop culture – indeed, fashion. ‘Madonna has always been our icon. It’s thanks to her that a lot of things in our lives changed,’ the designers said, embracing a clearly emotional Madonna at the end of the show.

JW Anderson’s pint of Guinness

In one of the more unexpected – and yet somehow totally fitting – fashion collaborations of 2024, JW Anderson united with Irish stout producers Guinness for a capsule collection which first appeared as part of the brand’s S/S 2025 menswear show this past June in Milan. Encapsulating Jonathan Anderson’s eye for the idiosyncratic, historical Guinness advertising adorned sweaters and T-shirts in the playful capsule. ‘I’ve always been obsessed by Guinness and their brand,’ he said. ‘I think they are still today one of the greatest advertisers... I’ve always wanted to be able to show some of it, because in fashion we think we are so radical but actually, Guinness was way before all of that.’ It made for perhaps 2024’s best fashion party: a celebrity-filled Guinness-on-tap booze-up at buzzy London pub The Devonshire, purportedly the best pull of Guinness in town (we drunk responsibly, of course).

Hylton Nel’s cats at Dior Men

‘Homepsun monumentalism’ is how Kim Jones described the work of South African potter-artist Hylton Nel, who provided the inspiration behind his latest collection for Dior Men. On the runway, Nel’s playful, naive cat sculptures – which feature hand-drawn motifs and anthropomorphic elements – were blown up to enormous size, while the collection itself the artist’s work became pins, embroidery and intarsia knits. ‘He’s an old friend of mine, I’ve known him maybe 12 years,’ Jones told Wallpaper*. ‘I love his work, and I wanted to take that idea of working with an artist and working it through the Dior archive.’ Capturing not only the veneration of homespun craft which has run throughout the year’s collections, but it was also one of a slew of art-led show sets, from Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s twisted living room for Acne Studios to Gary Hume’s reimagining of a 1990 work to backdrop Burberry’s S/S 2025 show in London. Read more.

Miu Miu’s ‘The Truthless Times’ newspaper

Miu Miu‘s S/S 2025 show took place amid a set created by London-based, Poland-born artist Goshka Macuga, evocative of a printing press. Over the ceiling ran moving conveyors of hundreds of hanging newspapers: copies of ‘The Truthless Times’, a satirical publication dreamt up by Macuga to capture the disorientating times in which we live (‘Endings Unending as Future Moves to Past’ ran one of the purposely impenetrable headlines). ‘The struggle for truth and meaning in contemporary society,’ said Macuga of the installation, which also featured a short film of sparring lovers amid a futuristic printers (the work was also part of Art Basel Paris 2024 later in the year, supported by the brand). Miuccia Prada responded with a collection which looked towards youth – a ‘period of absolute truth.’ ‘It’s a reaction to an era of overstimulation and over-information, simplicity in clothing may offer clarity and precision, and serve as an honest frame of character,’ elaborated the ever-perceptive designer.

Willy Chavarria’s American flag

Willy Chavarria’s S/S 2025 show was titled ‘América’ – a nod, said the designer, to the immigrant communities who take on the weight of the country’s labour (Chavarria is of Mexican-American descent). Taking place on Wall Street – a temple to American commerce – the show’s runway was backdropped by an enormous American flag. It was given greater significance by the then-looming American election, which would take place two months afterwards in November (as guests left they were given a sticker to remind them to vote). ‘Given the time that we're in – around the corner from a major election – I wanted to shine light on the people who make this country work, and also celebrate immigration and those people who have built the country and are still the backbone of the country,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time, reflecting a wider mood at New York Fashion Week whereby designers grappled what it meant to be an American designer today. ‘We haven't had the opportunities or the benefits that a lot of our white brothers and sisters have had. It's about giving, showing dignity to all of these people.’ Read more.

And so it begins: the turning of November to December marks the start of the festive season, as advent calendars are opened and halls are decked with gleaming displays and stacked-up Christmas trees (for inspiration, see this year’s Claridge’s Christmas tree designed by Paul Smith, or for the less traditional, Kengo Kuma's minimal wooden displays in Tokyo’s two Edition outposts).

Here, in our own annual tradition, the Wallpaper* style team has selected a line-up of Christmas baubles from fashion’s best-known names, providing the perfect festive adornment for the fashion fan this holiday season. From Bottega Veneta’s surreal, undulating ornaments to Loewe’s fantastical collaboration with Suna Fujita, or some truly luxurious cashmere pom-poms from Loro Piana, they will accessorise your tree in style.

Christmas baubles for style fans

Bottega Veneta

Matthieu Blazy’s gourd-like tree ornaments are satisfyingly surreal – all the more so in this vivid banana-yellow and black colourway (an alternative to the usual green and red Christmas fayre). Crafted using a traditional Polish technique, the glass ornament’s undulating texture is inspired by the Italian house’s ‘intrecciato’ woven leather.

Available from: bottegaveneta.com, £140 for two.

Loewe x Suna Fujita

‘Childhood dreamscapes’ inspire a new collection of clothing, accessories and trinkets from Loewe in collaboration with whimsical Japanese ceramicist Suna Fujita released in time for festive gifting. Alongside, a menagerie of animals to decorate your Christmas tree – like this colourful dotted octopus with Loewe-branded ribbon tie.

Available from: mytheresa.com, £75 for one.

Celine

An elegant line-up of the house’s motifs – from the ‘Triomphe’ logo to a perfume bottle and handbag – make up this selection of gilded baubles from Celine. In an expression of Parisian savoir-faire, each one is handpainted by Celine artisans, and come encased in a gift-worthy white Celine box.

Available from: celine.com, £270 for three.

Prada

These sleek Prada baubles take their geometric designs from the flooring of Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, where the Italian house’s first-ever store was opened in 1913 by Mario and Martino Prada (back then, it was called ‘Fratelli Prada’ – 'Prada Brothers' – and sold luggage). Available in red and white or black and white, each set of four is hand-crafted from glass and stamped with the Prada logo.

Available from: prada.com, £380 for four.

Hermès

This sweet leather charm, depicting a horse in flight, was crafted using the near-unparalleled expertise of the Hermès artisans (in particular, those who usually make the house’s leather gloves). And, while a fittingly festive adornment for the tree, it doubles as a bag charm for a sprinkle of year-round magic.

Available from: hermes.com, £660 for one.

Saint Laurent

Part of the house’s Rive Gauche line – a collection of Saint Laurent-branded ephemera, from travel mugs to ski helmets – this heart-shaped decoration is crafted from silver-coloured metal and engraved with ‘Saint Laurent’. The heart motif was a particular favourite of house founder Yves Saint Laurent, whose ‘coeur fétiche’ (‘heart luck charm’) necklace – created by jewellery Roger Scemama – would appear in almost every runway show from the early 1960s to his retirement in 2002.

Available from: saintlaurent.com, £130 for one.

Gucci

Add a touch of Italian glamour to your tree with this set of Gucci baubles, made from traditional mouth-blown Murano glass and completed with the house’s signature webbing-stripe ribbon. They are part of a luxurious line-up of gifts designed by creative director Sabato De Sarno, spanning fantastical luggage sets, animal-shaped bag charms and a pair of shimmering crystal-adorned pumps.

Available from: gucci.com, £485 for two.

Loro Piana

We first glimpsed these ultra-chic baubles at Loro Piana’s festive takeover of Harrods, which opened last month with a series of transporting displays along the department store’s Brompton Road facade. Crafted from the house’s signature cashmere in a series of warm, natural hues, they will add a textural flourish to any Christmas tree.

Available from: loropiana.com, £1080 for six.

Recently reimagined by creative director Sabato De Sarno as part of his Cruise 2025 collection, Gucci’s ‘Blondie’ bag, first launched in 1971, centres around a rounded version of the brand’s historic interlocking-G symbol. Now one of fashion’s most recognisable motifs, it remains on De Sarno’s interpretation, which is designed to recall the original’s effortless insouciance and the heady, liberated spirit of the 1970s.

The decade heralded a new era for Gucci as celebrity fans, such as Grace Kelly and Jackie Kennedy Onassis (for whom the house’s ‘Jackie’ bag was named), propelled the Florentine house to international fame. It launched watches and perfumes, and, in 1977, it also opened the Gucci Galleria in Beverly Hills, a gleaming temple to luxury fashion only accessible to high-spending clients via a gifted golden key.

New classic: Gucci’s Blondie bag

De Sarno, who joined Gucci in 2023, aims to strike a similarly optimistic mood with his tenure, which has so far seen the designer instil quotidian garments with flourishes of glamour and craft. His Cruise 2025 show, held in May, also saw him pay homage to London, staging it in the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Tanks at Tate Modern. ‘I owe a lot to this city,’ says De Sarno, noting that it was in the UK capital that Guccio Gucci first had the idea for his eponymous brand while working as a porter at the Savoy hotel. ‘It has welcomed me, and listened to me. The same is true for Gucci, whose founder was inspired by his experience there.’

The most striking thing about De Sarno’s Cruise collection was the use of craft, with everything from hanging beads and tassels to laser-cut camomile flowers appearing on garments. It was a rich reminder of Gucci’s long history of artisanal craftsmanship, echoed also in the ‘Blondie’, which is now available in rich Tuscan leather or simple canvas. Meanwhile, two versions of the logo were revealed: one in leather and the other enamelled, a nod to the jewellery produced by the house in the 1970s. ‘[It is] a fusion of nostalgia and modernity,’ say Gucci.

