The café is part of Milanese culture, from first thing in the morning (the traditional counter-top espresso) until apertivo hour at night (spritzes and negronis, alongside the requisite platter of accompanying snacks). In between, it serves as a stop-off for sandwiches, pastries and chatter – the perfect distillation of the rituals and rhythms of Milanese life.

For Milan Design Week 2026, which arrives in the city later this month, Italian fashion house Marni will take over one of these institutions for a three-month-long pop-up staged in collaboration with RedDuo Studio, a Milan-based interiors studio. The café in question is Pasticceria Cucchi, which was founded in 1936 by Luigi and Vittorina Cucchi and attracted a fashionable coterie of guests – from poets to artists and socialites – with jazz music and live performances. Now, it is being re-established as a gathering spot once again, by the Monti family, heirs to the late Giacomo Bulleri, one of Milan’s best-known gastronomic names.

Titled Marni x Cucchi, the takeover is a celebration of the café as a ‘stage for gestures and habits’, something captured in the event’s sceneography, which centres on a series of co-branded ephemera and objects – from sugar packets and takeaway coffee cups to plates, milk jugs and textiles, even staff uniforms (the cappuccino and coffee cups will be available from Marni’s Via Montenapoleone boutique). Bold, graphic motifs, reminiscent of midcentury design, are set to run throughout – from stripes to polka dots – while a joint logo features both Marni and Pasticceria Cucchi’s distinctive branding.

Throughout the three months, the café is set to become a stylish watering hole. While it will be open from 7.30am for morning coffee, through to 9.30pm, aperitivo hour is set to be the focus, with a special ‘Spritz Menu’ curated by Martini (Bianco and Bitter Spritzes promise ‘a contemporary expression of Italy’s aperitivo culture’). Meanwhile, a line-up of live musical performances each Thursday evening will nod to Pasticceria Cucchi’s origins as a caffé-concerto.

This project will also mark the first Design Week happening from Marni under current creative director Meryll Rogge, who showed her first collection for the house earlier this year at Milan Fashion Week. It’s clear that forging connections with the design world will be a big part of her tenure: her first show, for A/W 2026, comprised a set by research-based design agency Formafantasma (Wallpaper* Designers of the Year in 2021, and the creators of the 2026 Design Awards trophy).

The ‘familiar yer unsettled’ set – which recalled the anonymous entranceway to an office or apartment block, with paintings of quotidien objects decorating the space – served as a reflection of the Belgian designer’s approach to Marni. ‘I have a very personal connection to Marni. 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,’ she told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘Something real, unpretentious, open – but without suggesting a specific place.’

Marni x Cucchi runs from 20 April – 15 July 2026, 7.30am – 9.30pm, at Pasticceria Cucchi, Milan

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’

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

Belgian designer Meryll Rogge’s anticipated debut show as creative director of Marni, which took place during Milan Fashion Week A/W 2026 yesterday (26 February), was first teased across social media with a series of short videos directed by Davide Rapp, captioned ‘echoes of the familiar’ and showing just that: a key sliding into a lock, coffee being poured into a glazed mug, a bakelite telephone. Even the show invitation mimicked, luxuriously, that most ubiquitous of office stationery – the post-it note. ‘I have a very personal connection to Marni,’ Rogge tells Wallpaper*. ‘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.’

This familiarity – with a few surprises, of course – was a throughline for both collection and scenography, the latter of which was a close collaboration between Rogge and research-based design agency Formafantasma (Wallpaper* Designers of the Year in 2021, and the brains behind our 2026 Design Awards trophy). In the space, founders Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin transformed Marni’s headquarters with wood-effect panelling and fabric-covered benches, while a play on perception came in mirrored panels which were partially painted with ‘fragments drawn from quotidian life’, from car headlights to office chairs. The effect was a space which felt familiar – banal office space; the entranceway to an apartment block – though hard to place.

‘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,’ Trimarchi and Farresin tell Wallpaper*. These recognisable elements, resonant yet subverted through scale and deconstruction – for example a monumental doormat covering the floor in lieu of a carpet – were part of ‘a very clear atmosphere’, that Rogge already had in mind for the space when Formafantasma was brought in: ‘something real, unpretentious, open – but without suggesting a specific place’.

‘Our conversations with Meryll Rogge started from an open discussion about what “reality” means in fashion,’ say Trimarchi and Farresin. ‘We found that interesting, especially because a runway show is, by nature, constructed. It is a staged moment, carefully framed and controlled. Instead of trying to disguise that, we chose to acknowledge it. The set became a way to think about how fashion exists somewhere between lived experience and representation, never entirely one or the other.

‘We also spoke about how fashion moves through domestic and social environments,’ they continue. ‘Clothing is worn in kitchens, offices, streets – not only on runways.’ Indeed, in its vivid assemblage of elements – which shuffled between pragmatism and glamour – Rogge’s debut collection captured a human way of dressing, where a parka might be worn over a suit, or a sweater over a cocktail dress.

A penchant for elevating the everyday has long been a speciality for the Belgian designer, whose much-loved eponymous own brand, founded in 2020, is known for its imaginative take on practical dressing. Although the move to Marni marks her first role at the head of a major house, Rogge is a seasoned veteran of the industry, with stints at Marc Jacobs and Dries Van Noten, and is obviously staying true to the aesthetic values she has honed along the way. In 2022, she told Wallpaper* about her desire to create ‘pieces which evoke a sense of nostalgia, in a familiar and reassuring way’, a foreshadowing of the intentions she set for Marni with this energetic debut.

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

Last year, Francesco Risso, creative director of Marni, spent a month sharing a studio with Nigerian artists Slawn and Soldier. The results were surprising, encompassing an enigmatic mix of art and design, a body of work including both paintings and Baroque Italian furniture given a contemporary twist.

The results make up the exhibition, ‘The Pink Sun’, taking place at Risso’s palazzo in Milan in collaboration with Saatchi Yates, Risso’s private residence opening to the public, by appointment, for the event. Debuting after the Marni show during Milan Fashion Week A/W 2025, on 26 February, the exhibition will run until 14 April 2025. The results, curated by Alex Sossah, merge joyfully bright pop references with the cultural canon in a rebellious celebration of rococo.

‘With Slawn and Soldier, it was never a decision, it was a pull, an inevitability,’ says Risso on the unexpected partnership. ‘We met through my partner Alex, through London, through late nights and long conversations. There was an immediate, almost gravitational connection, three energies colliding, distinct yet speaking the same language, a language built on instinct, on movement, on rebellion.’

Rather than eschewing differences in style, the creative collaboration celebrates them with an emphasis on both street style and traditional craft. ‘This wasn’t about finding common ground; it was about celebrating the contradictions, the chaos, the tension between us. Soldier’s precision, Slawn’s raw spontaneity, my own obsession with texture and process – it all just fitted, like threads of the same story unravelling and reweaving themselves in real-time. The obstacles, the borders, the distance – none of it mattered. We created in fragments, in bursts of urgency, in a shared refusal to be bound by expectation.

‘When we finally stood together, side by side, hands moving freely, it felt like a liberation. This work, “The Pink Sun”, isn’t just what we made, it’s how we made it. It’s the process, the friction, the joy, the fight. It’s a conversation that doesn’t need to end.’

Slawn, Francesco Risso and Soldier present ‘The Pink Sun’ 26 February – 14 April 2025

It’s a grey Wednesday afternoon in January and Marni’s creative director Francesco Risso is standing in his office in Milan reading fragments of a poem. ‘Beauty is a white rabbit scampering across your yard,’ he orates. ‘You chase it, though you fall short, capturing it in the mad rush, you find yourself somewhere wondrous.’ It’s an unedited version of a text he wrote to be placed on each guest’s seat at his S/S 2025 runway show, which took place at Marni’s headquarters on Viale Umbria last September.

Models arrived to an intense score composed by longtime Risso collaborator Dev Hynes, played live on three baby grand pianos, while the clothes they wore were at once sparse and extravagant. When asked how he hopes people feel when they wear Marni’s clothing, Risso says: ‘To feel they can have any possible day that they want, and any kind of personality they want to engage. I feel that’s one of my missions.’

Inside the fantastical world of Francesco Risso’s Marni

Since taking over at Marni in 2016, Risso has proved a refreshing voice. He has frequently subverted the runway show, particularly the idea of the front row: he’s had people sit on exercise balls, random pieces of furniture, and stools of differing heights, and has regularly presented shows that unfold like performance art or theatre. His S/S 2022 show dressed the 400 guests in upcycled Marni ensembles, sporting hand-painted stripes, and featured performances by Mykki Blanco and Zsela, reducing many of the audience to tears. ‘We are trying to deliver emotions from the start,’ he says. And ‘no celebrities!’ He laughs when he says it, but he’s serious. ‘I love talented people, I just don’t love this endless circus that means fashion shows have become red carpets for celebrities, and therefore more important than the clothes.’

The designer throws off a floor-sweeping striped scarf and furry trucker hat and sinks into a chair. He is backdropped by the word ‘Marni’ crayoned over a door behind his head, which leads to the artistic studio. Ricocheting between topics, he compares the feelings he gets from painting (a central part of the Marni design practice sees the team evolve ideas for garments by first making art) to those he experiences from his own creative writing. ‘It can really envelop you. I kind of go into a trance,’ he says. He has recently written a fable about wolves as part of his upcoming collection – which will also feature a collaboration with Nigerian artists Slawn and Soldier – that he is particularly excited about.

Risso joined Marni from Prada, having trained at Polimoda in Florence, FIT in New York and Central Saint Martins in London. He was born on a boat in Sardinia, in 1982, and once on dry land, lived in Genoa with his parents and their extended families, where he found his way into fashion at an early age by ransacking their wardrobes. He would cut up their clothes and create his own designs. (His mother now frequently wears Marni.) This unconventional backstory goes some way to explaining Risso’s arthouse approach to the Italian house, which was set up in the mid-1990s by Consuelo Castiglioni and her husband Gianni and spoke to a creatively orientated crowd. In 2013, it was sold to the Only The Brave fashion group, owned by Diesel founder Renzo Rosso.

Unpicking the layers of his S/S 2025 show saw the designer circulate around the theme of resistance. ‘Resistance is beauty right now,’ he says, reflecting on the state of the world. This idea was expressed in the use of cotton across the entire collection, albeit in a myriad of finishes. ‘Cotton is the most resistant material. It’s the most sustainable and has existed since the start of time.’

It also spoke to a desire to strip things back – a continuation of the design mindset of the previous A/W 2024 season whereby the atelier occupied a cave of blank white paper devoid of all references so they could focus more on emotions – but also to celebrate fashion. Specifically, how fashion shows once proposed day looks, followed by cocktail and eveningwear, and wedding gowns.

The S/S 2025 show kicked off with models, sporting exaggerated eyebrows, dressed in simple micro jackets and stretch cotton leggings (some of Risso’s favourite looks) before evolving into a more flamboyant world of trumpet-skirt silhouettes and swishy boas that looked as if they’d been crafted from paper. Exuberant signature florals gave way to couture-like dresses featuring hand-cut poplin feathers finished with embroidered crystals. Many looks were topped off with experimental blown-up bucket hats, partly inspired by a 1960s Audrey Hepburn shoot featuring her in 18th-century-style hats.

‘One of the great lessons I took from Prada was to never sit in a comfort zone,’ says Risso of his decade-long stint working for Miuccia Prada. He says the combination of Prada’s push for extreme creativity alongside a desire for clothes to wear on the street remains a driving force for his work at Marni. ‘I don’t design things that aren’t…’ He pauses. ‘OK, yes, there are four feather dresses in the last show, but I like to make things that exist in a beautiful reality. They have to be out there in the world. I don’t want to make things for a museum.’ (Side note: the word ‘reality’ is a favourite of Mrs Prada.)

One of the challenges Risso feels acutely is that creativity increasingly exists in a metrics-driven universe. ‘The only thing we talk about now is the numbers. Oh, “This brand did 90 per cent” or whatever,’ he says. ‘Who cares? What about the good clothes? What about the good ideas? And it’s not that they aren’t there. There are incredible ideas, but still, society lives through metrics more than anything else, and it’s very sad.’

Risso is determined that the future of fashion needs to be making beautiful things by hand. He flicks through his phone, looking for a quote from Walter Gropius’ 1919 Bauhaus Manifesto that sums this up. He reads, ‘Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all return to the crafts. For art is not a profession. There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman.’ A recent show at London’s National Portrait Gallery, ‘Francis Bacon: Human Presence’, spoke deeply to him. He also loves Van Gogh. ‘They were both, in different periods, really beyond [what was happening in] society. They were capable of portraying real emotions and the shifting passages of time.’

Risso wishes fashion could find a way to be more empathetic within culture. ‘I believe we can make projects that expand empathy in some way,’ he says. ‘We have a role to engage with different forms of expression so that the clothes we make can live and speak to people. We make, design, conceive, we fantasise, we romanticise, we push it to the maximum… Making clothes is like making emotions. That is actually how Marni exists, to allow people to express themselves easily, and incredibly, and loudly.’

Models: Mia Harcourt at Models 1, Gordon at Menace Model Management, Wenqing Liu, Kate Moore and Minnie Hadley at Next Management London, David Oyinloye at The Squad Management, Zyla Pan at PRM Agency, Will Glen at Brother Models, Atem at Established Models, Nami at Anti Agency. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Masayoshi Fujita at Of Substance Agency using Oribe. Make-up: Emma Regan using Shiseido. Photography assistant: Ezra Evans. Fashion assistant: Leonie Dennett. Hair assistant: Miki Ide. Make-up assistant: Margot Schifano. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

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

As usual, our biannual Wallpaper* Style Issue reflects the changing fashion seasons. Rather less usually, this March 2025 edition arrives at a moment of relative upheaval within the industry, with close to a dozen creative directors on manoeuvres. Given that this list includes the likes of Sarah Burton, Matthieu Blazy and Haider Ackermann, it’s fair to say that something more involving than the industry-standard ‘musical chairs’ is underway.

Meanwhile, something akin to fashion’s tectonic plates is in motion, ushering in a more liberated, less prescriptive view of what a collection can be. Fashion features editor Jack Moss first identified the shift at Prada, where, he writes, co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons chose to operate ‘more like an open-ended invitation: who do you want to be today? “Infinite options proffer infinite opportunities,” said the house. These options comprised 49 entirely different looks to choose from; a collage of elements with barely a garment or idea repeated.’

This disavowal of the traditional ‘convening power’ of a collection, unless defined by its very disparity, inspired Jack and fashion & creative director Jason Hughes to explore further examples of this new, more eclectic mood. They found it in the work of Satoshi Kondo at Issey Miyake, Francesco Risso at Marni – whose S/S 2025 collection once again celebrated the house’s individuality – and Rei Kawakubo’s characteristic perfume provocations at Comme des Garçons.

Elsewhere, we conjure with the spirit of self-expression that resides in the work of fashion designer-turned-jeweller Gabrielle Greiss; Eva Gödel, whose model agency Tomorrow Is Another Day is changing the mores of the runway; and the founders of Furu, the project management agency that is turning to architecture in the stark surroundings of the Swedish island of Gotland. Going your own way never felt less fanciful, more freeing, so now.

Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief

The March 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 6 February 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Last June, British designer Craig Green opened up his London studio to show his latest collection after a two-year absence from the runway. He admitted that such an intimate show was scary – ‘It’s like someone painting a runway through your house,’ he said – but it also felt liberating. Here was the site of Green’s fashion experiments, a creative lab of endless enquiries into fabric and material; all that intricately moulded leather, the glimmering candy wrapper-like fabrics, or the various constructions designed to hang off the body like contemporary sculpture. In the past decade, these have evoked sails and lilos, medical equipment and horse-riding stirrups, even contorted dummies used for martial arts practice.

For this show, his S/S 2025 offering, Green felt like a designer in full flight, riffing on archetypal menswear garments in imaginative style: a series of ‘biker jackets’ were made in collaboration with Danish leather brand Ecco and constructed in colourful jigsaw puzzle-like layers of ‘shooting and protective patches’. The resulting pieces were strange and seductive, the result of hours of experimentation and meticulous assembly. ‘The childish idea of taking an engine apart to see how it works,’ Green said of his process, which is one of enquiry and curiosity. Walking back out of his studio into London’s Docklands – currently in its own state of reinvention, surrounded by looming cranes and construction sites – the excitement for his return was palpable.

Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: the fashion winners

Indeed, the show spoke to a wider mood in fashion, whereby its most intriguing designers are eschewing the pedestrian in favour of experimentation and high-minded design. It is a riposte, no doubt, to the so-called era of ‘quiet luxury’ and ‘stealth wealth’ – that post-pandemic moment of stratospherically expensive cashmere sweaters and swaddling silhouettes – and a response to the frenetic, tremulous times in which we live. The resulting collections spanned the thrilling (John Galliano’s triumphant Artisanal show for Maison Margiela), the unexpected (Rick Owens’ 200-strong old Hollywood epic featuring his parading white-clad ‘army of love’) and those that mined a feeling of childlike wonder, like Matthieu Blazy’s colourful S/S 2025 outing at Bottega Veneta, which took place amid a menagerie of leather beanbag animals. ‘I wanted to feel the primal pull of fashion once more,’ said the designer. ‘The joy of looking, discovering and dressing: the power of wow.’

