The fashion week cycle is well and truly under way. After a return to form for London Fashion Week, it is now Milan's turn.
The week kicked off with shows from Prada, a teary farewell at Diesel and a spectacle of Italian excess at Vogue World.
Prada skirts the issue
Prada opened the spring/summer 2027 season in typically unorthodox style, presenting a collection composed entirely of skirts. No dresses, trousers or shorts. Just skirts.
At Fondazione Prada, the house’s converted factory and cultural space in the south of the city, models strode across a Perspex floor illuminated by strip lighting, as if walking over a giant photocopier.
The skirt appeared in almost every imaginable form: sensible grey tailoring, crystal-flower evening wear, jaunty neon florals, pleated, candy-coloured nylon and draped printed silk. There were sheer and layered versions, Velcro fastenings and cotton treated to resemble leather. Some were merely fragments of skirts – apronlike panels slung around the hips without quite meeting.
Miuccia Prada rarely wears anything else, and the show notes made her fixation explicit: “Engineered for freedom, the skirt is a Prada obsession.
“At once autonomous and interdependent of the clothes around, its definitive graphic silhouette, linear and modernist, offers the single fixed parameter for projection of ideas.”
Those ideas emerged through the styling. Skirts were paired with tiny bralettes, fluffy jumpers and tucked-in technical windbreakers, as well as biker jackets, camisoles and slim-cut shirts. The message was clear: whether tidy, loose, rebellious or vaguely unhinged, skirts are the future – and can be worn however you please.
Glenn Martens' farewell at Diesel
Elsewhere, Glenn Martens presented his final collection for Diesel, the label he has led since October 2020.
He began by planting dancers from the French collective (La)Horde among the audience. They soon leapt into action, headbanging to the soundtrack.
The collection was classic Diesel, filled with Martens’ reworked denim and trompe-l’oeil effects. Oversized jackets, barely-there looks and head-to-toe leather appeared alongside distressed knitwear and cutaway streetwear in a show “envisioned as an immersive party at a club you never want to leave”.
Martens remains creative director of Maison Margiela.
Italian fashion takes over Milan
Vogue staged Vogue World Milano beneath the glass-vaulted roof of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Italy’s oldest and most prestigious shopping arcade.
Billed as a celebration of fashion, craftsmanship and culture, the five-act spectacle brought together leading Italian houses. Armani Privé, Bottega Veneta, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Ferragamo, Gucci, Prada and Valentino were among the brands that created one-of-a-kind looks.
Jennifer Lopez attended in a dramatic black lace Dolce & Gabbana gown, while Dakota Johnson wore an oversized jacket and sheer skirt by Valentino. Rapper MGK walked the runway and model Alton Mason performed somersaults in a Brunello Cucinelli suit.
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