The bag’s revival is heralded by a new campaign, ‘We Will Always Have London’, captured by seminal countercultural American photographer Nan Goldin. A so-called ode to ode to ‘the timeless allure of London’, it unfolds in black cabs, townhouses and along the River Thames, starring the musicians Blondie and Kelsey Lu alongside a cast of young protagonists.

Watch Nan Goldin’s ‘We Will Always Have London’ below.

The new-look ‘Blondie’, currently available at Gucci’s New Bond Street store in London, is the first style to launch from the Cruise 2025 collection. The rest of the collection will drop at the store at the beginning of November, where it will be available as a global exclusive for a week before being distributed worldwide. The full Blondie collection is available at gucci.com.

Set design: Lianna Fowler. Photography assistant: Karolina Burlikowska. Set assistant: Lucy Fraser.

This article appears in the November 2024 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands from 10 October, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

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.

Earlier this year, Sabato De Sarno, who was appointed creative director of Gucci in 2023, initiated his first furniture collection for the Florentine house: five 20th-century Italian design classics, remade in ‘Ancora’ red, the rich, oxblood hue which appeared as part of his debut runway collection and has become a symbol of his tenure so far. They included pieces by Nanda Vigo, Gae Aulenti, Piero Castiglioni, Mario Bellini, Tobia Scarpa and Piero Portaluppi, spanning sofas, rugs and a chest of drawers.

‘Design objects have always been a source of inspiration for me, especially when it comes to icons,’ De Sarno told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘I have discovered them, observed them, collected them. I have explored their stories.’

Gucci reissues an Enzo Mari design classic

This past week in Milan, De Sarno added to his roster of ‘Ancora’ red reissues the ‘Timor’ perpetual calendar by Italian designer Enzo Mari, designed in 1967 for Danese, which served as the invitation to Gucci’s S/S 2025 womenswear runway show on Friday afternoon (20 September 2024). Delivered to guests in an ‘Ancora’ red box, the unique invitation also featured a Gucci motif on its body (a miniature cardboard invitation inside saved guests having to transport the calendar to the venue).

De Sarno chose the object – a curving plastic design, out of which the days, weeks and months of the year fan outwards – to reflect the collection’s starting point, which was about capturing ‘a precise moment in time... a moment to seize and live to the fullest’. ‘It’s the moment the sun dives into the sea at the end of a day,’ he continued. ‘It’s the moment we find ourselves. This collection is a tribute to those moments, and an invitation to stop, seek your own moment.’

Held at the Triennale Milano museum, the city’s temple to design – where a recent Enzo Mari retrospective curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist took place – the show’s runway was evocative of a setting sun, comprising a series of rooms which moved from yellow to orange to ‘Ancora’ red. Meanwhile the collection itself captured what De Sarno called a ‘casual grandeur’, instilling everyday garments with joyful moments of craft, colour and embellishment – from smatterings of crystals to beaded tassels and lace.

Read our review of the show, and discover more from Milan Fashion Week S/S 2025, here.

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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

In 1964, Tokyo would host the Olympics, heralding a new era for the country and a re-introduction to the world stage. As the Bullet Train was completed and the sweeping lines of the Kenzō Tange-designed Yoyogi Stadium rose across the Tokyo skyline, Japan was cast as a country of peace and prosperity; a technologically-savvy nation recovered from the ravages of World War II. This optimistic mood would permeate the nation, luring an influx of international brands, as the games were beamed across the world via the first-ever use of satellite.

These included Gucci, the historic Italian luggage house which was seeing a renaissance of its own. Adopted by the burgeoning jet-set classes of the 1960s, its newly introduced double-G logo, Horsebit loafers and top-handle handbags became internationally recognised symbols of status and style. This was cemented in 1961 when Jacqueline Kennedy first carried what would be later renamed the ‘Jackie’ bag. Three years later, Gucci would arrive in Japan, a 60-year landmark the house celebrates this month with ‘Then and Now', an exhibition at the Gucci Ginza Gallery in Tokyo.

‘Then and Now’: Gucci celebrates 60 years in Japan

The focus here is on the house’s Bamboo 1947 handbag, recognisable for its curved bamboo handle, crafted in a meticulous process which sees the material – long synonymous with Japan – softened, manipulated and then lacquered into its unique curved shape. Launched in 1947 by house founder Guccio Gucci, the exhibition features 60 vintage Bamboo 1947 handbags from the house’s Florentine archive in a multitude of fabrics and finishes, primarily dating from the 1980s and 1990s. 

In addition, a series of Japan-based artisans have reinterpreted the style using a range of craft techniques rooted in the country’s history. These include goldsmith Morihito Katsura (who has been awarded the status of ’Living National Treasure’ for his role in preserving Japanese ‘cultural artefacts’), his pupil Naoko Ai, lacquerer Ai Tokeshi, ceramist Nakazato Hirotsune, photographer Daido Moriyama and painters Yui Yaegashi and Nami Yokoyama.

‘Craftsmanship reflects the climate, history, and culture of each province,’ Tokeshi tells Wallpaper*, speaking of the historical importance of craft in Japanese culture. The Okinawa-born artisan adds layers of lacquer – some with gold foiled finishes – to the body of the bag, which she calls ‘harmonious’. ‘By experiencing inherited techniques, we can feel the lives and spirituality of our predecessors and how they interacted with natural materials,’ she continues. ‘This leads to a renewed appreciation of the uniqueness, charm, and richness of the land.’

Elsewhere, Hirotsune, who is known for his Aritayaki porcelain (a style from the Koyorian in Arita, Saga Prefecture which dates back 400 years) recreates the bamboo handle in porcelain. ‘[I wanted to] express the flexibility and elasticity characteristic of bamboo in the Bamboo Bag using porcelain, [so] I shaped each piece by hand, ensuring a form with individuality,’ he says. ‘The aim was to express the hardness and sharpness unique to porcelain, and the translucent whiteness that can only be achieved with the Amakusa pottery stone.’

‘Japanese crafts have value not only as tools for daily life, embodying “the beauty of utility”, but also as artistic crafts characterised by the delicate handwork unique to Japanese artisans,’ he says. ‘Although the standard of beauty and necessity changes over time, I believe it is important to create for both a new era, while also preserving traditional values and techniques. Crafts convey and perpetuate the climate of Japan.’

‘Bamboo 1947: Then and Now Celebrating 60 years of Gucci in Japan’ runs at Gucci Ginza Gallery, Tokyo until September 23, 2024.

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A freewheeling mood took over this season‘s menswear shows, seeing designers embrace the ‘irrational’ and the eccentric with colourful, experimental collections which in the heat of Florence, Milan and Paris captured summer’s uplifting energy. Indeed, designers from Rick Owens to Rei Kawakubo, Sabato De Sarno to Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, spoke of a shift towards hope and optimism, albeit tentative. ’I want to hope for some light, even if very small,’ said Kawakubo, while Owens called his hundreds-strong runway cast his ’white satin army of love’. Meanwhile, the looming Paris Olympics – and its message of global unity and personal tenacity – was unavoidable, seeing preparations transform the city as a backdrop to both the menswear and haute couture shows which followed.

After the shift in recent seasons towards quiet, understated luxury – and the undeniably safe collections this often yielded – it felt like a refreshing re-emergence of men’s fashion month, which thanks to blockbuster shows from the likes of Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton is shaking off any suggestion of its demise. Here, we unpack the S/S 2025 menswear shows – from ’irrational’ clothing to couture-level craft and eclectic new takes on tailoring.

Nothing was what it seemed

‘Truth and pretence, the real and the unreal.’ So began a Prada collection which saw Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons urge the viewer to look closer, ‘to question the actuality of what we perceive, to reconsider, to look at things closer’. Staged amid a ‘fairytale ravescape’ – whereby models emerged from a vertiginous white cabin, which before the show had been blaring techno music – this was a collection of illusions, from belts that were in-set into trousers to trompe l’oeil Breton striped T-shirts, or trousers which appeared to be made from tailoring wool but were actually printed cotton. Elsewhere, shirts under sweaters or cardigans were constructed as a singular garment. ‘Viewed from afar, pieces can pretend to be other,’ said the designers. ‘Details may seem simplistic, naïve, but up-close, physically, perceptions transform.’ It was disorientating fashion, for disorientating times, where even the appearance of reality is no guarantee (just prior to men’s fashion month, Meta introduced a label for Instagram and Facebook which tagged images that had been ‘made with AI’). And trompe l’oeil would appear throughout the season: at Acne Studios, denim was adorned with plastic chains, stacks of belts or printed rips and tears, while at Loewe, what looked like a cable-knit sweater was actually hand-painted fabric. ‘Things are not what they seem,’ said creative director Jonathan Anderson.