Our Design Award winners – which include Green’s ‘biker jacket’ and a purposely crumpled overcoat from Blazy – were also chosen for their wow factor. Transcending the everyday, they are clever, sculptural, sometimes weird; each relies on process, craft and construction. When selecting the pieces, we were in part led by the thinking behind Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ S/S 2025 womenswear collection for Prada, which the designers described as a rallying call against the internet algorithm; the way it silos us into bubbles, smoothing our tastes towards pure hegemony (‘we like things because people tell us to like them,’ said Mrs Prada backstage). Instead, they wanted to create a collection that rejected the ‘derivative and expected’ through 49 unique looks, a riot of colour and silhouette. ‘We thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Simons.

We’ve also rejected the derivative and expected. We were seduced by the work of Duran Lantink and Ellen Hodakova Larsson, both awarded at the 2024 LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers for their distinct viewpoints. The work of the Dutch-born Lantink – with its smooth, bulbous protrusions, like inflatables have been snuck under the surface of his garments – is bold and challenging in the way it transforms the body but remains rooted in everyday garments. He is confident that he will see them worn on the street (and his growing stockist list seems to agree). Swedish designer Larsson works with deadstock garments, turning the earnest connotations of upcycling on their head and conjuring up a surreal glamour with pieces made from discarded objects (we chose a dress made from stitched-together faux fur hats).

Other winners include Francesco Risso’s S/S25 collection for Marni, which reimagines elegant midcentury silhouettes in paper-like fabrics evoking fur and feathers, as if twisted fashion illustrations come to life. Like Blazy, it spoke of a primal desire to dress up and play, and was one of our highlights of the season. Another was Nicolas Ghesquière’s show for Louis Vuitton, which kicked off with a runway, formed from the house’s trunks, rising from the floor, its liberated mood reminiscent of high-voltage 1980s shows. The collection riffed on the same era: bold wide-shouldered jackets, flourishes of tulle, pirate-style pants, and a vibrant mash-up of print and adornment. Or the one-legged trousers, featured here, which loop cleverly around the lower body and introduce an intriguing new silhouette.

Construction is always on the mind of Satoshi Kondo, who is leading Issey Miyake into exciting new realms while retaining the pioneering spirit of the house’s namesake. This season, he looked to washi, inspired by the traditional handmade Japanese paper’s ability to fold and be shaped that reminded him of playing with origami sheets as a child (the dress we chose, with its undulating silhouette, recalls crumpled paper). Victoria Beckham’s collections also saw her experiment with forms, including a dress that saw fabric laid over twisting, wire-like rods. It’s exciting to see a designer refusing to rest on their laurels or take the easy route.

It has undoubtedly been Jonathan Anderson’s year, though. At both Loewe and his eponymous label JW Anderson, he proved his ability to shift the eye, to endlessly interrogate the way that we wear and perceive clothing. His S/S 2025 womenswear collection for Loewe featured featherweight dresses crafted over bouncing cage-like constructions, the delicate wires intricately welded together by hand, alongside elongated dress shoes, and feather T-shirts hand-painted with the work of Van Gogh and Manet, a play on ‘band merch’.

At JW Anderson, he said he wanted to intuit ‘where the next decade is going’, with a purposely reduced collection of sharply flared skirts and garments printed with extracts from an essay by British art critic and Bloomsbury Group member, Clive Bell. Anderson explained post-show that it explores ‘the idea of art and design and how they sit together’, though he elaborated that he was less interested in the essay’s content and more in ‘the modernity of text on a white page’. ‘There needs to be a narrowing of things,’ he continued. ‘[This collection] is about the idea of taking a blank page and starting afresh.’ For Anderson – and indeed the rest of the designers assembled here – the possibility of that blank white page seems endless. The question is, where next?

Find all the Wallpaper* Design Awards winners in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 9 January 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Models: Awek Gak Chol at Titanium Management, Arthur Del Beato at Milk Management. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM Hair: Tobia Bartolini using Oribe. Make-up: Michelle Dacillo at Agency 41 using Laneige. Manicure: Cherrie Snow at Snow Creatives using Boy de Chanel Le Vernis and Chanel La Crème Main. Photography assistant: Michel Bewley Fashion assistant: Nathan Fox. Production assistant: Archie Thomson. Digi tech: Alexander Brunacci.

If ever there was a time to hone your working uniform it is the autumn, a season which, after the hot and heady rush of summer, marks the moment to pack up your holiday wardrobe and embrace the strangely seductive pull of officewear – a mood of grown-up polish that draws you back to your desk and the routine of the nine-to-five.

This needn’t suggest tedium: the A/W 2024 collections offer an altogether twisted view of city dressing, seeing futuristic and sculptural silhouettes meet unexpected flourishes of texture in a corporate palette of navy, grey and black. Alongside, riffs on the classic overcoat: like Acne Studios’ version in moulded leather, which creative director Jonny Johansson likened to Estonian artist Villu Jaanisoo’s enormous rubber armchairs that were dotted around the runway when the collection was revealed in Paris earlier this year. ‘[It’s] rooted in toughness and human form, leather and denim,’ Johansson says of the full-throttle collection.

A/W 2024’s twisted officewear

Victoria Beckham describes her A/W 2024 collection as taking the silhouettes at the core of her brand and ‘abstracting’ them, often deconstructing them to their essence and rebuilding them into new propositions. This includes office-style tailoring, whereby blazers are redesigned to hang on the front of the body, leaving the back exposed, as one might hold a garment to the body before trying on an outfit. At Sportmax, the wide, notched lapels of a tuxedo are combined with a classic elongated grey coat for statement-making outerwear that need not be removed when you step inside the office.

Meanwhile at JW Anderson and Louis Vuitton, the idea of a sculpted waist is explored in different ways by Jonathan Anderson and Nicolas Ghesquière, two designers who defined the A/W 2024 season with imaginative and intriguing collections. At JW Anderson, a grey sweater has a darted waist for a pinched silhouette recalling tailoring or dressmaking, while at Louis Vuitton, a sculptural jacket comes with the kind of sharp, futuristic line which has defined Ghesquière’s postmodern approach during his ten-year tenure at the house (the A/W 2024 collection was a celebration of the past decade, seeing the French designer revive his archive anew).

In the heart of London’s Square Mile – the financial epicentre of the city – photographer Sasha Marro and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture A/W 2024’s new working uniform as part of the October 2024 Guest Editors’ issue of Wallpaper*, which is on international newsstands now.

Model: Julia Rambukkana at The Milk Collective. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Chloe Frieda using Authentic Beauty Concept. Make-up: Sunao Takahashi at St Luke using Dior Forever Foundation and Capture Totale Le Sérum. Photography assistants: Fred Barlet, Pablo Gallegos. Fashion assistants: Lucy Proctor, Nathan Fox. Production assistants: Minna Vauhkonen, Ady Huq, Archie Thomson. Retouching: IPP Studio.

This article appears in the October 2024 Guest Editors’ 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 slight shift in scheduling saw Milan Fashion Week move a day earlier this season, the extension giving some much-needed breathing room to an always-packed programme. ‘I’m very satisfied with this synergetic effort by the four main players on the fashion circuit,’ said Carlo Capasa, president of Camera della Moda, the week’s organising body. ‘[We] had for some time been asking for an extension of the Milan Fashion Week, given its calendar of over 200 appointments.’

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

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

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

The best of Milan Fashion Week S/S 2025

Bottega Veneta

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

Dolce & Gabbana

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

Ferragamo

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

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

Gucci

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

Missoni

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

Sportmax

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

Tod’s

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

Emporio Armani

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

Moschino

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

Prada

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

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

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

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

Max Mara

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

Jil Sander

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

No. 21

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

Marni

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

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

Fendi

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

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

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

January marks the beginning not only of a new year, but a new season in style – gone are the winter collections of last year, in are the S/S 2024 collections, and with them the promise of brighter days ahead.

As part of Wallpaper’s Design Awards 2024 issue, we select the winning men’s and womenswear collections of S/S 2024 – and their standout looks – which will define a season of dressing ahead. These span Sabato de Sarno’s sensual new vision for Gucci (the designer called it a ’story of richness and lust... of sweat, dancing and singing’, and is pictured top left), the eclectic oppositions of Dries Van Noten’s womenswear, and Maximilian Davis’ expertly reduced Ferragamo tailoring. 

Winning collections came too from Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons at Prada, where they reckoned with beauty and craft, the sinuous lines of Kim Jones’ Fendi, or Matthieu Blazy’s extraordinary riffs on the quotidien at Bottega Veneta (here encapsulated his version of a working man’s tie, recrafted in leather). Or Lucie and Luke Meier’s gently oversized men’s Jil Sander tailoring, adorned with glimmering crystal broaches (pictured top right). 

The various looks are captured by London-based photographer Daisy Walker, and styled by Wallpaper* fashion and style director Jason Hughes. 

The standout looks of S/S 2024, selected by Wallpaper*

Courrèges

Dolce & Gabbana

Dries Van Noten

Acne Studios

Hermès

Wooyoungmi

Ferragamo

Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello

Givenchy

Alexander McQueen

Carven

Isabel Marant

Bottega Veneta

Miu Miu

Paul Smith

Fendi

Dior

Prada

Balenciaga

Marni

Valentino

Loewe 

Models: Kerolyn Soares at IMG, Aaron Shandel at Wilhelmina. Casting: Ikki Casting at The Art Board. Hair: Adam Garland using Authentic Beauty Concept. Make-up: Jo Banach using Chanel Les Beiges Winter Glow and No.1 de Chanel Red Camellia Exfoliating Mask. Interiors: Olly Mason. Set build: London Art Makers. Photography assistants: Chloe Yates, Zillah Rauter. Fashion assistants: Kris Bergfeldt, Samela Gjozi. Hair assistant: Annabella Hudgell. Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson. Post-production: Lasso Studio. 

A version of this article appears in the February 2024 issue of Wallpaper* – dedicated to the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024 – available in print from 4 January, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Clothes that subscribe to the tenets of simplicity, quality, and longevity can easily be passed over as boring. Not so when they’re in the hands of Francesco Risso, the ebullient creative director of Marni. When a collaboration between the Italian label and Uniqlo was first discussed, Risso had already been a long-term fan of the Japanese retailer’s LifeWear staples, especially the range of Heattech thermal tops and leggings, ‘because apart from their technicality, they really expose the line of the body’, he says.

A second Uniqlo and Marni collection launches on 1 December 2022 with layering at the core. Popcorn-knit vests, sweaters and balaclavas come in neon green, orange, and saffron yellow. Gloves and stoles are made in soft cashmere and mélange knit. 100 per cent silk furoshiki scarves have hand-painted patterns and are edged with a zig-zag stitch. Multi-stripe merino dresses are interrupted by black ruched wiggles. 

Uniqlo and Marni Winter 2022

The capsule thrums with both Marni’s spirited eccentricity and Uniqlo’s rigorous efforts to perfect what are already ideal staples. ‘After working with them, I now understand their unbending integrity for design, which is made to exalt the persona of the wearer and that aim is very clear on both sides,’ Risso says. ‘Putting our textures on their bases and their bases onto our textures, this jumbling of things, was very much a learning curve. I guess they were laughing at some of our playful approaches whilst we felt very grounded by theirs.’

Recently, Risso has noticed a different body confidence that people have on the streets, so this collection favours garments that unapologetically define the body. Knitted trousers, Heattech leggings, socks and long-sleeve tops come in colour-blocked pale pink, cornflower blue and black or psychedelic brush-stroke prints. A soft down-filled puffer is cut slightly lower at the back and feels like a cloud. ‘When our first collaboration was released, I saw a full-on adoption of it. More than just someone in a dress or a shirt, people were really combining things and going for the whole expressivity of it. We wanted to jump into that more and make it even more graphic. Treat the body as a graphic gesture.’ 

The look is grungy and cheery, best worn piled on. ‘I'm always intrigued by people and their lives, that's what really informs the way we build up collections. This is a period that requires a lot of that reflection. The world is harsh and there’s a need for us to find or get pleasure from what we do. I think what this collection does – and what our way of making is about – is a reflection on joy, especially right now.’  

The second Uniqlo and Marni collection launches from Thursday 1 December 2022 in selected stores and online.

uniqlo.com

After several seasons of treading carefully and cautiously, New York Fashion Week S/S 2023 arrived with fresh vigour. An influx of international imports may have helped – Fendi made its way to Manhattan to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its Baguette bag, while Marni staged its first US show in Brooklyn, right in view of the Brooklyn Bridge. But really, it was the hometown pride for New York talent that was palpable across the board, from Collina Strada’s gathering of their close-knit community at an under-the-radar nature reserve to an intoxicating collection from Eckhaus Latta that poignantly featured prints from the late artist Matthew Underwood, who was a friend of the brand.

Here, reported by Wallpaper* US editor Pei-Ru Keh and contributing editor Tilly Macalister-Smith, is the best of New York Fashion Week S/S 2023.

New York Fashion Week S/S 2023

Wednesday 14 September

Michael Kors

Polished concrete, mirrored walls, ferns and fig trees provided the backdrop for Michael Kors ‘Urban Resort’ collection, shown in the Meatpacking District on Wednesday morning. 

Vacation bodies (glistening thighs, polished shoulders) of all proportions were shown off with cut-outs, racer-front vests, one-shoulder tops and plunging halter necklines that reached navels. Linen palazzo pants, jersey bandeaus and crepe de chine sarongs – when styled with barely-there high heels, double gold cuffs and low-slung belts with gold hardware – were transformed into legitimate city options. 

It’s a particularly strong season for tailoring: a cross-front halter waistcoat was immaculately cut, while a buttonless white gilet was belted with a strap of gold. Fine gauzy linen – a notoriously tricky fabric for suiting – was fresh, not a crumple in sight. Shirting and jackets with silk fringing cascading from arm holes in place of sleeves were well executed. As for the palette, a vibrant chilli red added depth, notably in a satin kaftan that will translate easily to eveningwear. TMS

Deveaux

After a three-year hiatus, Deveaux celebrated a refresh this season with a complete relaunch of the brand. For Andrea Tsao, the label's co-founder, ‘Deveaux’s aesthetic and identity really stands for utilitarianism, wardrobing, and the kind of thoughtfully considered, interesting pieces that our customers depend on,’ she says. ‘This season feels like the start of a new chapter – we are refocusing on our original founding principles and paying close attention to things we're passionate about, like menswear details and functionality. But at the same time, injecting a sophisticated and elegant joyousness to the brand.’

For the occasion, Tsao drew from the brand's hometown, New York City, for inspiration. Inspired by the life cycle of New Yorkers through the seasons – dramatic thunderstorms, relentless sun showers and blistering summer heat, all of which showgoers endured within this single week – the collection teamed relaxed silhouettes and classic mainstays with clever, utilitarian details. 

‘To me, American sportswear is about finding beauty in function. What we are creating is a modernised version of that – for instance, some of the more relaxed tailoring pieces that can be styled back to a nylon utility pant,’ she says. ‘Our community and audience are full of people who have such unique and interesting demands, and are looking for creative, one-of-a-kind pieces that aren't trendy but feel emotional in a different way.’ PRK

Tom Ford

Smouldering. Sex. Appeal. Tom Ford’s woman is entirely her own. Stalking the mirrored runway under flashing disco balls, the models exuded prowess and power: the audience was putty in their hands. Sex, of course, is a Ford hallmark, but recast against the backdrop of the overturning of Roe v Wade, the collection felt like an empowered statement. 

As Robert Palmer sang ‘you might as well face it, you’re addicted to love’, models walked in shorts and jackets appliquéd with sequined love hearts and stars. Then came A-ha’s Take On Me, remixed with a throbbing club beat, as Western fringing and intricate cowboy detailing rendered in more sequins took a turn. String vests encrusted with crystal, lamé tailoring and louche satin tuxedo sweatpants embodied the driving new wave synth pop of Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round. 

The final passage was slower, more sombre. Freddie Mercury’s distinctly sorrowful voice sang out Time Waits For No One. Ford just gave us a reason to relish every minute. TMS

Willy Chavarria

It’s unlikely that the Marble Collegiate Church, bordering Koreatown and Madison Square Park, has hosted such a crowd in the nearly 400 years it’s been standing. Jostling several rows deep at the front steps and queuing around the block, Chavarria’s community – which reaches all boroughs of New York and beyond – turned out en masse to support the designer. Known for his tendency to treat lowly workwear with reverence, this season he turned his attention to papal matters. Opening the show, a handful of male models wearing oversized while T-shirts down to their knees (as roomy as priests’ robes) carried roses, red and black, to the altar. For Chavarria, bagginess is next to godliness. 

