In pictures: Six trends from Milan Fashion Week

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  Sand: The desert and seashore – sand brought together Prada and Giorgio Armani. The backdrop to the Prada show was sand dunes (improbably coloured violet), while Armani opened his show with a short film shot by the Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino that showed the ruggedness of the Stromboli and Lipari islands. The landscapes provided the palette used by both Armani and to some extent Salvatore Ferragamo – pale, natural tones. Armani’s came in separates, mixing in pale python and leopard prints for tailoring, with striated prints of windswept dunes on swishy ankle-length skirts and a series of sandy, opalescent evening dresses. At Ferragamo, the dusty palette was there, along with the tribal fringing and the demure longer lengths (a key trend this season), but there the similarities with Armani ended as Ferragamo’s collection focused more on safari in the city. Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images

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  Luxury patchworks: Miuccia Prada was musing about why people are so attracted to antiquity and looking at ways of updating it to the present day. She experimented by combining “rich” and “poor” fabrics, crafting together once-luxurious, distressed and frayed upholstery brocades with scraps of cotton in beautiful collage patchworks for dresses. Consuela Castiglioni at Marni tried the concept in a different way, starting her show with cottons and raw linens and then building on the luxurious flower prints and finally the embellishment onto the same silhouettes as the show progressed. Meanwhile, at Bottega Veneta, Tomas Maier appliquéd swatches of black mesh and sequins onto humble cotton poplin and denim, or black chiffon onto gingham 1950s-style dresses. Olivier Morin / AFP photo

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  Woodstock: 1970s classics from The Doors, The Eagles and Simon & Garfunkel were a bit of a giveaway to the boho hippy theme that strummed its way through several collections. However, today it would be Coachella and Burning Man festivals rather than 1969’s Woodstock that the Italian designers have in mind – and infinitely more jet set. Pucci, Etro, Cavalli and Missoni girls will be perfectly dressed in breezy tie-dye maxi dresses or crochet minis (Pucci); fringed cowboy jackets, Paisley chiffons and Navajo feathers and beads (Etro); long billowing skirts with men’s shirts (Missoni); and psychedelic halter-neck dresses (Roberto Cavalli). Marco Tacca / Getty Images

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  Say it with flowers: Flowers are never far from a summer collection: the Brits love them and so do the Italians. Marni even hosted a pop-up flower market in Milan on Sunday for charity. On the catwalk Karl Lagerfeld transformed the orchid, which for autumn appeared as corsages on coats, into graphic prints for Fendi’s summer shift dresses and appliqués on leather jackets and skirts. Giamba, Giambattista Valli’s new diffusion line, adopted the amaryllis for young baby-doll dresses (see story at right). At Tod’s, stylised florals were carefully appliquéd to bags and stencilled on mesh leather tennis dresses and at Dolce & Gabbana, it was blood-red carnations on black dresses. Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images

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  Seventies retro: The 1970s is a favourite decade with the Italians. They love the era’s colour palette of burnt orange, burgundy, forest green and brown. All of those shades cropped up at Gucci, where Frida Giannini also revived the red-and-green signature stripe on shoulder bags. Giannini’s vision is smarter and more buttoned up than the hippy looks seen elsewhere, with tailored tan suede coats and buttoned-up day dresses. This demure style was also played out at MaxMara with a willowy silhouette and blouses in a micro-floral print and also the high-necked dresses at Prada. Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images

Italian fashion designers have in the past few days been pitching their creations for spring/summer 2015 at Milan Fashion Week, but in reality you could knock 40 years off that date. Here are six of the most interesting trends to emerge.