Designers embraced the ‘irrational’

Indeed, earlier in the month in Milan, the Northern Irish designer presented an equally illusory collection for his eponymous label JW Anderson. ‘Irrational clothing’, he described, noting that he was inspired by the free association of hypnotherapy (‘Inhale. Exhale. Are you feeling dreamy? Maybe a little delirious?’ read the accompanying notes). It made for a typically idiosyncratic outing – from enormous knitted house coats to Guinness-adorned knits and protrusions of coloured fabrics – which in part drew its liberated mood from viewing young people at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said. ‘The eye has changed within menswear and within womenswear. People want something that is really challenging.’

This desire was echoed across the season, as menswear designers eschewed any notion of ’quiet luxury’. Martine Rose, who showed for the first time in Milan this season, adorned her stomping cast with prosthetic noses and tangled wigs, while at Rick Owens – undoubtedly a highlight of the season – the designer staged a Hollywood epic on the forecourt of Palais de Tokyo. There, his hundreds-strong ‘white satin army of love’ marched out in an arresting array of looks, from monastic hooded gowns and laddered jersey bodysuits to sculptural capes made from tarnished gold Japanese denim (‘megacrust’ is how Owens playfully described the technique). The showstopping spectacle was a celebration of fashion’s liberatory spirit, one which Owens likened to escaping his hometown of Porterville, California and running away to Hollywood. ‘[It was] the boulevard of vice I gleefully ran to to find my people, [the] weirdos and freaks.’

Craft was couture level

At a preview for his latest Dior Men collection – which was inspired by the South African ceramicist Hylton Nel – Kim Jones noted a growing desire from his consumers to have something entirely one-of-a-kind. ’People want something that nobody else has got,’ he said. It was part of the reason he introduced his first dedicated couture collection for men last season and, while his S/S 2025 show in Paris did not have any official couture pieces – he has said he will create a couture collection only once each year – one particular jacket took over 600 hours of hand-embroidery to complete. A similar veneration of craft came at Loewe, where intricate tabard-style tops were crafted from woven metal or delicate shards of shell, an echo of the extraordinary 'caviar' beaded pieces from his A/W 2024 womenswear collection where each of the thousands of tiny beads were embroidered by hand. Equally seductive was the simplicity of Norbert Stumpfl’s latest Brioni collection, shown in the serene gardens of Milan’s 18th-century Palazzo Borromeo d'Adda. There, his ongoing quest for lightness – a signature of his tenure at the Italian house – was formulated in the collection’s fabrications, which spanned featherweight wools, supple perforated leather and airy vicuña knits. Most spectacular, though, was the eveningwear, where one double-breasted dinner jacket was embroidered with 10,000 baguette beads, each one hand-knotted in silk thread.

But there was still a slice of reality, too

If the enthusiasm for ‘quiet luxury’ has tempered in recent months, there nonetheless remained an appetite for the particular pleasure of real clothes – perhaps best epitomised in Paris by Auralee, Ryota Iwai’s Tokyo-based label which celebrates ten years in business this year. In its relative normality – there were no tricks here, just sweaters, jeans, and the like – it was impossibly desirable, the type of collection which makes you want to throw out your entire wardrobe and start again. It is down to Iwai’s exacting but uncomplicated approach, where tactile, meticulously sourced fabrics (Peruvian Alpaca, Mongolian cashmere, New Zealand wool, Indian cotton) meet a sensitive, considered palette (this season: pale green, red, buttercup yellow) which makes it anything but boring. ‘People put a lot of pressure onto their clothing, perhaps hoping to make a huge statement but I’m more interested in how smaller changes can highlight something about the wearer,’ Iwai told Wallpaper* prior to the show.

There is nothing normal about Hermès – and yet, despite Veronique Nichanian’s dedication to painstaking craft and truly luxurious fabrications, her collections end up feeling entirely effortless, and even thrown on. This season, she said she wanted to evoke ’a sweet summer’, and as ever there were plenty of real-world clothes here: breezy Oxford shirts, blouson jackets and bowling-style knits – in a palette of blues and pale pink – would fit into any man’s wardrobe. The same goes for Dries Van Noten, who has made a career of instilling the quotidian with a louche romance. His final show – earlier this year Van Noten announced he would be leaving his namesake label after 38 years – was a celebration of this, presenting a final collection which captured the designer’s distinct eye for colour and tactility. For this, he will be missed. ’This is my 129th show; like the previous ones, it looks ahead. Tonight is many things, but it is not a grand finale,’ he said. ‘Creating is about leaving something that lives on.’

The suit is still ripe for reinvention

Each season, it feels like there is a diktat on the suit: it is double- or single-breasted, narrow or full, cropped at the ankle or pinched at the waist (as such, it often deemed emblematic of the season’s mood). For S/S 2025, though, there was little consensus, except that the suit remains ripe for reinvention, as designers across the board riffed on the garment in differing and distinctive ways. At Loewe, the show opened with razor-sharp black tailoring, evocative of the uniforms of security guards or gallery attendants. ‘This is my own interpretation of precision,’ said the designer, who noted inspiration from the ‘singular’ creative vision of figures like Paul Thek, Peter Hujar and Susan Sontag, whose work populated the show space. But there was illusion at play here, too: the fabric, a woven silk mohair, was designed to hold its shape with an almost-spongey finish. ‘These are things [that] are incredibly difficult to do but that which when you see them it feels effortless,’ he said.

There was experimentation of a different kind at Junya Watanabe, where the Japanese designer’s paean to denim included classic wool tailoring spliced with the fabric for an intriguing hybrid. Meanwhile at fellow Japanese label Comme des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo’s Homme Plus collection contained plenty of tailoring cut in the designer’s cerebral manner, whether sliced-apart tailored jackets adorned with ruffle-like collars, or those out of which flashes of vividly coloured lining emerged. Colours were equally vivid at Issey Miyake Homme Plissé, where double-breasted blazers, waistcoats and ties were crafted from the brand’s signature lightweight knife pleats in crisp shades of green, orange and blue. Entirely crease-resistant, and undeniably easy in their roomy, stretchy silhouettes, they will prove a useful companion next summer. And, for the brave, so too will Gucci’s super-abbreviated tailored short shorts, part of a youthful S/S 2025 collection which creative director Sabato De Sarno said was inspired by the ’freedom, energy [and] community’ of surfing.

Sportswear was given an Olympics boost

Even for the most sports-averse, it was near-impossible to avoid the looming summer of sporting events ahead on menswear’s European tour – whether the Euros (which Emporio Armani hosted screenings of in both Milan and Paris), or the Olympics. The latter, taking place in Paris later this month, felt particularly prescient, not least because Parisian luxury goods conglomerate LVMH is one of the event’s principal sponsors. Unsurprisingly, then, Pharrell Williams evoked the Olympic spirit at his third menswear show at Louis Vuitton, which was held at Maison l’Unesco and made a plea for global unity and community (in fact, if you squinted, you could see the Olympic rings adorning the Eiffel Tower in the distance). ‘[It is] the celebration of human athletic prowess,’ said the designer, who featured several football kits adorned with ‘LVFC’. Meanwhile, at Wales Bonner, the British designer continued her successful collaboration with Adidas Originals, which here featured a shimmering sequinned version of the brand’s Samba sneaker, alongside slouchy basketball shorts and hoodies, striped polos and – most memorably – a pair of three-stripe swim trunks. And at Gucci, Sabato De Sarno’s surfing inspirations made for a collection of sleek, graphic menswear in sporty, luminous tones – including one of the season’s most covetable accessories: sunglasses on fluoro straps, worn like chokers around the neck.

As the dust settles on Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025 – which concluded in Paris last week after previous stops in London, Florence and Milan – we revisit the season’s showstopping runway sets, which spanned the surreal, the transporting, and the serene.

From a ‘fairytale ravescape’ at Prada to the enormous cats that populated the runway at Dior Men – a collaboration with South African ceramicist Hylton Nel – we pick S/S 2025’s best sets and showspaces, which backdropped the month’s defining collections.

Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025: the best runway sets

Dior Men’s giant cats, inspired by the work of ceramicist Hylton Nel

The inspiration for Kim Jones’ S/S 2025 collection for Dior Men was the works of South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. ‘He’s an old friend of mine, I’ve known him maybe 12 years,’ Jones told Wallpaper*. ‘I love his work, and I wanted to take that idea of working with an artist and working it through the Dior archive.’ While Nel’s naive motifs featured across the collection, a series of his cat sculptures were blown up by Jones to populate the Val-de-Grâce showspace in a celebration of what the British designer described as Nel’s ‘homespun monumentalism’.

Prada’s ‘fairytale ravescape’ at Fondazione Prada’s Deposito

On arrival at Fondazione Prada’s Deposito space – where Prada’s runway shows are held each season – guests were transported to what the house described as a ‘fairytale ravescape’ complete with a white cabin, door ajar, out of which techno music blared. As the show began, models emerged from the structure and down onto the runway wearing a collection that co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons described as ‘capturing a spirit of freedom, of youthful optimism and energy’. ‘We wanted to create clothes that have lived a life, that are alive in themselves,’ they elaborated. ‘There is a sense of spontaneity and optimism to these clothes - they reflect instinctive but deliberate choices, freedom.’