The collection explored the similarities – and juxtapositions – between church and streetwear. A pair of long shorts could have referenced basketball shorts, or ecclesiastical robes. A traditional nun's black habit with white collar was reworked into a bell-sleeve shirt. Black then red silk taffeta gowns, replete with corsages the size of dinner plates, decorated neat tailored jackets. Shiny patent black choir-boy loafers were worn with oversized T-shirts emblazoned with city names in reversed varsity type (Fresco, Sacramento). Many of the models were friends of Chavarria, and brought with them a true representation of New York. The show was a highlight of the week. TMS

Batsheva

As far as local designers go, Batsheva Hay is as New York as they come. Case in point: an invitation to editors, buyers and friends to savour her new collection in a classic Jewish deli, Ben’s Delicatessen, alongside latkes, knishes, orange juice and coffee. Against the deli's retro features, vinyl seating and well-worn carpeting under foot, Batsheva turned out 1980s-era favourites, including a white patent leather skirt suit, acid pink party dresses covered in black polka dots and sparkly tunic dresses. The throwback carried over into the label's use of its trademark florals, this time cut into blazers, pyjama sets, bralette tops and bloomers. Relaxed, even frivolous and open to interpretation, Batsheva’s subversive take on saccharine sweetness is alive and well. PRK

Tuesday 13 September

Gabriela Hearst

There was a distinct, elemental quality to Gabriela Hearst’s new collection. Inspired by a chance introduction to the work of Ancient Greek female poet Sappho, Hearst expressed a more contemplative mood with uncomplicated silhouettes in a neutral, monochromatic palette. Despite its apparent minimalism, Hearst’s flair for creating unexpected beauty with intricate craftsmanship was at full strength. An abstract collage featuring black and gold shapes proved to be the grounding force of the collection, particularly in a series of garments featuring contoured gold leather that was soaked in water and then draped on the body to create each individual piece. Knitted dresses featured intricate pebble stitches and swirling designs knitted into the garment itself. Hearst’s elegant tailoring was adorned with custom-made rose-gold bars, bestowing a hint of shine as models moved. 

As always, Hearst’s passion for sustainability, eco-transparency and ethical production continues to make her an industry leader. In addition to using eco-certified materials and implementing carbon offsetting measures for the production of her show, Hearst published a list of the materials used in the collection, ranging from deadstock linens and silks to upcycled denim. The show itself was set to a rousing live performance by the Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of women and nonbinary performers, and culminated in Hearst skipping out joyfully to take her bow. The Chorus is actively raising funds for Act Blue, a New York abortion access fund that supports anyone living in or travelling to New York, who may need help paying for an abortion. PRK

Peter Do

Memory. When we close our eyes, what bubbles up? And what causes us to be sucked back to a place we might not have visited for days or years? A scent or a song can trigger instant recall, but do clothes wield that power? Peter Do enlisted Korean American author Mary HK Choi to pen a letter for his show notes; in it, she talks of her father dying, memories, the feeling of time slowing down. 

The last would prove a theme of the collection, which was titled ‘Time’. In his own work, Do manages to embody this feeling of time slowing, while always looking towards the future. Blush, chocolate, sand and mushroom-coloured tailoring in patent leather, satin, and dry tropical wool had a feeling of sensuality and softness. Open-backed leather jackets and shirting appeared as powerful silhouettes from the front, before revealing an unexpected vulnerability as the models walked past. Cityscape prints were blurred like a flashback, appearing on silk scarves fashioned into capes, and then blown up on black and white degradé prints (Do revealed they were images he took himsef of moments that he ‘wanted to memorialise’). 

Despite the label still being relatively young, Do’s hallmarks are becoming easily recognisable: tailor’s white top-stitching left in place on the exterior of garments (also this season, black tape used to the same effect); billowing white shirting in various fabrics; double-breasted suiting, left open or pulled taught across the waist; steel toe-capped, chunky-soled footwear and intimidatingly high spiked heels; razor-sharp pleating, this season in sheer chiffon. It lends the feeling that Do is not just creating clothes but also a world; as such, he asked K-pop star and NCT band member Jeno to open the show wearing one of his inaugural menswear looks. Male and female models both walked, but one gets the feeling that the girls and boys will be borrowing from each other. TMS

Tory Burch

For her latest collection, Burch looked back to a moment of personal transition, the 1990s, when she first moved to New York. By association, the silhouette became longer, leaner and cleaner – in her words, experimenting freely while paring everything back. Fabrics had a sporty stretch, aiding a feeling of movement in shin-skimming pencil skirts and cropped stretchy leggings (the latter worn with flat slingbacks and slippery satin maxi skirts). Richness, and a feeling of travel, came in a lustrous gold leather coat and woven fabrics with historical patterns. Unexpected moments appeared throughout – an apple green satin mac, a sheer turquoise turtleneck, giant shimmering paillettes – while sporty open-collared tops, nylon macs, and sleeveless gilets grounded the collection in the everyday. TMS

Jonathan Simkhai

Amber was the starting point for Jonathan Simkhai’s S/S 2023 collection. Re-examining the fossilised resin, he emphasised that the material is not a semi-precious gemstone, as is often believed, but something more humble (albeit beautiful). He was particularly drawn to its healing qualities, and thus looked to fabrics that would soothe the wearer.

Simkhai was also taken with amber’s inherent ability to capture and preserve moments in time. The designer was feeling nostalgic for the minimalism of the 1990s, as well as much older craft techniques used over generations. Tightly knotted crochet was treated with precision, with panels inserted into silk dresses (it felt less bohemian and more cocktail party appropriate). Waists were cinched with folded buttery leather belts. Shoulders were subtly built up on suiting to emphasise form. Sporty mesh pencil skirts and dresses, reimagined from white cotton shirting, will feel as at home in the city as packed for vacation. TMS

Monday 12 September

Carolina Herrera

For S/S 2023, designer Wes Gordon conjured up the magic of storybook romance for a feminine, flower-laden collection that threw back to American glamour from another time. Inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel, The Secret Garden, one of Gordon's childhood favourites, the silhouettes on offer ranged from strapless bustiers teamed with oversized balloon sleeves, and figure-hugging mini dresses with whimsical taffeta ball skirts, to floaty chiffon dresses covered in handpainted tea roses and peony blossoms. Set under the chandeliers and opulent interiors of The Plaza hotel ballroom, the maximalist collection was offset by a dash of precise tailoring, such as a double-breasted suit, a black wool jacket and, of course, crisp white shirting, in a nod to the label's namesake, who sat approvingly in the front row. PRK

Coach

It's unlikely many mornings after the night before roll in as buoyantly optimistic as Coach’s show today. The dreamy tableau that opened proceedings was titled ‘The Morning After’, showcasing a street scene bathed in tangerine-pink dawn light – a young couple in love strolling hand-in-hand; party-goers (with ballet moves) still revelling; a pedigree dog; and a spherical red balloon, bobbing along and passed between characters. 

Coach is certainly steering headfirst into a new dawn for the brand. Looking to overhaul its ‘accessible luxury’ positioning and transform into a true luxury player, it's been quietly tightening distribution and upping its prices, reintroducing updated versions of bags rather than phasing styles out after a couple of seasons. All of this dovetails with a creative shifting of gears. Stuart Vevers played subversively with American codes: baby-doll prairie dresses with white socks and patent Mary Janes, varsity sweaters styled with buckled leather shorts, Fair Isle sweaters naively over-knitted with colourful yarns. Outerwear was also given serious attention – oversized leather coats had a pre-loved softness – while jelly sandals and rubber pouches in boiled-sweet tones will likely be social media catnip. 

The show was closed by Lil Nas X, who was revealed as Coach’s new global ambassador, while the brand also noted its support for the youth education programme at Park Avenue Armory (where the show took place) with a donation from the Coach Foundation, made to empower a new generation in the New York and beyond. TMS

Area

Area’s move towards a more couture-based approach appeared fully realised in its newest collection, ‘Tetrahedron’, which saw designers Piotrek Panszczyk and Beckett Fogg dissect ancient architectural tropes to explore ideas around fetish and worship. Opening with a cage-like bondage dress, covered in jumbo, jewel-encrusted spikes, the collection exuded an otherworldly spirit that straddled both punk and primitive. The spikes – actually 3D-printed cones handset with Swarovski jewels – also appeared on dramatic evening coats, belts and stilettos, giving garments a powerful, otherworldly aura. 

Panszczyk and Fogg have experimented with provocation ever since founding Area in 2014. This season, that came in the form of bondage motifs that oscillated between the classic feminity of ribbons and bows, and the bold strength of BDSM wraps and corsetry. One dress, crafted entirely out of metal ribbons adorned in rhinestones, appeared to swirl around the body as if caught by an invisible breeze.

Construction and shape were key elements in this collection. Distortion of form appeared everywhere from couture pannier jeans to shrugged bodysuits developed around folded pyramids in vibrant silk duchesse. The same motif also took shape in spherical column gowns and skirts. As fantastical as these pieces were, the offering was rounded out with comparably more wearable items, such as a jewel-encrusted tunic tee and ribbon-shaped bustiers and cocktail dresses. PRK

Sunday 11 September

Sandy Liang

Sandy Liang took showgoers back to simpler times with an ultra-feminine collection evoking the unbridled romance and naivety of youth. Filled with bralette tops, gauzy slip dresses, low-slung trousers that sat way below the navel, ruffled nightgowns and a bounty of silk hair ties and ballet bows for the finish, Liang’s S/S 2023 collection tapped into girlhood at its truest. The teenage fantasy hit its high points in the creations Liang unveiled earlier in the week – a silk Mary Jane pointe shoe, complete with a blocky square toe, which has been in development for over two years, and a bridal capsule collection, featuring four dresses and three veils. Playful, unexpected and just the right amount of off-kilter, Liang’s version of femininity exudes an effortless energy. PRK

Khaite

When you take a show apart – strip away the venue, the music, clever styling, models – what are you left with? Clothes, pure and simple, seen in just the same light as a customer will find them on the hanger. How clothes hold up once the support acts are eliminated can say a lot about the calibre and health of a business – ultimately, how clothes feel, and how they are cut to hang on the body, is what will keep shoppers coming back. 

Cate Holstein has perfected the recipe of making really great clothes that women want to wear now. Without oversimplifying: clothes that make you feel relevant, seductive, and strong. Clothes that are uncomplicated to wear but cut so precisely as to deliver maximum effect. Today, Holstein deftly cherry-picked the sexiest elements of the 1980s (an oyster satin trench coat; ten-denier black tights worn with satin heels; pussy-bow blouses; python prints), spinning them together with 1990s David Lynch references and entirely of the moment silhouettes that she is making her own. 

Often, clothes seen in a runway show are made for effect and later ‘cancelled’ from the production run, deemed too expensive or complex to make on a larger scale. Not for Khaite: what you see in the show is what you can buy, and creating a collection with a compelling spirit that still passes muster once it's dismantled to its individual items deserves acknowledgement. TMS

Puppets and Puppets

Carly Mark has a way of bringing together incongruous references to deliver something cohesive yet out of the ordinary. For her S/S 2023 collection, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, the dramatic illustrations of Danté’s Inferno by Gustave Doré, and parties in New York City provided the inspiration. ‘By weaving together these three themes, I’m able to tell a story about New York that is universal and also uniquely my own.’

Known and loved for her amusingly kitsch accessories (handbags featuring cookies, a wedge of swiss cheese as a hat), new, simpler pieces this season gave breathing room to the more expressive ideas: a burnt red wrap skirt that revealed a flash of thigh; a suit jacket with pencil-narrow lapels; conservative court shoes, worn subversively. Butterflies hovered on areas that don’t usually see the light of day: across a model’s exposed chest, and on another model’s coccyx, revealed by a dress with a particularly low back. There were perhaps fleeting whispers of the late, great Alexander McQueen, who similarly sought inspiration from Dante (his A/W 1996 collection was named ‘Inferno’) and of course gave the world his famously low-slung ‘bumster’ silhouette. Although here, Mark’s off-kilter treatment of an intarsia varsity jacket and silver cocktail dress crafted from a series of bows felt, as the designer said, distinctly her own, and a love letter to her home city of New York. TMS

Zankov

Henry Zankov is fast becoming known for his specialism in knitwear, drawing admirers with his bold, optimistic designs – or ‘taking up space with colour’, as the designer puts it. Zankov has been thinking about his Jewish-Ukrainian roots and artists that share this heritage, including Louise Nevelson and Kazimir Malevich. Fascinated by the idea of collecting – another reference point was the art collectors Aimé and Marguerite Maeght, founders of La Fondation Maeght – he also looked towards the works of contemporary French painter Philippine de Richemont, whom he met just prior to the pandemic. Through lockdown, they messaged constantly, sharing references and interests (‘We naturally found we wanted to collaborate together,’ he says); in the collection, de Richemont’s figurative, gestural motifs run throughout on oversized sweaters, floor-length maxi-dresses and culotte shorts. Exploring the idea of knitwear for all seasons, other standout pieces included lightweight crepe intarsias and sheer ‘tissue-weight’ ribbed tanks – easily packed for summer – and a sporty, perforated boucle terry knit in vivid raspberry pink. TMS

Tommy Hilfiger ‘Tommy Factory’

The rain may have gotten the better of Tommy Hilfiger’s recreation of Andy Warhol's Factory, but the New York veteran nonetheless staged a larger-than-life, mega-wattage return to the runway. Held just beside the Brooklyn waterfront, Hilfiger presented what he does best – heritage Americana and preppy sportswear, with a renewed, inclusive message. Worn by an exceptionally diverse cast of models, the collection ranged from rugby-striped tunics and nautical knits to logoed denim bodysuits and plaid tailoring. Most notable was the unveiling of a special capsule designed by the British designer Richard Quinn. Featuring a rework of Quinn’s signature daisy emblem in a palette of bold colours, the collection sees the vibrant motif emblazoned on oversized puffers, peacoats, backpacks and holdalls. ‘I've always been inspired by working with creatives who push boundaries and Richard is no exception,’ said Hilfiger. ‘We've brought together our two distinct aesthetics to create a rebellious take on prep. It’s unexpected and optimistic and reflects the playful spirit at the heart of both our brands.’ PRK

Luar

As a prelude to his S/S 2023 runway show, Luar’s Raul Lopez shared a childhood memory in the show notes: him sitting at a reunion in his family’s Brooklyn living room, waiting for other family members to arrive. As each relative unzips their practical outerwear to reveal their glamorous and romantic finery for the special occasion, ‘you can’t help but gasp and sit up a little higher’, writes Lopez. ‘They float towards you with stars in their eyes, planting a kiss on your cheek as you think to yourself, oh we eatin’ good tonight, devouring legacy in the form of looks.’ 

Such was the mood for Luar’s latest collection, a supercharged tribute to the 1980s, informed by the immigrant experience, stemming from Lopez’s family roots in the Dominican Republic. Titled ‘La Alta Gama’ (‘The High End’ in Spanish), the collection reflects Lopez’s portrayal of the high and low, elegance and utility, tailoring and leisure, which have all come to define the Luar brand. ‘The women in Lopez’s family protected at all costs the American luxuries they worked hard to acquire. The jackets were their armour but the minute that these layers were shed signalled not just arrival but an inherent transformation,’ the notes continue. 

Exaggerated shoulders, textured leather blazers, pinstripe tailoring, nylon parkas and patchwork motifs were some of the references that mixed together. Paired with silk skirts, billowing trousers and jewel-encrusted gowns, the dynamic mash-up is reflective of Luar’s exciting appeal. Completed by its inclusive spirit and a cult handbag to boot – S/S 2023 sees a new briefcase shape join the ranks – Luar’s star continues to rise. PRK

Saturday 10 September

Eckhaus Latta

Beneath a cool canopy of trees at El Jardin Del Paraiso – a community garden in the Lower East Side – Eckhaus Latta paid homage to a friend of designer Zoe Latta who passed away in 2019, Matthew Grinnell Underwood (1983-2019), a multidisciplinary artist from Providence. With the permission of his estate, Latta and co-designer Mike Eckhaus deftly wove his artworks into the collection – notably, printing his images onto silver foiled T-shirts and knotted dresses, as well as slinky knitwear. Harpist Mary Lattimore opened with a delicate melodic riff, before sampling, scratching, and building on her own notes to create a soundtrack of depth and complexity. The press notes included a poem, which described the act of zoning out as inherently romantic. Romantic was the mood; serenely melancholic in the sunshine. 