Zegna’s field of linen in Milan

This season, Zegna recreated a field of linen in a vast warehouse on the outskirts of Milan just a short drive from the city’s Linate airport. Doubling as the runway set for the house’s S/S 2025 show, each blade of ‘linen’ was created from lightweight strips of metals that moved gently as the models walked. Creative director Alessandro Sartori – whose summer collection used the fabric in a multitude of iterations and weights – said he wanted to evoke the feeling that nature was invading the industrial space. ‘Linen is a wonderful medium,’ said Sartori. ‘Not only [is it] traceable and true to our commitment to sustainability, but it is also as malleable and sensual as the idea of summer dressing we are prompting.’

A celebration of ‘artistic freedom’ and independence at Loewe

Taking place at Paris’ Garde Republicaine, Loewe’s stark white showspace doubled as an art gallery of sorts, seeing works from Paul Thek (a collection of miniature metal mice), Carlo Scarpa (an easel from the 1990s), Peter Hujar (a photograph of a single high-heeled shoe) and Charles Rennie Mackintosh (a chair and coat hook, the latter draped with a red boa) populate the runway. Meanwhile, a vintage copy of Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation lay open on the floor. Described by the house as ‘an exercise in curatorial subjectivity and narrative association’, each artist was chosen for their ‘fierce adherence to independence and artistic freedom’. ‘I like that these people are singular in terms of their vision,’ said creative director Jonathan Anderson.

Gucci’s celebration of design at Milan’s Triennale

This season, Gucci creative director Sabato de Sarno chose the atrium of Milan’s Triennale museum – the city’s temple to design – to host his sophomore menswear show for the Italian house. While the Giovanni Muzio-designed space was unchanged for the show, ’a testament to our deep appreciation for its intrinsic essence’, a series of specially constructed green lacquered stools lined the museum’s corridors. They were dedicated to architect Gae Aulenti, the subject of an exhibition at the institution which runs until January 2025.

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s windswept dandelions

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s latest collection was titled ‘Up, Up, and Away’, its breezy, lightweight garments inspired by the wind: ‘the phenomena caused by wind, crafts and designs that react to wind, and forms that embody wind,’ described the Japanese brand. The showspace, constructed in the courtyard of Paris’ Mobilier National reflected the collection’s mood, seeing dandelion-like structures by Vincent de Belleval shudder gently in the breeze.

A silver runway for Dries Van Noten’s runway finale

Dries Van Noten transported guests to St Denis, a suburb on Paris’ northern outskirts, for his final show as creative director of his eponymous brand (earlier this year, the Belgian designer announced he would be stepping away from the label after 38 years). Staged in a vast warehouse transformed for the event – which was attended by well-wishers including designers Pierpaolo Piccioli, Ann Demeulemeester and Stephen Jones – a runway made of silver leaf ran the length of the space. As models from the label’s past and present walked, shards of the foil hovered in the air, reflecting the S/S 2025 collection’s celebration of the fleeting and the ephemeral.

A Louis Vuitton takeover of UNESCO celebrating ‘global unity’

The rooftop of Maison l’Unesco in Paris was temporarily transformed into the show space for Pharrell Williams’ latest Louis Vuitton menswear collection. While the grass-covered runway was checkered to recall the house’s Damier motif – which has become a hallmark of Williams’ collections so far – the show centred around Erik Reitzel’s ‘Symbolic Globe’, which depicts the world as a vast, interlinked spherical grid. It was part of Williams’ plea for global unity with a collection designed to celebrate connection and community. ‘Activating the maison’s mind-expanding travel gene, the collection illustrates the degrees of similarities which bind us across the globe,’ Williams said via the collection’s notes.

When Sabato De Sarno was appointed creative director of Gucci in 2023, he had wantedhis inaugural runway show to take place on the historic cobblestoned streets of Milan’s Brera district. Those arrangements were dashed when a freak rainstorm forced the show indoors, but De Sarno has never tired of celebrating his passion for his adopted city and the timelessness of Italian style. That sentiment was reconfirmed in the days leading up to Milan Design Week in April, when it was announced De Sarno would launch his first furniture collection for the brand.

However, De Sarno, alongside the project’s curator, Michela Pelizzari, founder of creative agency PS, wouldn’t create a collection from scratch. Instead, they would reissue five 20th century pieces by designers whose work helped make Milan the design capital it is today. ‘Design objects have always been a source of inspiration for me, especially when it comes to icons,’ says De Sarno of the decision to launch his first furniture collection with Gucci. ‘I have discovered them, observed them, collected them. I have explored their stories.’ Unveiled at Gucci’s Via Montenapoleone flagship store during Milan Design Week, the collection comprised five important pieces by Nanda Vigo, Gae Aulenti, Piero Castiglioni, Mario Bellini, Tobia Scarpa and Piero Portaluppi.

Gucci interprets past icons through a contemporary lens

According to Pelizzari, the choice of these designers was inextricably tied to De Sarno’s early explorations of the Gucci archive. ‘At the time, Sabato was finding the brand’siconic pieces and reproducing them in the collection,’ she says. ‘So the idea of an ‘icon’was important.’ However, finding the right balance of products was a challenge. De Sarno and Pelizzari wanted to include pieces that played an important role in the canon of 20th-century Italian design but hadn’t yet become cult – or rather, popular – in the contemporary landscape. ‘It was important to choose pieces that were iconic but not super famous,’ says Pelizzari. ‘Cult products are obviously all iconic, but it’s not true that all iconic pieces are already cult.’ Unsurprisingly, Gucci are keen to preserve the objects’ exclusive aura. Each item will be made to order and only be available to purchase on the Gucci website for one year before being retired.

The collection can be described as comprising vital but lesser-known gems. There is Vigo’s ‘Storet’ cabinet, designed in 1994 and reissued by Acerbis in 2020. ‘We wanted something sexy, with a female point of view,’ Pelizzari says of the narrow cabinet with a stack of curved lacquered drawers. They also chose the ‘Parola’ tabletop lamp, designed by Aulenti and Castiglioni for FontanaArte, a deceptively simple design that incorporates three different types of glasswork. And the collection includes a 1970s-era sofa by Bellini, the Milanese genius behind B&B Italia’s ‘Camaleonda’ sofa and the more recently reissued ‘Le Bambole’ from 1972. His modular ‘Le Mura’, re-released by Tacchini in 2022, is defined by a low, boxy shape that can be arranged as a sofa, loveseat or chaise. Pelizzari and De Sarno also wanted to include smaller, tabletop items, landing on Venini’s ‘Opachi’ vase by Scarpa. ‘If you asked a child to draw a vase, that would be the ‘Opachi’,’ says Pelizzari. ‘Ithas the most perfect, simple shape.’

Of the five pieces, the only completely original object is the ‘Clessidra’ rug by CC-Tapis and the Portaluppi Pattern Project by Pictalab, which translates motifs found in the architecture of famed Milanese architect Piero Portaluppi into vibrant wallcoverings – and now, rugs. ‘The silk and wool together really show off the richness of the colour,’ says Pelizzari of the design, which resembles a chain-link diamond pattern in Himalayan wool and silk pile.

Colour is one of the most integral elements of the project. The deep burgundy that De Sarno has dubbed ‘Rosso Ancora’ – which popped up in the form of mini dresses and leather bags on his runway, and in all of the messaging that has been released by the brand since then – represents the literal fil rouge that runs throughout the collection. ‘Gucci Design Ancora starts exactly from these classics that have given shape and personality to the concept of Italian design, [which] today is so recognisable and loved all over the world,’ says De Sarno. ‘Translating the ‘Le Mura’ sofa, the ‘Clessidra’ rug, the ‘Parola’ lamp,the ‘Storet’ cabinet and the ‘Opachi’ vase in our Rosso Ancora colour aims to celebrate the values of Italian style.’

According to Pelizzari, Gucci’s Design Ancora is meant to be held up as a mirror to De Sarno’s quarterly collections for the brand. His first fashion campaign in 2023 featured a cluster of fresh-faced models posing in front of a stark white background. In one image, the models are styled in contrasting shades of burgundy red and acid-toned chartreuse. This became the visual starting point for the Milan Design Week installation by Spanish designer Guillermo Santomà, who took the idea of a photoshoot and transformed it into amaze-like room rendered entirely in the same acid green. Each of the walls featureda sloped base that recalls an infinity wall, the curved sets used in photo studios that obscure the seam between the backdrop and floor, diminishing all sense of depth. The effect created an optical illusion that made it seem as if the contrasting red objects were floating free within the bright green space.

In future, Pelizzari explains that Gucci Design Ancora will be conceived as an extension of De Sarno’s creative vision. But for the launch, it was key for both De Sarno and Pelizzari that they celebrate Italian ingenuity in design – though, Pelizzari hints, they are open to expanding their horizons. ‘Made in Italy doesn’t just mean Italians,’ she says.

gucci.com

A version of this article appears in the July 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

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.

Sebato De Sarno is continuing to put his stamp on the house of Gucci in the shade of ‘509 Rosso Ancora’ (or, Ancora Red). Since taking the helm of the brand in 2023, presenting his first collection during Milan Fashion Week in September of that year, De Sarno has used the colour throughout his work; the hue is taken from the wall of an elevator in the Savoy Hotel, where Guccio Gucci worked as a porter in the late 1800s, inspiring him to create the luggage line that began a dynasty of Italian fashion.