The overall effect was ethereal and dreamlike (sheer netting ruched into dresses, tops as light as candy floss) punctuated with moments of urgency (a hazard orange workwear jacket). And then came the section of items with giant pieces missing – not suggestive cut-aways, but rather gaping holes revealing a stomach or side, or an absent trouser leg, as though something crucial had been unexpectedly lopped off, gone missing. A commentary on grief and loss, perhaps, so adept is Eckhaus Latta at reflecting back to the world the very spirit of life in a given moment. TMS

Dion Lee

Dion Lee’s selection of a raw, vacant space on the 22nd floor of a midtown Manhattan office block meant his androgynous collection was set against the sun-drenched New York City skyline. With views of the city’s changing architecture and its sea of glass facades just beyond, Lee’s consideration of the silhouette – articulated through body-hugging mesh tanks, cut-out elements, motocross-inspired leather and denim jackets as well as zippered parachute pants – could not feel more of the moment. Known for his gender-fluid approach to dressing, Lee’s ability to blur the boundaries between tailoring and utility, structure and ease was equally apparent. This season, he was drawn to similar crossovers in nature. His transformation of the recognisable Monstera plant motif into leather mini dresses and boots was paralleled by sheer cut-out tops and T-shirts that mimic the rib cage and other aspects of human anatomy. A delicate halterneck top crafted from metal beads and worn with wide-legged tailored pants was a particular highlight, as was a pair of lemon yellow dresses, interspersed with revealing, loosely strung panels, once again accentuating the body. PRK

Private Policy

Feelings of peace and love flowed through Private Policy’s after-dark sidewalk show where fans of the brand queued three deep outside the downtown venue for a chance to glimpse models walking under the floodlights which lined the pavement. The brand has been consistently working to shed light on a political global issue each season; over the years they have addressed topics as diverse as American ‘big pharma’, the potential of fungi, enslaved fishermen and contemporary capitalism. Their S/S 2023 show was titled ‘Noah’s Ark’, and the brand’s creative directors, Haoran Li and Siying Qu, were concerned with animal migration, deforestation and the impact of humans on animal welfare. In places, the translation was literal –heart-shaped peace signs and doves mid-flight adorned T-shirts. Elsewhere, graphic hoodies and board shorts, utility denim and cargo pants, and streetwear-infused tailoring meant plenty of desirable pieces for Private Policy’s many devotees. TMS

Marni

Creative director Francesco Risso’s contract with Marni was extended in 2020, after a four-year winning streak, in part for his ability to attract and convert a younger, more diverse customer. Tonight, in a dramatically lit tunnel in Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), a milieu of curators, artists, fellow fashion designers, musicians, and more hugged hello and jostled for their seats, all pledging allegiance to the house’s vibrant, colourful prints. Risso studied part of his fashion education at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and appeared as comfortable as ever to be back in the city. The concept of the circle seemed to be circulating in Risso’s mind. The String Orchestra of Brooklyn (along with Dev Hynes), all bedecked in tangerine-red, delivered a driving, pulsating soundtrack that looped and looped; sleeves of dresses flowed into hemlines, creating a hooped silhouette that appeared to conjoin arms and legs. Circular crochet panels appeared on the front of crop tops, while slinky silk jersey separates also showcased a circular motif. The final looks leaned more into handcraft, appearing to have come unravelled on the loom before being top-stitched back together with a knitting needle. Sporty accessories took the form of sunglasses masquerading as slick swimming goggles, boxing boots and knitted sock boots stamped with soccer boot markings, while the finale dress was painted with dish plate-sized dots. A very welcome import. TMS

Friday 9 September

Proenza Schouler

Fashion’s discombobulated scheduling (viewing summer clothes in autumn, winter coats in spring) continues to disorientate, although remarkably everything at Proenza Schouler appeared just right for now. Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez delivered their vision for next summer on a sweltering fall day as people were still mentally and literally unpacking from their own summer escapes. Energy was high among the guests and in the clothes; Hernadez looked to his Cuban roots to inspire expressive flamenco ruffles and polka dots, while McCollough built on their nearly 20-year heritage of American sportswear. It made for a tantalising flirtation between city and vacation states of minds: the new perennial mindset? On the runway, models with slicked wet hair and glistening skin appeared as though they had just stepped out of the ocean, arriving at a glamourous beach bar for sundowners in gold crochet pants and dresses trimmed with kinetic beading. 
 
Everything moved with finesse – scuba circle skirts swished; hemlines of pants swirled about ankles as though models were walking through waves; exaggerated waterfall sleeves draped almost to the floor. By contrast, tailored outerwear and pristinely cut lace shirting in chartreuse and bubblegum pink presented a youthful option for those dusting the sand off their toes. A colossal waterfall, ‘a symbol of life’, was projected onto the interior walls of Hall des Lumières in downtown Manhattan opposite City Hall. Next week the full 28,000 sq ft space will open to the public as an immersive digital exhibition programmed by Culturespaces, the creator of Atelier des Lumières in Paris in partnership with IMG. TMS

Collina Strada

Collina Strada’s provocative, eco-minded ethos found an ideal soulmate in its show setting this season. Staged at the Naval Cemetery Landscape, a former cemetery now transformed into a nature preserve, with local plant species, nectar-rich annuals and milkweed varieties to attract pollinators, like monarch caterpillars and butterflies, back to New York City, the wild and unexpected sanctuary formed an idyllic backdrop for the label’s ethereal new collection. Inspired by the butterfly’s symbolic life cycle, designer Hillary Taymour emulated stages of life, death and rebirth in garment form, while showcasing the advancements in Collina Strada’s regenerative philosophy. Diaphanous orange fibre organza gowns in psychedelic florals and rose-derived ‘sylk’ pieces were teamed with embellished deadstock denim, knitwear made from upcycled cotton-acrylic scraps (a collaboration with the Italian label Vitelli), and handpainted, made-to-order jeans, created together with Unspun, to prove just how responsibly clothes can be made. Finished with cane sugar sandals and boots by Melissa and Viron boots made from apple leather and upcycled leather, the future of sustainable fashion is certainly blooming and bright. PRK 

Fendi

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Fendi’s Baguette bag, it seemed only apt that the brand returned to the Big Apple to fete the sartorial icon, the place where it was canonised in pop cultural history thanks to Sex and the City. Joining forces with other icons such as Marc Jacobs, Tiffany & Co and SATC actress Sarah Jessica Parker, Fendi’s artistic directors Silvia Venturini Fendi and Kim Jones took over Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom to stage a star-studded anniversary collection to be remembered. Inspired by the bag and the era of freedom and excess that it was born in, the collection was an ode to the piece's multiplicity. From its multi-pocketed form, which riddled its way overcoats, skirts and gloves, to reinterpretations of the Fendi logo and the bag’s signature buckle, the collection embodied the bag’s idiosyncratic glamour, with a hefty dose of shiny satin, shimmering sequins and candy-coloured fur all muddling together in triumphant harmony. PRK

Left, cardigan, €395; top, €470, both by Leorosa. Shorts, £395, by Erdem. Hat, £200, by Maison Michel. Sandals, £750, by Prada. Socks, €25, by Bresciani. Right, cardigans, £860 each, both by Missoni. Sandals, £750, by Prada. Socks, €25, by Bresciani.‘Maralunga’ armchair, £1,050, by Vico Magistretti, for Cassina, from Monument (throughout). 

The S/S 2022 menswear shows touted cocooning, kaleidoscopic and crafty cardigans as the knitwear silhouette of choice.

Milanese brands promoted prismatic, patterned and painterly shapes that reflected the exuberant spirit of the city – from Missoni’s signature chevron to Marni’s brushstroke stripes.

London-based brand Erdem, which presented its first men’s collection for spring, made a case for striped sleeveless jumpers and paintbox-red chunky cardigans in a Sebastian Flyte-meets-1970s-style-icon take on dressing. Meanwhile, the aesthetic of 1980s cinema informed young knitwear label Leorosa’s cardigan designs, which were colour-blocked, boxy creations that riffed on a preppy Ivy League polish.

Fellow fledgling label Waste Yarn Project also favoured contrasting yarn colours, creating collared cardigans formed using asymmetric panels in hues such as turquoise, yellow, fuchsia and orange. Demonstrating an anti-waste approach, each individual style is woven using leftover wool from a Shanghai factory. So instead of being left to gather dust in boxes on a factory floor, the yarns now cocoon the body in bold colour. 

INFORMATION

A version of this article appears in the April 2022 issue of Wallpaper*, on newsstands now and available to subscribers 

The concept of a creative community is synonymous with an in-person fashion show, but one that, ironically, is frequently missing from the seasonal catwalk junket. A well-noted criticism of a runway show can be the disconnect between the clothing on the catwalk and its audience or consumer, or the lack of connection between a creative director and the brand they work for.

After 18 months without physical runway shows, the S/S 2022 fashion season has offered brands and designers the chance to reconnect with their creative circle and audience, and cultivate experiences brimming with authenticity, forward-thinking and enthusiasm. With his spring show for Marni, creative director Francesco Risso rose to the challenge, hosting a show celebrating community, the spirit of collaboration, one which boasted audience engagement, live music, innovative and optimistic silhouettes and a magnificent sense of meaning.

Marni S/S 2022: a moment of creativity and inclusivity

‘A collection about the act of getting dressed to be together. An action of trying on, fitting in and fitting out that connects the audience and the show, the observers and the observed,' wrote Risso in Marni's show notes of a concept that began when fashion journalists and buyers touched down in Milan, and were invited for a personal clothing fitting at the brand's industrial Viale Umbria space.

Here, guests were met by Marni’s design team and, in dedicated fitting rooms, were offered a variety of cotton Marni pieces, from paint-streaked sundresses to shirting, pleated dresses to worker jackets, all detailed with a canvas patch outlining the limited number of the 800-strong ‘Marniphernalia: Miscellaneous Handpainted Treasures'. Wallpaper* fashion director Jason Hughes was fitted with a beige shirt with orange and white streaks of paint, while fashion editor Laura Hawkins looked to pleated dresses accented with blue splashes.

The Marni show-cum-happening was held at a vast industrial space, where guests, all clad cultishly in their colourful DIY designs, sat in a circular runway formation formed from rickety wooden panels. The atmosphere pulsed with energy as the show began with a spoken-word performance by poet Mykki Blanco and also featured live music from the singer Zsela and an orchestra dotted around the audience, with composition and creative direction by Dev Hynes and Babak Radboy. A diverse mix of models, with various body types, circled the audience, finally ascending a podium at the centre of the show space, swathed in tattoos and sporting paint-streaked wigs by Julien d'Ys, stripes and naive daisy prints, dresses with bold cut-outs, oversized ponchos, and XL suiting.

In the final ascent of inclusion, which saw models and musicians immersed within the Marni audience, Risso walked amongst his models, wearing striped trousers and a huge oversized scarf. ‘Everything and everyone as one,' read his show notes. Marni, a true representation of modernity.

INFORMATION

marni.com

Something colourful is coming to 5 Carlos Place in Mayfair. It’s prismatic, punchy and emanates pizzazz, and celebrates the intersection of craftmanship between Italy and Colombia. Yes, artisanal aficionados. Marni Market is pitching up at Matchesfashion’s Central London townhouse. From 2 June 2021, the Italian label’s annual craft-celebrating offering of furnishing accessories, design objects and bags, will be displayed for the first time as a full collection in London, in all its optimistic glory.

Over the past year, the importance of time-honed, craft-focused creation has been reinforced, as around the world, we’ve appreciated a slower, more meditative approach to creativity and consumption. Marni Market’s one-off-designs are all crafted by the Milanese brand’s network of Colombian artisans, who the label has a long-term collaborative and celebratory relationship with. These intuitive designs revel in tone, texture and pattern, and make illusion to the bold beauty of the natural world, from hand-woven PVC chairs which unfurl like pastel-hued flowers, to wire sculptures resembling blooming cactuses, rugs with gently undulating patterns to crochet shopping bags with prismatic petal motifs.

In celebration of Matchesfashion’s Marni Market launch, the luxury retailer has commissioned London-based documentary and portraiture photographer Jermaine Francis to lens a series of pieces positioned around the UK capital. Cue a striped shopping bag suspended from a road sign in Soho, fruit stands positioned jauntily on bold park benches and a colour blocked stool standing in a red telephone box.

For lucky Wallpaper* readers, keen to inject some joy into their own domestic settings, be it through a side table to energise a living room setting or a rocking chair for a roof terrace, Matchesfashion is offering first access to Marni Market at 5 Carlos Place on 1 and 2 June 2021. Book your hourly appointment here. §

INFORMATION

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Chances are, that after months in slouchy separates, you're considering splashing out on something a little smarter. The post-pandemic world calls for a return to more rigorous dressing codes, from tailored suits to smart jackets to shirting. Can't decide which tailoring style to invest in? Here, we present a selection of shapes and silhouettes, guaranteed to enhance your out-out wardrobe, from brands including Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Ermenegildo Zegna and Marni.

Tailored suits: how to smarten up your act

The nylon jacket

A sure fire way to bring a relaxed ease to suiting? Opt for a style in a sports-inspired technical fabric. Case in point: Prada's suit jacket, imagined in the brand's signature nylon fabric.

The pinstripe jacket

A pinstripe blazer is the pinnacle of the 1980s Wall Street wardrobe. Add a touch of 2021 insouciance with a pattern in a wider stripe. This tailored suit speaks of power but is pleasingly laid-back too.

The asymmetric jacket

For the more avant-garde, a jacket with an aysmmetric fit ticks all your alternative buttons. Opt for a style that fastens off-centre. This will brings an eye-catching edge to your collar proportions and corresponding shirt and tie choices.

The workwear jacket

If you can't quite imagine yourself in a fitted jacket, a more workwear-centric silhouette is for you. Think boxy, oversized and with a four-button fastening and opt for stiffer utilitarian fabrics like cotton-drill or canvas.

The skinny jacket

Obsessed with the skinny silhouette that dominated early Noughties fashion? Button yourself into a narrow blazer shape and pair with an equally skinny trouser silhouette. The Noughties has never felt so now.

The white jacket

When black-tie events return to our schedules, you'll want your tailored suit to stand out. Opt for a pristine white tuxedo jacket with a luxurious satin lapel. Avoid red wine and colourful cocktails at all costs.

The oversized jacket

A slouchy, unlined jacket makes for a comfortable spring silhouette. Wear with a light underlayer, like a T-shirt or gauzy jumper, for laid-back modern ease, a look that’s enhanced when rolling up your sleeves.

The check jacket

While check or plaid jackets might feel a touch fusty, they're instantly updated with feel-good colours. Steer away from browns and greys and explore a colour palette rich in turquoises, purples and greens. 

As fashion journalists spend another season taking in fashion shows remotely, through a screen, there’s been much chatter behind the scenes regarding how they might emerge style-wise next season, when there’s a chance of shows being staged with a live audience. There’s the suggestion of a new Roaring Twenties, which will see people around the world glammed up as they emerge from lockdown, wearing bold outfits and eschewing loungewear and flat shoes for evening looks and stilettos. There’s also the parallel concept that after a year of yearning only for cosy silhouettes, we may simply never want to dress up again.

As in New York Fashion Week and London Fashion Week before it, Milan's designers mused on these concepts for autumn, creating collections and tying together 2021 trends that swung between romp and relaxation, extravagance and ease. Authenticity was also integral to a host of Italian brands, conscious that when consumer attitudes shift towards spending once more, people will be keen to buy from brands with long-lasting aesthetics. 

This concept was paramount to Kim Jones, who presented his heritage-nodding debut women’s collection for Fendi, following his first, Bloomsbury Group-themed haute couture collection for the Roman house earlier in February. Jones looked to the archival designs of Karl Lagerfeld, who was creative director of the house for 54 years, and the wardrobes of the five Fendi sisters, with a collection brimming with elegant, ladylike and luxurious silhouettes. Think cappuccino, khaki and midnight-tone slip dresses, tuxedo jackets, tailored coats and body-hugging knits, in luxurious fabrics including marbled silk, double cashmere and organza, and adorned with details of the past, such as Lagerfeld’s ‘Karligraphy’ monogram and the embossed stitching of the brand’s ‘Sellaria’ bags. The show’s accompanying set, an evolution of its haute couture set-up, also alluded to the past, featuring F-shape transparent vitrines, with crumbling columns resembling Roman artefacts inside.

Max Mara’s signature camel tones have reinforced its reputation for timeless, trend-subverting dressing, a concept that resonates strongly today. For the brand's 70th anniversary collection, creative director Ian Griffiths celebrated the classic house tones with an offering of elegant yet easy Italinate pieces, such as caramel teddy bear-fur coats, outdoorsy quilted gilets, loose knits and pleated skirts. Griffiths also applauded the ascendant nature of the women that wear his clothes (back in 1951, in contrast, the brand's founder intended them for ‘the wives of the local notaries and doctors'). In a playful twist, the collection referenced the stylings of the British aristocracy off duty in the British countryside, featuring flat caps, foulard headscarves and oversized retro sunglasses.

Brunello Cucinelli also celebrated natural tones, broadcasting his brand's show live from its home village Solomeo. The offering luxuriated in creams, beiges and browns, featuring relaxed yet sumptuous silhouttes, including 1980s-inspired suiting, textural knitwear and robe coats.

Post-pandemic, as people consider their fashion choices, many will desire eye-catching silhouettes that still retain the ease of lockdown dressing and the luxurious nature of its fabrics. For A/W 2021 Loro Piana considered this requirement, with an offering that catered to work, leisure and beyond. Think shearling coats, uniform-centric knitted two-pieces, sharp overcoats and double-layer parkas in a spectrum of rich hues, from bottle green to chocolate, merlot to mustard.

This sense of comfort was also reflected by Tod's Walter Chiapponi, who served up a collection of soft, bourgeois-meets-sportswear shapes, including frilled puffer jackets, jumbo-corduroy trousers, padded dresses and pleated skirts. Similarly, Missoni drew on movement and the comfort of its knitwear heritage, creating sparkling-stripe pleated dresses and chevron-stripe knitted flares and cardigans – for looking and feeling good in.

For Prada's Milan Fashion Week menswear show back in January, co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons mused on the restrictions encountered during the Covid-19 era, as well as the liberation from conventional routine that lockdowns have also brought. The brand's women's show evolved this concept with an offering that considered polar opposites, and ‘the point between simplicity and complexity, elegance and practicality, limitation and release'. In the same OMA-conceived show set (myriad graphic interconnected rooms lined with tactile fake fur) models sported pieces that alluded to Simons’ and Miuccia's design canon, like oversized nylon MA-1 bomber jackets with retro jacquard linings, faux fur and sequin wraps clutched around the shoulders. Standard dressing codes were subverted, with tailored peacoats imagined in paint-box hues, body-hugging evening gowns replaced with knitted all-in-ones and conversative tailored skirt suits spliced to reveal the body. There was an exuberance and ostentation to the collection, which shimmered with paillettes among shaggy faux fur and bold upholstery prints.

Where Prada subverted and played with the parameters of dressing up, so No 21's Alessandro Dell'Acqua celebrated them in all their going-out glory. Dell'Acqua is clearly ready to shake off his sweatpants and, for A/W 2021, created a collection that swapped bedroom comforts for something a touch more boudoir. For women, there were fringed dresses that revealed lace knickers, leopard-print pencil skirts and stomach-baring sweaters. Dell’Acqua brought together ultra-mini 1960s skirt lengths, shrunken peacoats and platform shoes, and paired them with grungey separates, like plaid shirts that were slung on top of revealing bodysuits.

At MSGM, Massimo Giorgetti also made a case for going-out gear, with a collection that celebrated the underground nightlife of Milan, featuring latex pencil skirts and puffer jackets, rib-knit velour dresses, paint-cracked denim and holographic roll-necks, all in vibrant tones. Dolce & Gabbana, too, was in the mood for club-kid fashion. While the brand's A/W 2021 menswear collection nodded to the exuberant e-boy fashion made famous on TikTok, the women's kaleidoscopic offering addressed the e-girl, and abounded in 1990s raver silhouettes, with graffiti-splattered puffer jackets, foil jeans and shaggy leopard-print knitwear. The collection also alluded to the body-cinching shapes that Dolce & Gabbana was renowned for in that decade, with ruched dresses, bodysuits and form-flattering, double-breasted jackets.

Across fashion cities, designers have mused on the new requirement to create clothing to be viewed digitally, through a screen, rather than in person. At Marni, Francesco Risso's imaginative runway shows – resembling other-worldly greenhouses or forestscapes formed from paper – are a way of welcoming his fans into his art-inflected, ecclectic world. For A/W 2021, he used Instagram to invite show watchers to three Zoom events, a breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Here, he presented clothing that was a hyperbolic, larger-than-life interpretation of designing for digital, with oversized puffer jackets swathed in shaggy fake fur, crochet two-pieces and tie-dye knitwear. Ruffles, ruching and multicoloured prints, along with bags blown up to XL proportions, appeared larger than life no matter how small the computer screen. 

In 2020, Giorgio Armani was the first designer to cancel his fashion show on the final morning of Milan Fashion Week, due to the increasing threat level of Covid-19. As regions around Milan began to close their borders, journalists travelling home or straight on to Paris began questioning their safety and considering the reality of a European lockdown. On Giorgio Armani’s A/W 2021 catwalk, there was a fluid relaxation to the silhouettes. The collection includes relaxed suiting in velvet and explosive floral jacquards and gowns in wispy transparent fabrics. There was an optimism in the bold blue and turquoise hues that accented the offering, which riffed on powerful 1980s tones. 

The 1980s was a decade that also inspired Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli. He referred to his decision to stage his A/W 2021 show in the empty auditorium of the historic Piccolo Teatro di Milano, which has been shuttered since the pandemic hit, as ‘punk’. This attitude was echoed across a solemn, largely monochromatic collection that featured ultra-short ‘scissored’ skirt lengths, shirting and slick tuxedo suiting. Elsewhere, DIY and punk elements came in spliced knitwear, slashed into Argyle shapes or cut out into floral motifs; stompy biker boots festooned with rose petals; and boxy, studded accessories. The austere nature of the collection was emphasised by models walking to the sounds of the Milanese symphony orchestra. 

Salvatore Ferragamo is a label familiar with operating during hardship. Its founder famously innovated with materials due to resource restrictions during and after the Second World War, incorporating tree bark, hemp and fish skin into his shoe designs. For A/W 2021, creative director Paul Andrew was focused on shapes and fabrics for a new world, presenting Future Positive, a science fiction-inspired film, with ultra-modern menswear and womenswear silhouettes. Andrew looked to a range of cinematic references during the collection's development, including Gattaca, Until The End Of The World, and The Matrix. Suiting was deconsctructed and bold, outerwear imagined in transparent plastics, metallics and leathers, and footwear had a motocross-meets-astronaut feel. Andrew innovated with materials across the collection, which included accessories made from upcycled pre-consumer offcuts and recycled pre- and post-consumer wool and cashmere, a dress made from recycled polyester, and footwear soles formed using pre-consumer TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) and metal-free leather tanned with plant-based materials.

Sportmax also operated with futuristic intent, looking at inspirational female figures across history, spanning statues of mythological figures and Annie Lennox, to create a forward-thinking fashion statement. The brand's collection featured models striding in parachute-volume taffeta gowns, The Matrix-worthy leathers and sparkling silver dresses, paired with shield-like sunglasses and thick soled wader-centric boots. 

Ferragamo dedicated its collection ‘to all those who must walk' – citing its founder – ‘at a time when we must be united in our determination to reimagine, rebuild, progress’, it summed up the impetus behind Milan Fashion Week A/W 2021 as a whole.

Designers in Milan – with a substantial reduction of international visitors – held a fashion week of sorts, with a mix of real shows and virtual presentations, all of which were streamed on their websites and via their social media platforms, in a bid to connect with their international clients. For those actually attending (I counted just two editors from France, a handful from Germany, six from the UK, and no one from the US or Asia) it was all about masks, hand sanitiser, temperature checks, self-declaration Covid-19 forms, very last minute changes to shows from real to digital or from digital to real and location changes. As for the clothes, as a rule Italian designers are collectively wishful that S/S 2021 is nothing like the summer before it.

Fendi kicked off the week’s proceedings with a significantly sized down runway show, which marked Silvia Venturini's final solo outing, before KimJones joins the creative helm of the brand next season. The mood spoke of sophisticated comfort, with models including Penelope Tree and Cecilia Chancellor wearing floaty shirts printed with shadows of windowpanes, snuggly duvet coats and buttoned dresses in quilted upholstery satins.

The N°21 show, held in the brand's own Garage Ventuno showspace, was a marker of how fashion shows operate during Covid-19. In place of the usual benches chosen to get as many bums on seats as possible (until now, there was always room for another guest) were stacking chairs spaced around two metres apart in a diagonal format. If clothes are being designed for our new less social lives, founder Alessandro Dell’Acqua created good looking knits and sweats amongst the looks, but matched with marabou incase you get the urge or chance to dress up.

Dolce & Gabbana’s purpose built Metropole show space can seat more than a thousand, but its S/S 2021 show was reconfigured to seat 300 on rich brocade cushions. Unlike a show with a 1000 guests, it was effortless to get in, with temperature checks and hand sanitising stations plus guidance on how to leave after, similar to new disembarkation rules on aeroplanes, sector by sector. A little like the famous Ford Model T motto ‘any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it is black,’ the message here was you can have anything you like as long as it's patchwork. This meant macro or micro silhouettes from mini dresses to caftans, signature sartorial tailoring through to highwaist jeans and sneakers imagined in brocade, lace, carré silks and denim. The brand covered all options for a summer of going out or staying in, depending which way the pandemic plays out.

Max Mara chose to show in the cloisters of the courtyard of the Accademia di Brera, and guests sat spaced apart on cubes, the preferred seating choice of the week. Protective Cloisters – of which Milan has many fine ones to offer – were to become the venue of choice seen also at Boss, Ports 1961, and Salvatore Ferragamo. Amongst the tailoring and coats that Max Mara is famous for, creative director Ian Griffiths interwove appropriate pieces for our changed lifestyle, like strong knits, raglan sleeve sweats, parkas, and sporty silhouettes made from thermo bonded lightweight technical jersey. After long periods spent at home the message was a clear: clients now expect comfort as well as style.

For his digital Emporio Armani presentation, Giorgio Armani hired directors Leandro Manuel Emede and Nicolò Cerioni to film ‘Building Dialogues', a seven minute film shot over three days outside the company’s offices adjacent to Armani/Silos and across the road at the Tadao Ando show space. Its architecture – which is almost entirely pale grey – formed an appropriately background for the collection.

Back in February, on the last day of Milan Fashion Week, Giorgio Armani, alone, decided to hold his fashion show behind closed doors and asked everyone already invited, even his VIP clients who had flown in to Milan expressly for him to watch it from their homes or hotel rooms. This season he streamed Giorgio Armani's show online and on Prime time Italian TV (adding around a million extra viewers). And with a larger audience in mind (who may find the average 12 minute show length somewhat short), it was preceded by a 20 minute ‘house made’ documentary called ‘Pensieri Senza Tempo' or ‘Timeless Thoughts', with archive footage of Armani fashion from 1985 onwards.

I watched ‘Building Dialogues' from the Armani/Hotel which reopened in July. Some luxury hotels, such as the Park Hyatt, have been shuttered for almost six months. It was also in my room where I watched the Prada show. It was odd to be in Milan and watch a show broadcast from three kilometres away and not actually be present. This was the highly anticipated debut collection of dual creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons. Shot in a yellow carpeted and curtained room designed by OMA/AMO, models walked followed not by the eyes of guests but only the articulated robotic cameras. The show was followed by a Q&A session where Prada and Simons answered questions submitted from the public via social media, discussing topics around the importance of novelty, collaboration and what defines Prada-ness. The session was a much more comfortable and civilised way of learning about the collection than popping backstage for a bun fight to speak to the designers.

For his second season at Tod’s, creative director Walter Chiapponi opted to stream ‘The Song', a film directed by Antoine Asseraf shot at Casa Villa Necchi, where the protagonists including Karen Elson and singer Okay Kaya dressed up in suede, denim and frilled dresses and connected with each other over imaginary Zoom calls or face time links.

Sunnei – who just announced a new investment from Vanguards – celebrated Milan's summer spaces, inviting guests to the Lido of Milan in the north of the city. There, guests stood on designated circular markers inside an empty swimming pool (sheltering from rain with umbrellas) watching models wearing relaxed tailoring, caftans and loose dresses in the brand's signature bold hues.

Amidst Covid-19's new reality, designers are all looking for appropriate methods to show their collections. Francesco Risso, creative director of Marni, pulled off an most extraordinary feat, casting 48 members of his creative community for ‘Marnifesto', a film spanning locations from Tokyo to Dakar, with each model wearing one look from the collection that had been remotely fitted with the aid of video and local seamstresses. All 48 feeds were mixed live in New York, with each model setting out at the same time, filmed on a smart phone by their boyfriend, girlfriend or roommate at home, on the metro, in the supermarket or on the street. As I watched it at 4pm in a Milan cinema, Risso was sitting there too, seeing it for the first time. He'd gave up his creative control when he sent of his S/S 2021 pieces, passing the freedom of self-expression to the cast.

Moschino’s Jeremy Scott worked with The Muppets creator Jim Henson to create ‘No Strings Attached’, a fun and perfectly executed 40 look fashion show modelled by puppets, set in a tiny filmic couture salon set to schmaltzy classical music by Michel Gaubert. 

For Salvatore Ferragamo, creative Director Paul Andrew turned to film director Luca Guadagnino to produce a short film set in Milan. Although the men’s and women’s ready-to wear-and accessories were the focus, it was equally a homage to the city and its architecture. ‘Life in Technicolor', picked up the vibrant green, mauve, yellow and lobster in the collection and accessories, but also illustrated hidden colours found in the city.  The 40 looks featured in the film were also shown on the runway in the rounded cloisters of La Rotonda della Besana, the Florentine houses usual venue, albeit with a substantially reduced number of guests.

At Versace, the label presented Versacepolis, a show streamed live with everything aside from the usual audience (the brand decided a week before to run the show with no physical guests). Everyone participating from set builders to producers, models to hair and make-up artists, plus Versace staffers, had all been tested by the company as negative for Covid 19. The show, featuring both men and women was full of joyous colour and print. Stand outs were the pleated looks, plain or printed, with some sculptural ruffling nodding to Roberto Capucci. This was a very confident message. The brand is hoping their clients have reason to dress up next summer, those décolleté bra topped dresses are a little too saucy for Zoom.

The Ports 1961 show, held in the warm autumn sun of the cloisters of the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia was intimate for very few but filmed for a larger audience. Karl Templer wanted this collection to be tactilem ‘as touch is forbidden now and everything is on screen’, and with its classical references, spring was all about embrace and touch. Templer is optimistic about people still finding pleasure in dressing up.

Valentino is based in Rome and traditionally shows its men's and women’s ready to wear and couture collections in Paris. Exceptionally this season it came up to Milan to show in a metal foundry in the north of the city. This show was inside, with a small crowd in a enormous space, but safety was key so all guests (who all turned up in masks) were given a new FFP2 mask and asked to wear it for its duration. We were treated to a sound track performed live by Labrinth, while creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli offered plenty to like for real life including exclusive Valentino 517 boot cut jeans made in collaboration with Levi’s, which will surely get everyone wearing the styles again come spring, whether we have to stay at home or not. Piccioli paired the jeans with oversized mannish shirts in chiffon, taffeta and lace and accessorised with the new macro Rock Stud bags and shoes. There were of course some more dressy pieces including fluid long dresses and a chocolate brown slinky sequinned cape-shouldered and ribbon-sleeved dress. Even you don’t have anywhere to go or anyone to see sometimes its great to dress up just for you.

Inspiration can be hard to come by during down time. Now that the usual fixes for a creative dry spell – meeting with friends, visiting a gallery, taking a meditative stroll – are no longer options, the quickest creative pick me up is to check in on what other people are up to.

Hair artist Julien D’ys is one person never low on artistic output. Over the years, he has amassed hundreds of notebooks all bursting with sketches, paintings and photographs that have formed the basis of his work with Comme des Garçons, John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld and Marni, to name a few. ‘My notebook is like my brain,’ D’ys says. ‘I draw, I think, from there I built my idea and bring it in life.’

Included here are some of the sketches D’ys made in preparation for the 2020 Marni and Comme des Garçons shows. For Marni, the inspiration was ‘Alice in Wonderland mix with acid and rave, rebel kids,' with colours drawn from the work of ‘Egon Schiele and some Russian paintings.' The end result, a gang of  lanky models dripping with glitter and paint, their sinewy hair lacquered to their faces as if they just emerged from a crowded dance floor, was easily the beauty sensation of Milan Fashion Week.

The concept for Comme was far more simple but no less striking. ‘For Comme des Garçons I always get one word from Rei and this time she said BLACK and I start from there. I made some drawings and from there I created wigs showered by black ink.’

In a time when you might have more time then ever, perhaps take a note from D’ys and pick up your pen or make up brush to make your own beautiful creations.

Scene setting: Risso’s weird and wonderful narrative knows no bounds. For A/W 2020, guests entered an industrial space through a tent-like tunnel, before emerging into a pinkish hued green house, like you’d imagine on in a lunar space station or as a weird enclave on a meditative retreat. Risso wasn’t confined by a solid definition. ‘Are we in a caged world trying to get out,’ or ‘are we trying to escape into a magic, techno psychedelic world escape,’ he mused backstage, clad in striped trousers and a long sleeved t-shirt, after removing the rabbit head he’d worn down the runway. His down-the-rabbit-hole designs referenced ‘beauty in leftovers’, reflected in the soft seating of the show, which was formed from piles of internal sponge from old sofas.