It was this very history that drew De Sarno to London, for Gucci’s Cruise 2025 show, which took place at the Tate Modern this week (13 May 2024), and where models wore the first product he designed for Gucci Beauty: a matte lipstick pigmented with the deep, rich burgundy-tinged red of Rosso Ancora.

The show’s make-up was keyed by Lucia Pieroni, who worked with fresh and natural skin that complimented Duffy’s undone and effortless hair, to ensure that the lipstick took front an centre on the models who were chosen to wear it.

The effect was that it almost felt like an accessory in itself, akin to the oversized suede bags with GG monograms, ballet pumps, and sunglasses with tinted lenses, when paired with looks that celebrated Ancora Red, head-to-toe.

Said to provide a ‘creamy, long-lasting matte finish’, the lipstick is formulated with hydrating oils and gelling waxes to ensure a soft feel and velvety texture. Of course, the packaging is also Ancora Red, a reinterpretation of Gucci Beauty’s ribbed, gold-toned tubes.

Currently, Rouge à Lèvres Mat in Rosso Ancora is available in the US and online in the UK at gucci.com. It will be in Harrods from 1 July 2024.

The Italian creative director of Gucci, Sabato De Sarno – who began his tenure at the house in 2023 – has so far favoured a stripped-back approach to his runway shows, a symbolic departure from the theatrical runway presentations of his forebear Alessandro Michele. His last men’s and womenswear outings in Milan were shown in the Fonderia Carlo Macchi, a concrete-walled former industrial space on the outskirts of the city, with just monolithic Gucci-branded blocks as mise-en-scène (the exact shade: Gucci ‘Ancora’ red, the designer’s signature hue).

For his first Cruise outing for the house – the globe-trotting runway shows synonymous with far-flung locations and arresting show settings – the designer has taken a different tack. Taking place in London’s Tate Modern this evening (13 May 2024), De Sarno transformed the gallery’s subterranean ‘tanks’ into a blown-up terrarium, filled with a lush jungle of around 10,000 different plants. Sabato describes it as a botanic ‘tapestry’, which after the show will be donated to community projects in London, including Life Under the Westway, an urban gardening project led by non-profit Grow to Know which will regenerate West London’s Westway-adjacent Maxilla Gardens.

First look: the Gucci Cruise 2025 show set at Tate Modern

’The Tanks’ were designed by Herzog & de Meuron and opened in 2012, seeing the Swiss studio excavate and transform three industrial cylinders which would have fuelled the turbines of the former power station which now houses the gallery. De Sarno noted a desire to bring the ’outside in’, imagining the sparse concrete space ’invaded by a poetic panorama of greenery’ in a clash of man and nature. He also noted a feeling of duality, a juxtaposition of what he sees as the two sides of London – its urban architecture versus its famous gardens and parks.

The various plants chosen were selected for their ability to grow in harsh and challenging conditions, making them easily transported to the various community growing projects after the show. These include Epimedium, Vinca, and Dryopteris, which grow well in shady city gardens, while larger shrubs and threes include Hornbeam, Parthenocissus, and Aesculus. Spring foliage, meanwhile, is selected to represent freshness and renewal.

It is also a nod, no doubt, to Gucci’s longtime links with botanicals: its most famous print, besides the house’s double-G monogram, is the ‘Flora’, which first appeared on a silk scarf in the 1960s. Comprising 43 varieties of flowers, plants and insects, the design by Italian illustrator Vittorio Accornero was created for the actress Grace Kelly and inspired by Botticelli’s ‘Allegory of Spring’. It is a motif that has long been part of the house’s heritage, inspiring the house’s 2017 fragrance Gucci Bloom. In March of this year, De Sarno revealed his own campaign for the fragrance, which saw models immersed in a pool of floating flowers.

Discover more from the Cruise 2025 runway shows here.

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Unlike its burlier sporting counterparts, tennis has long been synonymous with good style – whether the bygone elegance of classic tennis whites, the nostalgic glamour of Björn Borg and his 1970s counterparts, or the more outré uniforms of the contemporary power player, from Rafa Nadal’s searingly hued tank tops, Serena Williams’ catsuits and crystals, to Naomi Osaka’s panoply of designer endorsements.

Though it is safe to say that the past few months have pushed tennis fashion deep into the mainstream, largely down to the release of film director Luca Guadagnino’s tennis romp Challengers, starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist as a love triangle on and off the court. On-screen, their tennis uniforms – from emblazoned college wear to sleek grand slam attire – looked particularly seductive thanks to the eye of Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson, who served as costume designer; on the red carpet, Zendaya served up a stream of tennis-themed looks, whether glimmering pleated mini dresses or vertiginous white heels that skewered miniature tennis balls.

And, ahead of its Cruise 2025 show in London which took place in May, Gucci revealed Australian Open champion and current ATP world number one Jannik Sinner – and his now-trademark on-court Gucci holdall – as its latest campaign star (as of this week, the Italian house also released a dedicated tennis collection). It comes as the sport is in the midst of a particularly blockbuster summer: last month, Spanish wunderkind Carlos Alacaraz won his third Grand Slam at the French Open, on Monday (1 July 2024), Wimbledon begins in London, while the Olympics in Paris will see the tennis competition held on the famed clay courts of Roland Garros.

It makes it a prime time for fashion brands to embrace the zeitgeist with tennis-inspired collections of their own. Here, from Giorgio Armani’s grass court uniform – made to coincide with the Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic which takes place at London’s historic Hurlingham Club this week – to a Challengers-inspired T-shirt from Loewe, we pick the fashion brands serving a tennis ace this summer.

Fashion brands serving up tennis style

A Gucci collection which conjures the nostalgic glamour of 1970s tennis stars

In May, Gucci announced Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner – and current world number one – as its latest campaign star (see below). Now, ahead of the arrival of Wimbledon, the house has revealed a full tennis collection which harks back to the 1970s, a decade when Gucci embraced the sport with releases like the perennial Tennis 1977 sneaker. As such, expect pieces infused with a nostalgic glamour, albeit reimagined in current creative Sabato de Sarno’s sleek, contemporary style, from pleated white tennis dresses for women and sporty polo shirts and pullovers for men, alongside the requisite accessories, including sweatbands, an updated version of the Tennis 1977 sneaker, and a racquet holder in the Gucci monogram which is guaranteed to turn heads at the country club. Each is adorned with Gucci’s signature green and red ’web stripe’ detail, while an accompanying campaign stars rising British tennis stars Emma Cohen and George Loffhagen.

Gucci’s ‘Tennis Special’ collection is available from selected Gucci stores and gucci.com.

A court-ready Uniqlo collection from Jonathan Anderson and Roger Federer

Not content with outfitting the still-ubiquitous Challengers – and creating a viral Loewe T-shirt to match (see below) – Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson has also revealed a new Uniqlo collection made in collaboration with 20-time grand slam champion Roger Federer, who wore the Japanese brand on court for the latter part of his career. First introduced in September 2023, the ‘Roger Federer Collection by JW Anderson’ combines high-tech sporting fabrications with Anderson’s eye for good design. This year’s collection is inspired by the tennis uniforms of the 1970s and 1980s (also a touchpoint for the on-court attire of Josh O’Connor’s Patrick Zweig in Challengers) and features striped-collar polo shirts, nylon shorts and V-neck marl T-shirts, alongside more contemporary technical training jackets and sweatpants. It has been a busy month for Federer – who retired in 2022 – with the enduring tennis star also starring alongside his prolific Spanish rival Rafael Nadal in a campaign for Parisian house Louis Vuitton. Anderson, meanwhile, revealed his latest Loewe collaboration with Swiss sportswear brand On with a campaign starring on-the-rise American tennis star Ben Shelton (to tie it all together, Federer is also one of On’s major investors and a brand ambassador).

Uniqlo’s ‘Roger Federer Collection by JW Anderson’ collection is available at uniqlo.com. The latest Loewe x On capsule collection can be purchased from mytheresa.com.

A Giorgio Armani collection inspired by the Hurlingham Club’s Tennis Classic

Each June, the Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic takes place at London’s Hurlingham Club, an exhibition tournament on its famed grass courts that serves as an unofficial warm-up tournament for Wimbledon (this year’s participants include Holger Rune, Frances Tiafoe, Daniil Medvedev and the surprise appearances of Novak Djokovic, a last-minute addition). Alongside the glamourous proceedings – the Hurlingham competition has become a fixture on London’s social calendar – Mr Armani has also created a capsule collection of clothing to dress the ball boys, umpires and ground staff at the event. Crafted in simple cream, deep navy and white, the louche, unfussy collection is an exercise in Mr Armani’s nonchalant design codes – epitomised here in easy, unstructured tailoring, crisp white shirting and roomy, sportswear-inspired shorts, for men and women. Completed with the circular Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic motif, the collection is strictly limited-edition – it is available at the Hurlingham Club in a special pop-up, and for a short time in Giorgio Armani’s London boutique on Sloane Street.

The Hurlingham Club collection is available at Armani’s Sloane Street boutique and at Hurlingham Tennis Club now.