Mood board: Risso was preoccupied with finding new beauty from scraps, taking colourful fragments of leathers and tapestries, and patchworking them into coats and symmetric dresses tied with bows. He described his pieces as ‘collaged puzzles of remnants,’ which leftover shreds from ready-to-wear, being made into slouchy oversized bags. Elsewhere, chunky knitwear was colour blocked and accented with XL running stitch while velvet overcoats were printed with what resembled metallic space dust. In a beguiling blend of old and new, models sported their cut and paste pieces sporting futuristic glittering make up, sprinkled across their face and hair. Risso described them as ‘wild Alice in Wonderlands.’

Finishing touches: Cutouts on patchwork pieces (also noted on the Tod’s and Versace catwalks) were framed by pieces of metal in gold and silver, like hand-honed hardware. ‘We made the structures in clay in the studio then transformed them into metal,’ Risso explained. ‘Behind each object, there’s a hand.’

Scene setting: At Marni, Francesco Risso continues to embody the poetry and panic of an unsettled generation. There is always a dystopian bonhomie to his clothes and their unveiling. Since taking over the creative direction of the house since Consuelo Castaglioni stepped down in 2016, Risso has curated a diverse club of fans immersed in poetry, punk and play. A reach towards youthfulness isn’t a new concept but we live in unprecedented times where the young are tackling global issues head on. Risso sets up his shows as political drama. Guests entered the show space via huge silver tubes, clutching trippy invitations mimicking sheets of LSD. Dancers modelled the clothes under a canopy of laser beams, stopping in mid- flow: clubbers revelling in stillness.

Team work: the show notes began with a poem: A call from Prince Prospero. ‘Let’s dance/Let’s dance ‘til the end of love/ Let’s dance our best days away./ Let’s dance to keep the abyss at bay./ Let’s dance until everything changes./ Until fashion flows, in a blow.’ Risso alluded to Edgar Allan Poe’s tale The Masque of the Red Death in which the Prince attempts to avoid a plague by hiding in his abbey along with other wealthy nobles. There he hosts a wild masquerade ball. ‘This was just a dance that takes us to the end and the beginning of love,’ Risso said of the staging which was choreographed by artist Michele Rizzo. ‘It is not about death, it is about love. It’s a movement that allows you to be a propeller. Ideas of rave culture and how it is an escape – it somehow represents a sort of pause in time. I just loved every second of working with Michele. We were locked in a room together with the music and the clothes. This is what I really treasure about human connection. It is real.’

Sound bite: The models wore upturned hybrids, trapped in a never-ending party. Padded polka dot coats were lined in faux shearling. Window pane check trousers slung low. Oversize padded coats with laminated lapels came with frayed edges. Leather pants, matted knits hacked together. LSD happy face repeat prints on trousers were made to look like phases of an eclipsing moon. Coats were spliced. ‘In the days whilst we were making the collection I kept thinking about Price Prospero who locked himself up with millions of friends and danced away. This was our court, dancing to the end of love,’ the designer said backstage, ‘expressing the persistence of time and the beauty of what is remaining.’

Today, millions of people around the world have marched from school and the workplace to protest against today’s climate change crisis. The environment is a pressing issue in fashion – claimed to be the world’s second most polluting industry – and for S/S 2020, designers have demonstrated their awareness for change. In London, Phoebe English’s presentation was shown against a corkboard backdrop, pinned with sustainable fabric swatches and details on eco manufacturers and processes. In Milan on Wednesday, Arthur Arbesser presented patchwork suits and dresses made with swatches from his own archive.

Across news coverage today, images of children hopefully carrying placards feature, emblazoned with naive and idealised images of nature, like felt tip plants and animals. They bear parallels to the set design of Marni’s S/S 2020 show today, which featured a jungle of childlike trees growing within a vast industrial space, with hand-painted bark and jutting comic-like leaves made from recycled plastic, designed in collaboration with the Berlin artist Judith Hopf.As brands become more sustainability-minded, we begin to question the role of the ornately constructed and overblown runway set. After such spectacles in recent seasons, press releases have worked to ensure journalists that set design soil has been donated, or trees have been replanted in an environmentally friendly fashion. It’s a concept Marni creative director Francesco Risso has had on his mind for S/S 2020. His men’s show venue resembled an eerie underwater scene, with guests looking up through the surface of the ocean into a waste-clogged world, awash with plastic water bottles and milk cartons. His tropical S/S 2020 women’s set reused already-upcycled elements from his men’s show venue, along with cardboard and environmentally-friendly paints.

‘This is our joyous protest. I’m striking in my own way,’ Risso explained backstage after Marni’s S/S 2020 show, barefoot with tribal paint streaks on his cheeks. ‘The collection marks a new beginning for us’. The set spoke of promise, of things discarded, reused and transformed. ‘It was so beautiful watching old bottles become beautiful leaves,’ Risso added. At first glance, it also had an oddly uneasy note, a hint of a future natural world with synthetic elements. ‘The set is about how we think about those things we have already around us,’ Hopf explains. ‘There is no utopia or dystopia behind this concept – it follows the conceptions of diversity and difference in imagination.’

‘This is our joyous protest. I’m striking in my own way’ – Francesco Risso

As brands become more sustainability-minded, we begin to question the role of the ornately constructed and overblown runway set. After such spectacles in recent seasons, press releases have worked to ensure journalists that set design soil has been donated, or trees have been replanted in an environmentally friendly fashion. It’s a concept Marni creative director Francesco Risso has had on his mind for S/S 2020. His men’s show venue resembled an eerie underwater scene, with guests looking up through the surface of the ocean into a waste-clogged world, awash with plastic water bottles and milk cartons. His tropical S/S 2020 women’s set reused already-upcycled elements from his men’s show venue, along with cardboard and environmentally-friendly paints.

‘This is our joyous protest. I’m striking in my own way,’ Risso explained backstage after Marni’s S/S 2020 show, barefoot with tribal paint streaks on his cheeks. ‘The collection marks a new beginning for us’. The set spoke of promise, of things discarded, reused and transformed. ‘It was so beautiful watching old bottles become beautiful leaves,’ Risso added. At first glance, it also had an oddly uneasy note, a hint of a future natural world with synthetic elements. ‘The set is about how we think about those things we have already around us,’ Hopf explains. ‘There is no utopia or dystopia behind this concept – it follows the conceptions of diversity and difference in imagination.’

In her inspirations, Hopf nods to Jean Dubuffet and David Hockney and the ‘Fauvist artistic patterns used by Risso and his team’. For spring, the creative director looked to freeing draped shapes, in cotton and taffeta, infused with 1950s couture shapes, like gently poufing skirts, asymmetric dresses with ribbon tied backs and sarong skirts. ‘The women became plant bulbs or pieces of coral,’ Risso explains, of the pieces which were made from upcycled archive materials and hand painted with exotic brushstroke florals. ‘They’re like tree huggers!’

‘We worked with Judith and in the studio with multiple hands, like elves and creatures,’ Risso added. The image of people working together to find creative solutions is particularly prescient today, when millions of people have put their hands in the air, in the hope of change. 

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Mood board: Creative Director Francesco Risso encourages poetic rebellion with his unflinching collections; his S/S 20 offering examines how disillusionment can become positive energy: ‘It’s not political to me, it’s more humanistic,’ he said. ‘It’s up to us to make a stand and that’s why I like this sort of initiation ritual.’ Guests stood under a blanket of single use plastic; the spliced soundtrack gave off the improv feeling of a world being reordered. Risso’s dress code was camouflage verses carnival. The clothes were clashed and jumbled. Military shapes smacked into tropicana, camo slashed into field jackets. Trousers were patchworked and buttoned, sleeves bunched up. Slippers were made from off-cuts left over from production. Painterly plastic bottles were rendered across the collection. ‘Even the prints reflect a nature, the nature that we live in today, a corrupted nature. I was thinking about the Fauvists and how they would paint incredible beauties but in a savage way.’

Team work: Georgian artist Shalva Nikvashvili – known for re-appropriating found objects and waste materials into masks – made a series of ‘wedding hats,’ stapling and gluing together pieces of cardboard, feathers and fur. Silver brooches were by Kazuma Nagai, whom Risso met on a trip to Japan. Originally from Kanagawa-ken, a coastal Prefecture just south of Tokyo, Nagai studied graphic design and taught himself metalwork. His pieces have a mystical style which manifests in cosmic fairy-like creatures. For Marni he has worked on a series of metamorphic animal pins; a monkey becomes a fish, or a daisy chain merges with a crocodile. ‘It’s about transforming what we have,’ Risso said. They’re clinging onto his clothes for dear life, whether by claw, paw or fin.  

Scene setting: The guests all stood on red spots as the models walked though a channel of yellow ones, the portentous cloud of plastic hovering above: ‘I didn’t want to produce a set, this is us together, standing up shoulder to shoulder,’ Risso said. ‘This is the result of months of collecting plastic from many sources including waste and the ocean and the studio. Now this is going to be a process where this nightmare becomes an order in the second act.’ The bottles are going to be made into new objects, transformed by the German artist Judith Hopf. ‘I’m making the nightmare and she’s making the order.’

Mood board: ‘Follow what the hormones suggest to you, sabotage every behaviour and misdirect respectability’, read the directive show notes to Francesco Risso’s A/W 2019 collection. He was preoccupied by the game we play in our heads, running from our unbridled, erotic thoughts. For autumn, he suggested, we should all be embracing these internal notions head on and ‘do away with respectability and censorship.’ Shapes were diced and reinterpreted, bourgeois pleated skirts ruched asymmetrically, coats spliced at the shoulder, dresses formed from a patchwork of silks, draped, pleated and with only one shirt collar. Colours clashed in black, white, orange and pink. Prints were pixelated with houndstooth patchwork.

Scene setting: The vast industrial show space on Via Privata Giovanni Ventura was split into a series of interconnected rooms, varying in size and seating. Each was like a representation of the inner chambers of the brain, and the antithetical thoughts upon which Risso ruminated. In one room, a wall was made entirely of stacked speakers, amplifying his vision, and symbolically turning up the volume on our internal contemplation.

Best in show: The spliced and reconstructed dresses were particularly strong, and subverted notions of the sophisticated silks on display. Chain belts were bourgeois, but on closer inspection their links, constructed from padlocks and mismatched metals, had a punkier sensibility.

Mood board: The work that Francesco Risso is doing for Marni feels like a mirror of the times. Its tribal eccentricity chimes with the current mood for a more fluid, polyglot, personal style. In London this spirit is there in the artisanal ambisexuality of Charles Jeffery. The sex of Mowalola Ogunlesi. The modish trompe-l'œil of Stefan Cooke and the unfurled masculinity of Per Götesson. In Milan, the arrival of Risso’s off-beat approach stands out. Away from the formal sartorial codes and well-crafted, purposeful proportions, Marni is a force of fresh, wild abandon. For the coming season, the designer explored the youth of today – the pluralities of their lives, lived through multiple apps and across many cities. This translated into a host of playfully nutty clothes.

Best in show: Allegro Non Troppo – Bruno Bozzetto’s 1976 animated parody of Walt Disney's Fantasia – influenced the clashing sensuality and energy of the season. Colourful, dreamy frames from the film were magnified and printed across the front of wide-collar shirts and crushed silk pyjama tops. Patchwork prints, nubby bouclé coats and moleskin jackets and trousers had bold proportions; they were classic in their relative conservatism.

Finishing touches: Mohair striped sweaters worn as twin-sets, pastel puffa jackets with zip-up sides, misaligned pinstripes, synthetic reptile patterns. Baggy pony skin pants. Foamy neoprene suits. Banana sock boots! Padlocks, mitten flasks and chains. This line taken from the poem presented to showgoers summed up Risso’s foresight: ‘A tangle of neurons, antiphons, emotions/They protest for everything and wear notions./One becomes the other, the other becomes one, nobody is ever alone under the sun.’ It was a carnival of contemporary chic. 

Scene setting: Since Francesco Risso took the creative helm of Marni in October 2016, we’ve had runway sets evoking junk filled storage cupboards and exercise ball-filled underground gymnasiums. For spring, Risso had frazzled editors fantasising about a Sunday lie-in, with a show set lined with an array of single and double beds. When sat amongst the duvets and pillows in retro blues and browns, the collection provided a well needed pick me up.

Mood board: Risso’s collections reflect an eclectic amalgam of references. His woman is one who collects trinkets and wisps of fabrics, who wears hybrid garments and has the ability to transcend time and space in search of stylish silhouettes. His S/S 2019 show notes came in the form of a recipe, with schizophrenic ingredients like ‘Ancient Greece marble, at will’, ‘Sharp angles’ and ‘White painter’s canvas, in rolls’. This translated into a whimsical collection of deconstructed corsets and ruched skirts, colourful photo prints of Greek statues and busts, skirts with hems trailing with threads, beads and crystals and coats painted with pansies. It was feminine and flattering, off-kilter and eccentric, and a wonderful summation of the myriad Marni woman.

Finishing touches: Risso refines his catwalk jewellery offering each season, and the ancient Greek statues seen in his ready-to-wear prints were translated into artful 3D earrings and necklaces. Miniature torso statues, imagined not in museum-centric marble but in colourful metals hung from the ear or swung as pendants from the neck, like futuristic versions of artefacts found on historical digs.

Mood board: There’s debate to be had about what ‘cool’ might look like in such egalitarian times; is it in the throb of the queue outside Supreme waiting for the latest drop? Is it sat on the conglomerate, curated front rows of Paris? Virgil Abloh’s rise from self-proclaimed ‘image architect’ to creative director at Louis Vuitton and Demna Gvasalia’s ascent via his twisted archetypes to the helm of Balenciaga are the kind of moves that have changed the landscape of the industry. Cleverly marketed, recognisable clothes are the new normal. With their confident, breezy take on dressing, Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo have added something new to the vocabulary of modern Italian fashion with their label Sunnei. Light safari suiting with fluid cargo trousers, elongated crotch pants with mini kick flare and dropped shoulder hoodies were all presented with a subtle pomp.

Best in show: Since 2015 the label has slowly become a quiet highlight of the Milan men’s schedule. With no formal training in fashion (Loris studied Marketing while Rizzo studied Business Management, later completing a Master’s degree in Digital Media Management) they are self-taught, savvy marketers, which is fitting for our times. Their youthful, unpretentious style is a welcome break from the slew of sportswear tailoring and over-designed, over-logoed clothes elsewhere. The S/S 2019 show, they said, was inspired by the innocence and wide-eyed wonder of ‘a boy or girl visiting the Piazza Duomo for the first time’; the clichés of Milanese fashion are never far from the mood board and the duo make sure to subvert our preconceptions about Italian style. ‘This is what we would like to become, who we were before and who we were in the 90s,’ Rizzo said of the look, which included multi stripe knits, graphic striped camo windcheaters and baggy dungarees.

Scene setting: The venue for the show was the 31st floor of Gio Ponti’s Pirelli tower, a wide open piazza with concrete pillars and bold, curved central pod made of double cambered glass at the centre. The show saw the unveiling of a new womenswear line too which riffed on the cuts and prints of the menswear: ‘We don’t want to see it as a ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s’ collection,’ Rizzo said. ‘We needed to start something new, to explore categories.’

Mood board: The show notes to Marni’s S/S 2019 menswear show began with this mind-boggling sentence: ‘Imagining Olympics that are imagined imagining.’ This is the charm of creative director Francesco Risso, who joined the brand in 2016 and has since become known for his esoteric, Daliesque approach. The focus of the collection was on the physical, but far from being an ode to the proliferation of sportswear lux that has taken over menswear, Risso characteristically looked the other way, employing a more surreal, playful interpretation of the theme. ‘Being conscious and proud of your body, regardless of your flaws is a great achievement. I was inspired by the elegance and the naivety of the sport attires of the past which represent to me the essence of masculinity in sports and I reinterpreted them putting a dream filter on it,’ Risso said. The clothes were therefore mashed up archetypes of sports uniforms; cricket, tennis, athletics, fight, golf, football, racing, all reassembled and reimagined. Stand out were two hulking, padded bombers in vintage prints that zipped together to form hybrid, screwball styles.

Scene setting: Last season Risso set up the brand’s showroom like a surrealist scrap yard as we perched on vintage radiators, bumper cars and soft toys. This show was held deep inside the sweltering car park of the Torre Velasca, a residential brutalist towerblock in the centre of Milan – guests sat attentively on bright green yoga balls, bobbing up and down as a soundtrack of aggressive ping pong set the scene for what was to be a surreal, sensual riff on sportswear. Ultravox’s post-punk ‘I Want to Be a Machine’ blared out, splicing the thick atmosphere with its new wave optimism and soul.

Team work : The erotic, abstract photographs by Berlin-based artist Florian Hetz were enlarged and placed onto the front of varsity t-shirts and patch-worked into short-sleeve shirts. Formal illustrated portraits and heraldic symbols taken from a two-hundred-year old scrapbook were printed onto striped shirts and shorts; American painter Betsy Podlach’s sensual, poetical nudes, often in repose, were seen on short, wide-leg trousers and nubby dressing gown coats.

Scene setting: ‘The set was about putting order into chaos,’ explained Francesco Risso backstage after his third women’s catwalk show at the creative helm of Marni. This was a runway set that followed on from the men’s show space in January – a scrapyard-inspired setup strewn with bags of flour, dodgem cars and oil drums. This scene evoked a more ordered storage facility, stacked with piles of newspapers, plastic wrapped duvet covers, bags of soil, breeze blocks and tyres. Guests perched on coils of foam, tablecloths and sandbags as seating. ‘It was about bringing control into this waste of stuff,’ Risso said.

Mood board: The clothing also reflected a desire to bring things into order. Risso referred to his obsession with creating things in an ‘elementary’ way, citing Sherlock Holmes and the process of uniting leads and influences, bringing technology and primitivism into a unified whole. Colourful overcoats and silk dresses spliced together from different fabrics with trailing hems in Risso’s DIY signature, forties dresses in a kaleidoscopic patchwork of sequins, long shiny anoraks, colours and garments layered on top of each other. ‘Each garment is built through an elementary construction’ Risso explained. ‘The bust, the sleeve or the skirt is stitched an elementary way.’

Finishing touches: Risso referred to his designs as ‘noble armour’ and his jewellery pieces also acted as a colourful and mishmash form of protection. Stacks of chunky bangles layered over ribbed polo necks, chokers in coils of gold or hammered metal, hoop earrings resembling polo mints or tiny car tyres, and gold studs with long streams of feathers which fluttered down the backs of models like colourful wings.

Francesco Risso, the newish creative director at Marni, has brought a skittish, almost feral eclecticism to the 24-year-old Italian house, which suits his own boyish charm – all messy hair, clashing prints and a big smile. Once known for hardworking, vaguely conceptual separates, rendered in off-beat prints and hues – and favoured by women who care as much about being taken seriously as a professional as they do about looking fashionable – Marni is now offering a more youthful, broken-down look. Think scraggy furs, baggy skate pants, frayed edges, dishevelled suiting. Show sets have featured metres and metres of scaffolding, while invitations have come with fabric and thread. The message? This is a work in progress.

Tellingly, Risso began his design journey customising clothes. ‘I never liked to wear things as they were, I had to somehow cut a piece out of it or change it. I still do that,’ he says over coffee in Milan, where he lives. ‘My boyfriend sometimes finds cut-up pieces at home, or hems on the floor, sleeves discarded. I can never feel comfortable unless I have made something my own. I was always like that – there was a time where I also attacked my family’s wardrobes, tearing up my sisters’ clothes and my mother’s clothes.’

Some saw his appointment at Marni as a similar act of destruction. There were disgruntled whispers about the fate of founder Consuelo Castiglioni, who left the house in late 2016, and the decision of Renzo Rosso, president of the OTB Group, which owns Marni, to bring in an outsider from Prada to disrupt one of fashion’s best-loved family businesses. Reviews so far have been mixed. ‘I had some strange criticism at the beginning, but I think it is honourable,’ says Risso. ‘This family has kept this thing going in a successful way for so many years, so it’s honourable for people to stand up for it.’

A cheerful soul, who is as obsessed with stories as he is clothes, Risso has no desire to flip the house on its head with an aesthetic U-turn. To most, Marni is synonymous with ‘intellectual’ fashion. Risso is keen that this shouldn’t change. ‘Consuelo was trying to make pieces of clothing that would stand out from common stereotypes – this is as important to me. My method starts from a narrative, and with any narrative there are meanings and layers of meaning. It can be naïve but at the same time really conceptual. For example, for S/S18 menswear, the title of the collection was Lost and Found, and it was talking about this boy finding himself through finding objects in a metropolitan environment – in that sense, it’s intellectual.’

As the ‘Lost Boys’ story suggests, Risso favours whimsical inspirations. That menswear show all began with a photo he spotted on Instagram of a 1930s young man, with scrawled writing over it reading, ‘A rich boy falling off the hill’. It got him thinking about narcolepsy and Gus Van Sant’s 1991 film My Own Private Idaho – he thought of River Phoenix’s character suffering episodes and waking up on the street wearing a new piece of clothing that someone had put over him, hence the layered, mismatched mood.

The S/S womenswear collection, his fourth runway collection for the house, was similarly esoteric. ‘I wanted to really connect with beauty and the appreciation of how things are made. I was trying to tell a story about this woman who would find objects in a house and would appreciate things that came from different generations and then she would unravel them and put that on herself.’

The focus on beauty and craft was something of a backlash against the casual mood of current fashion; the ‘extraordinary ordinary’, as he calls it. He’s adamant that people, especially younger generations, want something tangible, and he’s keen for Marni to provide that. ‘I see in kids the need for connection – something more than being social media-connected. They want to have an experience. They want something real. Marni has this incredible story with the Marni markets [travelling pop-ups with cross-generational products] and that has brought about incredible social interactions – with people and families and kids. I would love to find new projects that allow each space we have to generate that kind of interaction.’

It’s a good moment for Italian fashion, given the buzz around new appointments and rebooted houses. ‘Five years ago, Milan was the most boring place in the world,’ Risso says. ‘There is a great new energy. The city has really made a big change in terms of what art is offering, what creativity is offering. It seems that people would rather come here than Paris or London.’

It’s a turning point in Milan as well as at Marni, I volunteer. ‘Yes,’ he smiles. To Risso, fashion is all about the new and the fresh – ideas unhindered by planning or questioning. ‘Almost like a Dadaist, where everything was put together through intuition,’ he says. ‘I like the playfulness of Marni. And I like the idea of seeing things through the eye of a younger person – sometimes even the eye of a child – it makes the objects simpler, and more naïve, and more alive.’

As originally featured in the March 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*228)

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We hear more and more that the younger generations are less interested in purchasing and owning things. They prefer to spend their money on experiences. Self-improving holidays, culture, live performances, eating out, eating in, yoga retreats, hiking Machu Picchu. While forensically documenting it all on social media of course. This naturally has been sending shock waves through the luxury industries. If this continues, soon nobody will be buying their products – no matter how good they are or how seductive their marketing campaigns.

But I beg to differ. I really don’t see that the love of experiences is at odds with the appreciation of well-designed, well-made goods. They are far from mutually exclusive. The stuff that surrounds the experience is still significant, if not more so. The enjoyment of a good wine is enhanced by the experience of drinking it from fine glassware. The rustle of tissue paper when you take out a new pair of socks is a pleasurable experience. Quality luggage – that should last a lifetime – makes your journey that much more pleasurable and, like your favourite watch or piece of jewellery, with time will be imbued with meaningful memories.

The best stores, the bricks and mortar sort, now offer their own sort of experiential high; part art gallery, lecture hall, social space but always dedicated to enhancing the act of retail consummation.

Of course, we all now understand the endorphin surge, the quick chemical hit, of buying stuff. ‘Unboxing’ videos go viral as we enjoy the vicarious thrill of watching other people unpeel the packaging off buried treasures. And Apple and others have redefined the art and science of cellophane and cardboard boxes, given them extraordinary levels of care and attention. But the best brands, their designers, makers and craftsmen, know that a great product has to keep delivering on an experiential level, to become part of the way we do things and enjoy things, change our behaviours and enhance our experiences.

I’m optimistic about the future of the businesses and industries that we continue to champion in Wallpaper*. This more thoughtful, well-educated and conscientious consumer is a good thing. They may well buy a little less, but they’ll be buying better. Less but better, to quote Dieter Rams, is the way forward.

Tony Chambers, Brand & Content Director

As originally featured in the March 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*228)

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The March 2018 issue of Wallpaper* is out now. Subscribe here

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Poster art: Loewe loves a poster-themed invitation, so for its S/S 2018 men’s presentation, the Madrid-based label opted for a fold-out of a model lounging by a pool at Salvador Dalí’s house in Cadaqués, Catalonia. The poster, part of the brand’s spring lookbook, was created in collaboration with graphic design studio and regular collaborators M/M Paris. Just like the windows of a home, it featured sleek rectangular cutouts. 

Home comforts: Designers were keeping house for S/S 2018, with a series of invitations revelling in domestic bliss. Anya Hindmarch’s came complete with a branded bar of soap, while Miu Miu’s was lined with a layer of sponge – what chicer tools for kitchen chores? More study-focused, Chalayan’s women’s invitation came complete with a pink Post-it note and JuunJ’s with a white collar. Dries Van Noten’s menswear invitation was printed with a retro office interior, boasting an old IBM computer.

True romance: In London, a host of show invitations nodded to nostalgia. Burberry’s featured an image by Dafydd Jones, of two students at the Magdalen Commemoration Ball at Oxford University in 1988, lying in formal clothing on the grass. Simone Rocha’s fold-out included two machine stitched-red figures with gothic trailing threads. Also otherworldly, the invitation to Thom Browne’s women’s show in Paris featured a card with a hand written poem speculating on the possibilities of dreams.

Feeling blue: The hue du jour during Paris men’s, blue accents were seen across the city’s invitations. At Louis Vuitton, an inky stripe completed the brand’s luggage-tag-inspired offering. At Yohji Yamamoto, a transparent black envelope encased a paper concertina printed with various global typescripts, which folded from a piece of sky blue card.

Box of tricks: Gucci presented its show attendees with a metal tin inspired by old pharmacy boxes. Its lid featured a mythical illustration taken from a German alchemical manuscript from the early 1700s, and opened to reveal a sheet of branded, chemist-inspired wrapping paper. Concealed inside? A thread holder, aromatic paper, five candles and a packet of matches. Talk about a hot ticket!

Bookworms: During the Paris womens’ shows, designers encouraged front rowers to engage in a spot of light reading or doodling. At Yohji Yamamoto, a yellow paged notepad was bound in plastic; at Hermès, guests were treated to a booklet listing the components of the brand’s 46 catwalk looks and a poem penned by Jarvis Cocker called ‘Hermès Colours’.

Orient express: Designers looked to Japan for their menswear show invitation inspirations. Take Paul Smith, which mailed guests a scaly plastic fish inscribed with Japanese typography. Or Emporio Armani, who printed an inky Oriental floral pattern onto its fabric-covered invitation. At Lanvin, guests kept themselves cool with a polka dot fan.

Band aid: Brands bought the entrance cues of music venues to the catwalk. From lanyards at Fendi and Versus, and barcoded tickets at Vetements, to sticky yellow wristbands at Marques’Almeida, we’d never felt more like we were with the band.

Hole in one: Designers brought cutouts to their catwalk invitations. Take the circular punches in Craig Green’s offering, evoking the hole motifs in his menswear designs, or the undulating curves in the Akris invitation, which nodded to a plywood sculpture by Alexander Girard (an inspiration behind the brand’s women’s collection). Or the circle cutout of a surreal horizon at Dirk Bikkembergs, and a viewfinder-like chink in the invitation for Natacha Ramsay-Levi’s debut for Chloé. Talk about making the cut!

Material world: Folds of fabrics acted as keepsake invitations. For Dries Van Noten’s women’s show and Luke and Lucie Meier’s debut at Jil Sander, the designers opted for subtle cream shades of fabric, printed with bold black typography. Marni’s women’s invitation featured a fold-out handkerchief finished with messy loops of thread, while Carven’s came with a pouting beaded fish. At Rick Owens’ women’s show, a scarf was printed with an illustration of a futurist sculpture by Thayaht, while at Tsatsas, the German accessories brand created a fabric invitation printed with an image of a rusty shipping liner.

Touch points: Textures were of top importance for S/S 2018, with Saint Laurent and Giorgio Armani opting for invitations in sumptuous leather – a white calfskin envelope for the former’s women’s show, and a tan leather invitation for the latter’s men’s offering. At Marni’s menswear show, creative director Francesco Risso favoured a tactile invitation printed on corrugated cardboard.

Clear view: Brands both emerging and established opted for invitations encased in cellophane. Kiko Kostadinov used a press stud to fasten a white strip of paper inside a glossy sheer plastic envelope. For Prada’s men’s show, the brand enclosed a white cardboard sleeve for a ‘Draft Novel’ inside a clear tearable pouch.

Left, coat, €1,365, by Dirk Bikkembergs. Jumper, £350; trousers, £295, both by Coach. Shoes, £2,092, by Raf Simons. Socks (worn throughout), £15, by Falke. Right, jacket, £760; roll-neck, £135, both by Paul Smith. Trousers, £295, by Coach. Belt, £230, by Marni. Shoes, £710, by Prada. Fashion: Jason Hughes. As originally featured in the September 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*222)

At just 23, Anders Hayward has already fit three careers under his beautifully buckled belt. Among his many talents, the dancer, model and experimental choreographer has the rare ability to turn a hectic fashion shoot into a carefully orchestrated waltz.

For our September 2017 Style Special, we tapped Hayward to direct the movement for a menswear fashion shoot photographed by Liam Warwick, in which we celebrate clashing checks and plucky plaids. Creating a sense of movement beneath all these juxtaposing Prada, Calvin Klein and Salvatore Ferragamo patterns was essential. ‘During the styling process, I chose thematic movements that I felt would suit the clothes,’ Hayward explains, ‘I’m interested in designers that create clothes for characters – I enjoy creating fashion narratives.’

Game to become the leading men were our models, Georges Labbat and Baptiste Faure – despite their differing levels of dance experience. Labbat was the perfect match for Hayward, having trained in Belgium under intensely musical choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. But Anders enjoys the surprise and (sometimes inelegant) quirks that come from working with models with minimal formal dance training, like Faure. ‘It’s great to see a model who has never really been choreographed before come out with some really interesting, organic movement. On the other side I love pushing more experienced dancers, like Labbat, to move in ways that they’re not necessarily familiar with.’

Hayward also grappled with a sculptural set and an eclectic mix of refined furniture – including pieces from Aram, B&B Italia and Rodolfo Dordoni. ‘I had sketches and blueprints of what the space was going to look like before, so I had a few ideas in mind – especially for the image with the two boys in the circle,’ says Hayward. ‘We found that it worked best if they were constantly moving. When the two were in constant flow, I could just tweak a hand movement, a shoe placement, or the flourish of a lapel.’

Though we’re only treated to the static, freeze-framed result, the arching backs, awkward necks and stretching fingers of each model capture Hayward’s momentum-filled choreography – while proving one can do impressive backbends in a tailored Fendi suit.

Left, coat, £1,560; top, £780; trousers, £620, all by Calvin Klein 205W39NCY. Right, coat, £1,825; trousers (part of suit), price on request, both by Salvatore Ferragamo. Roll-neck, £155, by John Smedley. Belt, £310; shoes, £710, both by Prada. ‘Pollock’ armchair, £1,755, by Charles Pollock, for Knoll, from The Conran Shop. ‘Cesar’ side table, £808, by Rodolfo Dordoni, for Minotti

There’s renewed verve in catwalk jewellery. Giant diamanté earrings, with all the glisten and gleam of a mirrorball, are the showstoppers this season. Scale is key – the performance aspect of the catwalk requires some theatricality in the jewellery. Lanvin’s over-long strands of diamanté tumbled from the ear like a waterfall, cascading in a fringe, from a bar that reached all the way across the lobe. At Saint Laurent, traditional cuts – round, emerald, baguette – were blown way out of proportion in off-kilter danglers, referencing the glamour of the 1980s. Marni altered the tone with a figurative take: mixed gold and blackened metal gave an antique chandelier effect when clashed with voluminous white paste floral motifs. Chanel, riffing on its classic Maltese cross designs in sizeable white metal pavé frames, displayed a lighter touch but that didn’t make its earrings any less bold and brilliantly playful, as the best catwalk jewellery design should be.

As originally featured in the April 2017 issue of Wallpaper (W*217)

Back in 1989, Issey Miyake began making revolutionary, lightweight, wrinkle-free pleated fabrics by feeding cut and sewn designs through a heat press. The innovative Japanese brand's fabric manipulations continue to inspire, forming a strong presence on this season's catwalks. At Jil Sander, the precise, narrow pleats of shirt-dresses were softened by voluminous cocoon sleeves, while at Loewe, Jonathan Anderson finished pleated dresses in sandy hues with shawl-fringed graphic ruffles, and Consuelo Castiglioni's final show for Marni updated chiton-like shapes with colour-blocked pastels and asymmetric sleeves. Meanwhile, celebrating its own wrinkle-free heritage, Issey Miyake's Yoshiyuki Miyamae created accordion-pleated jackets, cut and pasted to form sculpted concentric shapes.