A monogrammed Gucci tennis bag worn by grand slam champion Jannik Sinner

The 22-year-old Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner – who made it into a select club when he beat Daniil Medvedev earlier this year to win the Australian Open and has since been crowned the ATP world number one – has long been courted by the Italian fashion house Gucci, first attending the house’s Cruise show in 2022 and becoming an official ambassador later that year. His allegiance has been expressed with his choice of on-court tennis gear, swapping the usual sportswear-branded nylon holdall favoured by players for a custom-made Gucci monogram duffle bag, which is now available for sale. In May, Gucci revealed Sinner as its latest campaign star in a series of on-court images by Riccardo Raspa – a surefire sign of the player’s soaring profile (it also puts him on par with Spanish rival Carlos Alcaraz, who has fronted campaigns for Louis Vuitton). The nostalgic mood of the images – emblazoned with ‘Gucci is a feeling’, a slogan from a 1980s campaign – is made to capture the house’s longtime links with the sport, which included the perennial Tennis 1977 sneakers.

The Gucci ‘Maxi Duffle Bag’ is available from gucci.com (£1460) and Gucci stores.

A Brunello Cucinelli tennis capsule instilled with the designer’s distinct brand of sprezzatura

Brunello Cucinelli brings his eye for luxury to a new tennis capsule, no doubt ready to be spotted on court in some of the world’s most exclusive locales this summer. Spanning menswear, womenswear and kidswear – as well as a handful of lifestyle products, from racquet holders to tennis bags – the collection continues Mr Cucinelli’s easygoing sartorial codes, inspired by his native Italy. As such, expect sartorial riffs on the tennis uniform: whether white polo-shirt dresses with gently pleated skirts, crisp pleat-front men’s shorts, or an array of cable-knit sweaters and cardigans (in keeping with Brunello Cucinelli’s brand of sprezzatura, try draped over the shoulder or tied around the waist). A Brunello Cucinelli-branded cotton cap – complete with tennis racquet embroidery – completes the look. ‘[It’s] dedicated to those who live tennis as a lifestyle,’ says the brand.

Brunello Cucinelli's ‘Tennis Sets Capsule Collection’ is available from Net-a-Porter and brunellocucinelli.com, alongside selected stores worldwide.

A Loewe T-shirt from Luca Guadagnino’s sensual tennis thriller ‘Challengers’

Not strictly tennis attire, we know, but it does hail from Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, the erotically charged tennis movie which stars Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor as three rising tennis players caught up in a will-they-won’t-they love triangle set in the run-up to the 2019 US Open (sexual frustrations are taken out on the ball in the film’s high-octane on-court scenes). British designer and Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson was behind the movie’s costumes, including this ’I Told Ya’ T-shirt swapped between Zendaya’s Tashi and O’Connor’s Patrick as they dual it out in sport and romance. ‘As an audience, you're never quite sure who to root for, and clothes are an instrument of that,’ said Anderson, who based the T-shirt on one worn by JFK Jr. To coincide with the film’s release, Anderson has created a Loewe version of the T-shirt, as well as a sweatshirt version, in white or marl grey.

The Loewe ’I Told Ya’ T-shirt (£225) and sweater (£475) are available from loewe.com and selected Loewe stores worldwide.

A tennis-inspired collaboration between Aries and Fila which sees two worlds collide

British skate brand Aries brings its playful, subculture-infused style to a collaboration with Fila, one of the longtime behemoths of the sport, having dressed Björn Borg in his 1970s heyday (and arguably shaped tennis style forever). Shaking up the classic tennis whites, expect zip-front bandage skirts adorned with the Aries and Fila logos, striped sweatbands, and co-branded T-shirts and jackets. The idea of the collaboration was to capture a sense of ‘Italian-ness’ – Sofia Prantera is from Italy, though now lives and works in London – featuring a soft-pastel palette of pinks and greens which are faded through garment dyeing, a longtime fascination of Prantera’s that is also synonymous with Italian streetwear. Eschewing tennis’ occasionally stuffy connotations, the accompanying campaign features sibling musical duo Sons of Raphael, who scored Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla.

Aries x Fila is available from ariesarise.com.

A preppy on-and-off-court uniform from Tory Burch’s Tory Sport

American designer Tory Burch introduced Tory Sport in 2015, crediting the sporty off-shoot as the beginning of a more creative approach to her eponymous mainline label in the way it encouraged her to experiment with shape and form (‘the concept of being ”on brand” and that wasn’t interesting to me because it inhibits creativity... so, over the last five years, I’ve smashed that concept,’ she told Wallpaper* in January). Though Tory Sport runs the gamut of sporting pursuits – each piece instilled with the preppy, playful hallmarks which define the label – recent arrivals have included her take on tennis wear, a nostalgia-tinged collection of white pleated skirts, dropped-waist dresses and 1970s track jackets, some complete with tennis racquet motifs of the Tory Burch monogram. Recalling the hazy glamour of New England summers, the tennis collection is completed with the ‘Convertible Tote’, complete with a removable zip pocket with space for two racquets.

Tory Sport is available from Mytheresa and toryburch.com.

The early flush of summer, between May and June, marks the arrival of the Cruise shows, a round-the-world odyssey that sees fashion brands decamp to far-flung locales to show their latest high-summer offerings (the tradition began in the early 20th century as European fashion houses began to cater for the burgeoning jet set classes). 

After the Cruise 2024 shows took us to Mexico City, Los Angeles and Seoul, this season, fashion houses looked closer to home, swapping cross-continental travel for locations across Europe. First, Chanel showed in Marseille in early May on the roof of the Le Corbusier-designed Cité Radieuse, while Gucci held a blockbuster show at London’s Tate Modern later in the month. On 23 May 2024, it was the turn of Louis Vuitton, seeing Nicolas Ghesquière pay ode to Spain in Antoni Gaudí’s phantasmic Park Güell in Barcelona, followed by a Balenciaga show in Shanghai backdropped by the city’s futuristic skyline. Dior showed at the beginning of June at the historic Drummond Castle in Scotland, while Max Mara provided the season finale in Venice yesterday evening (11 June 2024).

Here, Wallpaper* picks the best of the globe-trotting Cruise 2025 shows.

Fashion odyssey: the best Cruise 2025 shows

Max Mara, Venice

Venice’s Palazzo Ducale, overlooking St Mark’s Square, provided a cinematic setting for Ian Griffiths’ latest outing at Max Mara, which looked towards the Venetian merchant Marco Polo for inspiration. Perhaps the city’s most famous resident – his name hangs over Venice airport – Polo was selected by Griffiths on the 700th anniversary of his death to encapsulate the unique magic of traversing cultures (a fitting thematic for the Cruise season, which originally centred on creating a wardrobe for world travel). So set the scene for an opulent collection which drew on Polo’s travels: from classic Max Mara camel and cashmere wools, which would have once been traded on the Silk Road, to rich brocades, embroidery and ceremonial rope fastenings and twisted headpieces. But this was also a musing on womanhood: Griffiths noted that Polo was ‘open-minded, inquisitive and tolerant’ and perhaps even an early feminist, recounting with awe in a 13th-century travelogue how Tartar women rode horses, and how an island of women in India was only visited by men for three months a year. Whether this was true of Polo or not, here, Griffiths instilled the collection with a stately, otherworldly power, making it more than stand up to the show’s dramatic surroundings. 

Dior, Perthshire

In 1955, Christian Dior presented a collection in the ballroom of Scotland’s Gleneagles Hotel, continuing the designer’s longstanding fascination with the British Isles, its traditions and dress codes. Yesterday evening (3 June 2024), current creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri returned to Scotland for a Cruise 2025 show held in the grounds of Drummond Castle, the countryside seat of the Drummond family since the 15th century (in a nod to Monsieur Dior, guests stayed in the nearby Gleneagles). It began with the skirl of bagpipes as models walked from the main castle down into its famed terraced gardens, a preened Eden which contrasts with the wilder Perthshire countryside beyond. It was a juxtaposition which felt reflected in the collection: punky swathes of tartan, hearty leather boots, mutton-sleeved dresses adorned with ‘nag, hysterical, feisty’ and structured, armour-like bustier tops, met the undeniable polish and femininity of Chiuri’s Dior, figured here in nipped-waist lace gowns, tulle skirts and delicate veils dotted with dew-like drops of pearl. It was completed with a nod to the past, seeing photographs from Christian Dior’s 1955 show in Scotland adorning jackets and T-shirts ’in a kind of cinematic montage’. ‘The presentation of the Cruise collection is an opportunity to follow the footsteps of Christian Dior around the world,’ said Chiuri.

Balenciaga, Shanghai

The futuristic cityscape of Shanghai provided the backdrop for Demna’s latest Balenciaga outing, a Spring 2025 resort collection which was presented at nightfall at the Jean Nouvel-designed Museum of Art Padong (in a nod to the city’s cuisine, the invitation was a ceramic xioalongbao bun in a traditional bamboo steamer). As the show began, a number of the city’s skyscrapers lit up neon with the Balenciaga logo, while the silhouettes in the collection itself were similarly vertiginous, seeing models teeter on super-sized platforms in elongated trenches and overcoats, their hemlines drifting below the line of the heel (in flats, they would have dragged along the floor). Elsewhere, Demna’s idiosyncratic riffs on quotidian garments continued, spanning sporty separates supersized or shrunken (a collaboration with Under Armour was debuted, available directly after the show) and a dishevelled play on the uniform of the Parisian bourgeois, here conjured in body-wrapping blanket dresses, chain-link bags, faux-fur coats and ripped and laddered stockings. It ended – as has become tradition with Demna’s ready-to-wear collections – with a flourish of ballgowns, inspired by those in the house’s archive. This time, they twisted around the body like crumpled golden paper, or came replete with bows and feathers. Another was adorned with handfuls of glimmering jewellery – a wink, perhaps, to the city’s wealthy, high-rolling denizens.