As originally featured in the March 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*216)

INFORMATION
The newspaper section of our March issue was shot at the Uphill House, designed by Robert Dye Architects. See more of the house here

Mood board: Francesco Risso, former womenswear designer at Prada, has just been handed the creative director reins at Marni. It's a big upgrade for the Milan-based Risso who now will not only oversee men’s and womenswear collections but also the creative stewardship for the entire brand. Risso showed he has just the right chops with his debut men’s show, where he maintained the beloved brand's signature quirk while also ruffling a few feathers with the use of scribbles, stripes, messy fur, and undisciplined brushstrokes on his off-kilter but still oddly wearable line up.

Best in show: Risso's preferred silhouette of boys lost in big clothes was one he favours himself and one that looks just right. Oversized flooded pants came cinched at the waist with nubby beautifully knit sweaters. Also notable were the plaid numbers, crafted into woven wool coats and shirts or patchworked into an intarsia checkerboard of rich fur.

Finishing touches: The models wore dainty, delicate crossbody purses covered in a thicket of fur, as well as huge colourful striped furry hats, giving the vague effect of Davy Crockett meeting Cat in the Hat at a rave. It worked. The shoes, meanwhile, were all clunky soft -ole trainers, perfect for creeping around the streets.

Mood board: Huge volumes blew over the runway at Marni, where Consuelo Castiglioni distorted the female shape and at the same time heightened it. Huge architectural shoulders created a new structure for the body while waists were severely cinched and loaded with enormous fanny packs that ballooned up to the size of rucksacks.

Best in show: This was a bold, arty show that offered Marni's more intellectual side. The best pieces tiptoed that conceptual line with the brand's signature feminine quirk. There was an exceptional series of three dresses, for example, crafted from printed canvas that were gathered irregularly at the waist and crusted in a shower of brilliant sequins.

Finishing touches: Shoes next season are sloping, extremely pointed toe affairs with big wedge block heels. But the coolest extra on these women were their mismatched earrings, dangling from one ear and the other in the quirky beauty for which Marni is known and loved.

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans

Thirty minutes south of Milan’s centre, where the city’s grey cobblestoned streets suddenly turn into wet, green farmland, lies a big warehouse in a small speck of a town, that is filled top-to-toe with magical leftovers of Italy’s great post-war design boom.

The warehouse, and its marvellous stash of midcentury furniture, lighting and mirrors, has little in the way of signage and does not obey proper business hours. Like many of Italy’s best finds, it is run by an elusive man named Mario who may or may not want to do business with you, even if you’re a dealer. If you’re a private client without a recommendation, you’re definitely out of luck.

‘It took a while to get in here,’ laughs architect Federico Ferrari, who first discovered the warehouse seven years ago, befriended slippery Mario, and now makes his way around the cluttered space with his wife Carolina Castiglioni as if it were his own home. ‘We come all the time. But you need to have the eye to scout here.’

Neither Ferrari nor Castiglioni has a problem on that front. Castiglioni, the daughter of Marni creative director Consuelo Castiglioni, is the Milan-based brand’s current director of special projects. She oversees, among many other activities, its design products, all made by artisans in Colombia. Ferrari, who studied at London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture, is a real-estate developer who works on refurbishment projects across Europe. A year and a half ago, he launched his own furniture company, Edizioni, with two partners, Alberto and Paolo Sala.

Ferrari and Castiglioni’s creative work is completely independent, yet the couple share an obsession with design. ‘I find design more fun than fashion to be honest,’ Castiglioni admits with a shy laugh. ‘It’s my hobby. It truly is. At night I love looking for furniture online. I don’t do that with clothes!’

Mario’s warehouse, meanwhile, provides a shared point of connection for the couple, not to mention an endless source of home furnishings for their Milan apartment. Here, they scored a worn out Osvaldo Borsani couch that they re-covered in green wool (Mario also had a quantity of original Techno fabric laying around), two 1950s blue velvet Italian armchairs and a 1950s black lacquer dining table with brass legs, as well as a Gio Ponti desk, the provenance of which they serendipitously discovered post-purchase.

‘We really gravitate towards the same things,’ says Castiglioni. ‘And here it’s like a treasure chest. It’s way more fun than any other shop. Mario’s fun. And the prices are good.’

But more than the hot home find, the warehouse offers endless inspiration for the pair’s separate design projects and symbolises the process each employs.

‘This place absolutely reflects how and where finished products and projects start,’ Ferrari explains. ‘Normally you see a glossy picture of everything perfectly done, but to arrive at a finished product where everyone says “wow”, you start at the low-profile, dusty warehouse.

‘Any project is a lot of work. You’re driving around in the fog in November and meeting with the metal worker, then the carpenter, negotiating it all. It’s all very hands on. And when Carolina does a project it’s the same thing – but half way around the world.’

Over the last five years, Marni’s collections of limited-edition, handmade, colourful furniture, presented at its refurbished 1920s factory space in Milan – in tandem with everything from Colombian dance lessons and exotic fruit shopping and juicing to robot assembly – have become some of the most entertaining and anticipated events during Salone del Mobile.

Marni’s design offshoot began with a simple collection of colourful woven chairs and has now grown to include indoor and outdoor armchairs, rocking chairs, love seats, tables, children’s chairs, giant animal sculptures, and benches. It is all midcentury in mood but coolly updated, while the bright, striped colours channel the controlled quirkiness of the brand’s fashion designs.

‘The whole project was born on a trip to Mexico several years ago with Federico,’ says Castiglioni, who frequently globetrots with her husband, from India to Brazil to Sri Lanka. ‘We kept seeing those woven, cone-shaped “Acapulco” chairs everywhere. They were so Marni. My mom loved them.’

Marni sends its design sketches and colour specifications to a group of local women and ex-prisoners in Colombia, who produce each piece by hand using iron frames and woven bands of PVC, creating a chic rattan effect. The one-off pieces are sold only during Salone del Mobile, in a limited run, with a portion of sales dedicated to various charities in Italy.

This year, Marni recreated a Bogotá fruit market, the Mercado de Paloquemao, in its Milan showroom (with fruit stands that doubled as chairs and tables). The true show-stopper, though, was the so-called Ballhaus production in which a troupe of Colombian performers in Marni skirts taught guests how to rock the cumbia, a local dance. New rocking chairs, with wooden legs, and standing lamps were presented, along with Marni dance skirts, which were all snapped up by a flurry of excited locals, Salone visitors and designers alike.

‘Many people have asked [to wholesale] the product, but this is a charity project,’ Castiglioni explains. ‘It’s nice that it lives for a very short period. It’s an artisan product in a limited run.’ Meanwhile, Edizioni was born with a product that Ferrari and his two partners couldn’t find anywhere else: fireplace accessories that looked right in a modern living environment, rather than a 19th-century villa. The result was Edizioni’s edgy fireplace screen, comprising an asymmetrical sheet of perforated brass, and a log holder that looks like a cool propeller. Since then, the range has expanded into a 16-piece collection of precise, well-edited tabletop items, small furniture accessories, mirrors and lighting design. Stand-outs include lamps that are composed of marble disc bases and metal cone shades with bronze and brass trim, and an adjustable nickel-coated table with a pietra serena (grey sandstone) base.

‘Edizioni is about small, complementary pieces that are affordable,’ explains Ferrari, who showed the brand’s second collection at Salone del Mobile this year. ‘It’s not about making a Gio Ponti couch, it’s about what to put next to the Gio Ponti couch.’

Still, Ferrari and his partners work with as much exactitude, and with many of the same craftsman, as Italy’s greatest midcentury furniture makers. ‘They’re all incredible craftsmen,’ Ferrari says of the web of artisans he uses throughout the country. ‘You discover a lot by going to the producers –the old ones have all worked for the best Italian companies of the last 50 years, from FontanaArte to Stilnovo. Talking to these guys, they know everything. They teach you.'

‘You need to discover them and know how to approach them,’ advises Ferrari. ‘It’s never through the front door. And trust me, they’re all grumpy!’

As originally featured in the September 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*210)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Marni website or the Edizioni Design website

Photography: Alberto Zanetti

Mood board: Key elements of hard-core nerd wear – i.e. heavy glasses, flood pants, cropped wide ties, geek fits on shrunken jackets – were all present on the Marni runway, bringing the Italian brand’s male equation quirkiness to an all time high for spring.

Best in show: Excellent knitwear appeared in traffic cone orange short-sleeved sweaters, colour blocked with green and white, and worn with navy cropped pants with hanging suspenders. The perfect topper coat materialised on this runway not to mention very cool Bermuda shorts with waist band air holes, paired with men’s shirting done in sporty sailor stripes.

Finishing touches: Marni’s shoes and eyewear are industry standards. This season glasses had half plastic rims only on the bottom rung, while ergonomic plastic shower sandals morphed back straps with a Birkenstock-like front buckle.

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans

Black looks: In the new season’s monochrome, Louis Vuitton, Jil Sander, and Kenzo (pictured clockwise from left) opted for sleek, jet-black invitations. Louis Vuitton’s was debossed with its iconic monogram pattern; Jil Sander sent a soft, matte invitation with the event details embossed in a contrasting shiny black; while Kenzo’s came in the form of a mock concert ticket

Antonio Marras: Like a paper matryoshka doll, the ever-playful invitation from Antonio Marras was a decidedly meta affair – an illustrated paper envelope within an envelope within an envelope and so forth eventually revealed show details

Dries Van Noten: London-based illustrator Gill Button hand-painted no less than 1,200 invitations for Dries Van Noten’s A/W womenswear show after being discovered by the Belgian designer on Instagram. The collection – and invitations – nod to Italian heiress and muse Luisa Casati

Pattern power: Fashion powerhouses Salvatore Ferragamo, Versace and Bally went big and bold for their womenswear outings in Milan, commanding our attention with a graphic array of patterned invitations

Iris van Herpen: On the other end of the spectrum, Dutch designer Iris van Herpen aroused our curiosity with a tiny, pea-sized glass vessel. With careful tinkering we were able to coax the presentation details out, printed inside on a thin, plastic tape

Dior Homme: This season, creative director Kris Van Assche dipped into Dior’s floral archive as well as a black-and-red plaid that wouldn’t go amiss on the hip skater crowd, who were foreshadowed on his poster invitation

Anya Hindmarch: The English designer announced her London womenswear show with a diabolically difficult, all-silver riff on a Rubik’s cube (a few frustrating/gratifying hours were admittedly spent attempting to solve it). Set designer Stuart Nunn later brought this motif to life on the runway, creating a backdrop of illuminated surfaces based on 8-bit graphics and Rubik’s cubes, of course

Gucci: We opened Gucci’s mysterious invitation box for its menswear show with baited breath. Inside, it revealed a striking trio of scientific glass slides each adorned with its own specimen from Alessandro Michele’s Gucci garden, including a snake and bumblebee (a nod to European nobility and Rome, where the Italian house is based and also where the insect is carved into buildings all over the city)

Monochrome medley: It was a simple matter of black and white for Salvatore Ferragamo, Margaret Howell, Neil Barrett and Aquazzura, who all posted boldly monochromatic invitations to our letterbox

Prada: As ever, the guarded Miuccia Prada revealed nothing ahead of her Milan show. Instead, we were left tantalised by an off-white paper booklet with a concertina binding, slipped in a ghostly, semi-translucent acetate envelope

Metal heads: A metallic trend emerged among this season’s invitations, including a delicate, gold foil iteration for Palm Angels’ menswear show (left) and a creased, silver foil backed by cardboard for jewellery label Ambush

Paul Smith: Keen-eyed, longtime followers of the eponymous British designer might have recognised the glossy, red apple motif that appeared on his womenswear invitations from London’s salon and Paris’ runway show. Sir Smith, in fact, had first used it in 1982 and his recent collection took a bite out of his past endeavours

Art and soul: The Technicolor brushstrokes were flying as Paul Smith, Marques’Almeida, Céline (poured tinted rubber technically), and Hermès all jumped on a painterly trend for their respective show invitations this season

Acne Studios: There was no telling what to expect from Acne Studios’ show thanks to its poster invitation, illustrated with two wildly different scenes. Were we in for a psychedelic romp in Paris or something more darkly seductive?

Rick Owens: The American designer announced both of his A/W Paris shows on matching, soft leather invitations

Givenchy: Riccardo Tisci heralded his show with a black-and-white poster pin-up, painted over with a powder pink hue

Material matters: Luxurious swathes of suede and felt won out many of the invitations this season, including (pictured, from top) Victoria Beckham, Marni, and Jimmy Choo

3.1 Phillip Lim: It was only fitting that the American designer would send out a boxed bamboo invitation with the show details printed inside on a glossy, lacquer-red duplex card, framed with a black border. As it turned out, his A/W outing was infused with plenty of references that included Japanese craft and kimonos

Fendi: The Italian house announced itself – quite literally – with a white duplex card featuring its name playfully adorned in a lemon yellow felt inside a comic speech bubble

1205: The elusive Paula Gerbase gave nothing away ahead of her menswear debut in London thanks to her minimalist acetate invitation

Zest sellers: Several houses heralded their shows with a bold tangerine or vivid orange, including (clockwise, from top left) Marques'Almeida's paint-streaked offering; MSGM's fabric-pressed card; Miu Miu's soft suede invitation; and Carven's graphic poster

Edun: The label adorned its womenswear invitation, the runway and closing looks of the show with a design from Ethiopian Grammar by artist Wosene Worke Kosrof. The Ethiopian sculptor/painter is best known for his interpretations of Aramaic script; here, he conjured a pastiche of phrases like 'mother love' and blended it with the Amharic alphabet on duplex card

Mood board: With a swish and a swash, Marni’s spring collection came floating down the runway with multiple panels of beautifully coloured and intriguingly cut layers of sturdy wool crepe. The inventive constructions were architectural-like in their linear, perfectly-curved lines but this terrific collection also managed to have a heart-thumping soul to it. It pulsed with primary colours and felt speedy and raw.

Best in show: There was beauty everywhere you looked on the runway but the most impressive pieces were the sheaths of lace cut into silver-dollar sized dots that looked like giant, life-like pixelated screens. They came covered in brightly saturated colour blocks on a two-piece top and skirt, or cut into asymmetrical hems on a sheer black shirt worn with a cotton black shirt and knit vest.

Finishing touches: Flat, simple, square-shaped bags were cut from stop-light yellow, electric blue and grass green leather and were hinged on gold wire hanger-like claps that connected to leather straps. Also cool this season were the stacks of huge block bracelets in green, black or brown lacquer and the chunky puzzle like earrings.

INFORMATION
Photography: Jason Llody-Evans

The last time we witnessed tunics and trousers merrily co-mingling in the same ensemble it was back in the 1990s, via the 1960s. This time around, the silhouette has been elegantly elongated, thanks to ground-grazing trousers paired with knee-length dresses, or sleeveless coats chicly topping voluminous trousers.

Opt for a matching afair, as seen at Marni in felted mahogany wool, or a happy union of day and night, as per Rodolfo Paglialunga’s Jil Sander runway that saw a cashmere robe united with silk trousers. Pringle of Scotland worked the concept in supple suede, while Stefano Pilati’s kick-fared jumpsuit for Agnona was streamlined for the workplace with a sleeveless gilet composed of the softest cashmere strips.

Either way, bare arms are on view, heading of the problem of too much volume, as trouser hems come as exaggerated bootcuts or cuffed with a good 7cm turn-up. All told, it’s a look that couldn’t spell ’art crowd’ any clearer if it tried.

As originally featured in the September 2015 edition of Wallpaper* (W*198)

Fortified by its universally recognisable trait of quirky femininity, the luxury Italian label Marni enlarges its retail address book with a new flagship store on Milan's fashion-pampered via Montenapoleone.

The new Milanese boutique, generously spread over 310 sq m, architecturally mirrors the brand's visual identity by adopting a sober structure with eccentric accents. Comprised of two floors connected by a minimalist spiral staircase, the store emerges from a quaint courtyard like a rising cube. Contrast is well utilised throughout - from the space's immaculate white walls interjected with coloured marble to the dark geometric shapes randomly dispatched on the boutique’s floors.

The flagship is infused with a charm that is dramatically austere yet whimsically playful. Its simple and restrained architecture has been magnified by the brand's funky designs and multi-coloured lacquered furnishings. In short, it evokes an 'off-beat' ambience by pairing streamlined, vintage designs with contemporary hues. The effect is both sober and boisterous, just like the clothes.

ADDRESS

Marni
Via Montenapoleone 12
50, via della Spiga
20121, Milan

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Mood board: Marni finally took its menswear collection off a static presentation and onto the backs of breathing real boys - but they were far from hot-blooded macho men. The Marni man is an intellectual creature, one who is much happier in an art studio or design gallery than an investment bank. So no suits here: but plenty of billowing Bermudas, sporty judo pants and shrunken jackets.

Best in show: It seems banal but Marni's knit take on the t-shirt in painterly vertical stripes was an excellent example of the emboldened basics this brand excels at.

Finishing touches: The jazziest part of the show happened from the ankle down where models wore tweed socks paired with tribal patterned intarsia flat form sandals - a quirky touch that added just the right punch to nearly every look.