Louis Vuitton, Barcelona

Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest Cruise collection for Louis Vuitton paid ode to Spain and its leading creative figures, an expansive list which spanned its great artists – he name-checked Velázquez, Goya and Zurbarán – to director Luis Buñuel and the futurist fashion designer Paco Rabanne. It was set against the backdrop of the phantasmic Park Güell on Barcelona’s Carmel Hill, a twisting, dreamlike landscape – replete with fairytale towers and colourful mosaic murals – by Spain’s most famous architect, Antoni Gaudí, long a draw for visitors to the city (in 1984 it was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site). ‘An architectural utopia,’ described Louis Vuitton of the choice of location, which continues a tradition of Ghesquière showing his Cruise collections in places of architectural significance, from the UFO-like former home of Bob Hope by John Lautner in Palm Springs to the equally futuristic Niterói Contemporary Art Museum by Oscar Niemeyer in Rio de Janeiro.

Shown in the Hypostyle Room of the park – imagined by Gaudí as a marketplace, the classically-inspired colonnade features 86 striated columns and a dramatic mosaic ceiling – the collection itself was described as ‘embracing the country’s passionate character… the fervour of its colours, its loyalty to tradition elevated into artistic expression.’ Tilted wide-brimmed hats, a motif which ran throughout, recalled the traditional cordobés, while layers of sheer polka dots and undulating ruffled gowns referenced flamenco-wear (albeit in Ghesquière’s typically postmodern style). References to Gaudí came in material which appeared to be made from shattered mosaic, while the abundant twisting, taffeta drapes of the show’s closing looks paid homage to the rich depictions of cloth in the work of the Spanish masters.

Gucci, London

‘I owe a lot to this city,’ said Gucci’s Sabato De Sarno as he presented his debut Cruise collection for the house yesterday evening in London, choosing the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Tanks in London’s Tate Modern as the setting. ‘It has welcomed and listened to me. The same is true for Gucci, whose founder was inspired by his experience there,’ he continued, referring to Guccio Gucci’s time at the Savoy Hotel as a porter, which would eventually lead to him creating an eponymous luggage line on his return to Florence, Italy in 1921.

Here, the vast subterranean concrete space was filled for the occasion with 10,000 plants – a clash which he described as one of ‘man and nature, sentimental versus minimal’, the ‘bare concrete Tanks invaded by a poetic panorama of greenery’. The idea of dichotomy ran through the collection itself – De Sarno cited Gucci’s ‘limitless capability to put together contrasts, make them converse, and find ways to coexist’ – with pieces which straddled a mood of delicacy and toughness, seeing romantic pussybow blouses worn with baggy distressed denim, or skirts decorated with intricate floral embroidery combined with chunky creeper-style versions of the house’s horsebit loafer. Meanwhile nods to Britishness came in oversized Harrington jackets, Prince of Wales check overcoats and a play on the Mackintosh raincoat.

Most striking, though, were the flourishes of craft: a matching jacket and skirt were adorned with a grid of thousands of gently clattering hanging beads, while fronds of glimmering tassels emerged from denim jeans. Or the laser-cut organza chamomile flowers, each assembled delicately by hand. ‘This is another piece of me, more romantic, more contradictory,’ said De Sarno. ‘I like taking something that we think we know and breaking away.’

Chanel, Marseille

Chanel travelled southwards for its latest Cruise show, choosing Marseille, the ancient port city that has long been a raw-around-the-edges counterpart to the more glossy Riviera cities of St Tropez and Cannes eastwards along the coastline. Creative director Virginie Viard said this was purposeful, part of a desire to expand the cultural impact of Chanel beyond the rarefied Rue Cambon in Paris and the high-earning locales with which it is most associated (it was also the reason the house chose Manchester’s cobbled streets for its Métiers d'Art show in December 2023, which was inspired by the energy of the city’s underground music scene). The setting here was Cité Radieuse, Le Corbusier’s 1952-completed ’vertical city’, recognisable for its monolithic concrete exterior punctuated with vivid moments of colour on its balconies (such is its architectural impact, Le Corbusier’s modular, utopian vision for living has since been designated a Unesco World Heritage site).

Viard chose the concrete-clad rooftop – the rain just about holding off – to present a collection largely defined by a sense of youthful ease, a hallmark of the designer’s tenure so far. There were breezy white blouses with broderie anglais motifs, colourful crochet mini dresses and spongy-soled flip-flops, while playful nautical motifs ran throughout – from anchor-charm jewellery to hand-drawn fish and plays on wetsuits and diving hoods. Signature Chanel tweed was of course in abundance: here shot through with Le Corbusier-inspired colour, like a grid-like design on a cropped tweed jacket and matching skirt, or a boldly-hued pinafore-style sleeveless blazer in shades of red, yellow and optic white. ‘Marseille is a city that puts me in touch with my emotions. I tried to capture its power of attraction, its breath of fresh air, and to convey the energy that reigns there,’ said Viard. ‘And you couldn't ask for a better backdrop to a runway show than the Cité Radieuse.’

Stay tuned for more from the Cruise 2025 season on wallpaper.com.

A host of new dark watches are embracing inky black hues. High-profile watch brands turning to the dark side include Bulgari, with its gleaming Serpenti Seduttori, which offsets a monochromatic palette with diamond-speckled rose gold; and Tag Heuer, whose use of retro shading and darker tones lend elegance across the board.

Audemars Piguet's shadowy dial is a textured foil for an all-black look, while Gucci's embossed dial riffs off contrasts.

Omega and Tudor let bright indexes do the talking, as does Bell & Ross, which adds a clean, skeletonised dial.

For Montblanc, a moonphase stays true to the inky midnight theme, while Chanel adds jewelled references with a chic secret dial.

Discover the best dark watches

A version of this article appears in the May 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print from 11 April, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

In partnership with Gucci

Gucci creative director Sabato De Sarno has unveiled a new exhibition, ‘Design Ancora’, for Milan Design Week 2024 at the house’s Via Montenapoleone flagship this week.

Co-curated by Michela Pelizzari, founder of the Milanese creative agency P:S, the exhibition is an opportunity for the brand to showcase a series of objects that, it says, define a golden age of Italian design, craftsmanship, and ‘cultured professionalism’.

In a bespoke space at the Gucci store, created for the project by Barcelona-based architect Guillermo Santomà, special editions of five designs from previous decades have been chosen by De Sarno and Pelizzari as symbols of ‘Italianity’ and specifically Milanese style. The new editions – all in Gucci’s deep red, ‘Rosso Ancora’, which was introduced by De Sarno at his debut show in September 2023 – interpret past icons through a contemporary lens.

The line-up features ‘Le Mura’ modular sofa by Mario Bellini for Tacchini (1972; re-edition 2022), its form a nod to the boulders in Roman walls; the geometric ‘Clessidra’ rug by CC-tapis (2024), part of the Portaluppi Pattern Project and based on a design by the late Italian architect Piero Portaluppi; and the sensually rounded ‘Storet’ chest of drawers by Nanda Vigo for Acerbis (1994; re-edition 2020).

Meanwhile, the minimal and elegant hand-blown glass ‘Opachi’ vase by Tobia Scarpa for Venini (1960; re-edition 2021) and the functional and fun ‘Parola’ table lamp by Gae Aulenti and Piero Castiglioni for FontanaArte (1980), featuring three types of glass-making, complete the collection.

Each object is representative of Gucci’s commitment to redefining luxury while celebrating creativity, Italian craftsmanship and innovation.

Following the presentation in Milan, the products will be available for purchase on Gucci's website, from 21 April 2024 at gucci.com

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.

‘I was surprised when Amica asked me about it,’ says the esteemed British photographer Martin Parr, recalling his fashion industry inauguration. ‘But Ic thought I will take on the challenge, and have never looked back.’ While today Parr shoots several fashion stories a year – from high-end brand campaigns and portraits to magazine editorials and backstage imagery – that first shoot in 1999, for the Italian women’s monthly, was the earliest example of Parr’s distinctive, oftentimes humorous, and aesthetically deliberate way of navigating the world of fashion.

Martin Parr: ‘Fashion Faux Parr’, published by Phaidon

Recently published by Phaidon, the joyfully titled Fashion Faux Parr is an exhaustive survey of the subsequent fruits of this relationship. High colour and boldly executed (it was designed by frequent collaborator Melanie Mues), the new fashion book serves to remind fans of how this unique partnership has played out over the past 25 years.

Alongside the well-documented campaigns for Gucci under former creative director Alessandro Michele – including the now-iconic image of a silver-haired sun enthusiast wearing bright white sunglasses at Cannes – is a queue of models pictured at New York’s famous Katz’s Delicatessen, part of a wider tourist-style portfolio commissioned by Vogue USA in 2018, and at Versailles, a backstage project for Jacquemus shot last year. Earlier street-led scenarios in Senegal, Cuba, Bristol and Broadstairs also feature, as well as accessories specials and British designer portraits.

While style has long been a core strain of Parr’s documentary work, organically acting as a signifier of a season, place, era or society, his fashion work more closely observes trends and particular moments, largely realised in tandem with art directors, stylists and beauty teams. ‘It varies,’ he notes, reflecting on the collaborative nature of the work. ‘With editorial fashion, you have more freedom and I enjoy bouncing ideas around with the art director. With commercial the script is pretty much established by the client, so it is a much tighter shoot.

‘I enjoy doing fashion and of course it brings in income, which helps me keep the foundation going,’ he continues, alluding to the Martin Parr Foundation, the gallery and archive space he opened in Bristol in 2017. ‘So my relationship [with fashion] is a good one.’

Indeed, while Parr maintains his own universe is very much still that of a documentary photographer – and it’s this work he’s best known for, as the designer Patrick Grant illustrates in the book’s introduction, identifying that he ‘takes pictures of old blokes staring at walls, socks and sandals, bottles of ketchup…bad weather and sunny tennis matches, Christmas dinners, chic interiors’ – the fashion world has been particularly positive of the match. Fashion Faux Parr might be his first fashion volume proper, but Gucci (which also collaborated with Parr on its Gucci ArtWalls series in 2020) and Louis Vuitton have also both co-signed monographs, and in 2005 Parr published a more tongue-in-cheek title, Fashion Magazine, in which he appeared on the cover.

As in his documentary work, there is plenty of charm and a certain richness in Parr’s fashion pictures; a particular warmth that gives the images, and perhaps the wider industry, a sense of accessibility, closely tied to his frequent practice of involving real people in his shoots. His approach is also often fairly straightforward – his perspective is what he offers – and he employs his surroundings to shape the narrative, rarely shooting in a studio. In previous interviews, Parr has spoken of the societal changes he’s observed in his decades-long career (mainly, the arrival of mobile phones), but what about the challenges he associates with fashion photography?

‘If there are a lot of models, it's tricky to get everyone looking good and in position,’ he explains, relaying a hurdle similarly common to anyone instructed to take a family portrait. ‘You have to persist in shouting out instructions.’ Inevitably this perseverance pays off, and as the designer Tabitha Simmons remarks in the book, recounting a shoot day with Parr, he’s left ‘an indelible mark on the fashion industry’.

’Fashion Faux Pas’ is published by Phaidon, and available from phaidon.com now. Also available from waterstones.com

martinparrfoundation.org

Just under a week since the announcement of Pierpaolo Piccioli’s departure from Valentino, the Roman house has announced the designer’s successor: Alessandro Michele, former creative director of Gucci, who exited the Italian label in November 2022. 

Michele, who was born in Rome, was one of the names that have circulated in the days since Piccioli’s announcement; having left Gucci, he is yet to have undertaken any other role at a fashion house, and has retained a low profile. This new appointment will see Michele present haute couture for the first time, alongside ready-to-wear for men and women, and will be effective from April 2024 (though his debut will not be shown until later in the year, as part of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2025).

‘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 this afternoon (28 March).

Alessandro Michele is Valentino’s new creative director

‘My first thought goes to this story: to the richness of its cultural and symbolic heritage, to the sense of wonder it constantly generates, to the very precious identity given with their wildest love by founding fathers, Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti,’ he continued, while also thanking Rachid Mohamed Rachid, Valentino’s chairman, and the house’s CEO Jacopo Venturini. ‘These references always represented an essential source of inspiration for me, and I’m going to praise such influence through my own interpretation and creative vision.’

Michele is best known for a transformative tenure at Gucci, which ushered in a new maximal aesthetic infused with a languid romance and informed by eclectic inspirations which traversed eras and cultural touchpoints. Having worked as part of the design team for two decades under Tom Ford and Frida Giannini, his first collection of menswear – originally presumed to be a placeholder role – comprised pussy-bow blouses, fur-lined backless loafers, and 1970s silhouettes and would prove an instant success. Just a year later, in its October 2016 issue, Wallpaper* highlighted Michele as a ‘Game-Changer’, in the years that followed, he went on to transform the house’s financial fortunes and dress a roster of high-profile clients, from Harry Styles to Lana Del Rey.

After his 2022 departure from Gucci, he was replaced by current creative director (himself formerly of Valentino) Sabato de Sarno.

‘For the last 12 years, as a team, we dedicated our time and resources to develop the Maison Valentino brand and business to become a world-class couture house built on the unique heritage and creativity of Mr Valentino Garavani, representing the best world of elegance and beauty,’ added Rachid.

‘The appointment of Alessandro Michele marks another pivotal moment for Maison Valentino. Michele is an exceptional talent and his appointment underlines our great ambitions for Maison Valentino. I strongly believe that with his unique creativity and sensibility, he will continue the elevation of the brand’s everlasting heritage and unique Italian maison de couture identity.’

valentino.com

A mood of escape and discovery permeated the S/S 2024 collections, with designers looking to journeys real and imagined to inspire their summertime offerings. Here, taken from the March 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, we select 12 objects and looks that capture the freewheeling mood of the season – whether Matthieu Blazy’s around-the-world odyssey at Bottega Veneta, Hermès’ beach-primed fisherman’s sandals, or Jonathan Anderson’s crystal-adorned sunglasses at Loewe. 

In fashion: the best of S/S 2024

Wander lust: Ferragamo (top left)

Maximilian Davis’ collection for Ferragamo was rooted in an imagined exchange between his Caribbean roots and the house’s Italian heritage, epitomised by these vertiginous sandals, elevated on a sculptural sole and laced with coloured rocks.

Enquire at ferragamo.com

Globe trotter: Bottega Veneta (top right)

Describing it as an ‘odyssey’, Matthieu Blazy’s show for Bottega Veneta saw models march across a tiled world map, sporting huge woven leather beach bags, stacked with clothing and rolled-up newspapers, as if wandering back from a day at the beach.

Enquire at bottegaveneta.com

Fluid forms: Dior Men

Elements of femininity – think shrunken, crystal-embellished cardigans, feather-and flower-adorned hats, and pearls – pervaded Kim Jones’ Dior menswear, inspired by previous Dior creative directors, from Yves Saint Laurent to Gianfranco Ferré.

Available at dior.com

Craft union: Prada

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ collection for Prada was one of material richness and intrigue, from floating translucent gowns to tasselled skirts in-set with eyelets. ‘We try to make the best out of our work, to make beautiful things for today,’ says Prada.

Enquire at prada.com

Great lengths: Dries Van Noten

There was an elongated line to this season’s menswear silhouette, which suggested a mood of ease and movement. This tabard by Dries Van Noten, with its subtle, 1970s-tinged print, formed part of a collection that encapsulates a ‘disrupted elegance’.

Available from driesvannoten.com

Big picture: Chanel

Chanel’s Virginie Viard looked to the French town of Hyères for inspiration, with her ensuing collection embodying the Riviera locale’s easy creative spirit. Camera-like quilted bags, complete with lenses, hung from models as if to capture the views.

Enquire at chanel.com

Track record: Wales Bonner

Inspired by Ethiopian and Kenyan marathon runners, Grace Wales Bonner’s ode to ‘long journeys and life missions’ was marked by a use of complex crafts in everything from woven zebra-print tops to macramé dresses adorned with Ghanaian glass beads.

Enquire at walesbonner.net

Action packed: Miu Miu

Miuccia Prada continued to explore notions of contemporary beauty for Miu Miu with a collection punctuated by sporty swimwear that crept above the waistline (as if clothes had been slung on after a morning in the surf ) and hiking-style sandals.

Available at miumiu.com

In proportion: Burberry

Daniel Lee’s collection for Burberry paid homage to ‘lightness, sensuality, beauty and elegance’, largely through proportion: the house’s signature trench sported a newly dropped waistline, while tailored trousers were replaced with long shorts.

Enquire at burberry.com

Escape route: Hermès

A soft and sultry summer mood permeated Véronique Nichanian’s Hermès menswear collection, which featured translucent layers, woven rope beach bags and this elegant riff on the fisherman’s sandal, made for clambering through coves and rock pools.

Enquire at hermes.com

Crystal clear: Gucci

The shimmer of crystal heralded the arrival of Sabato De Sarno at Gucci, with the house’s new creative director using it to adorn babydoll dresses and chainmail bustier tops in a collection designed to capture the insouciant glamour of Italian street life.

Enquire at gucci.com

Tunnel vision: Loewe

For his menswear collection for Loewe, Jonathan Anderson set out to create a silhouette that felt as if the viewer were looking upwards at the wearer through a fisheye lens. These oversized crystal-studded sunglasses completed the vision.

Available from loewe.com at selfridges.com

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

Models: Shuqi at The Milk Collective, Rex Rayner at Supa Model Management. Casting: Monica Domarke. Hair: Chris Sweeney at One Represents using Philip B. Make-up: Sandra Cooke using Giorgio Armani Beauty. Manicure: Ami Streets using Byredo. Photography assistants: James Donovan, Sarah Merrett. Fashion assistants: Kris Bergfeldt, Ady Huq. Digi tech: Al Habjan. Retouching: MGS Post.