Milan Fashion Week has come to a close and, fittingly, it left perhaps the most poignant show for last: Giorgio Armani, as interpreted by the late designer's niece Silvana.
Over the past few days, the Italian city delivered on craft, artisanship and the sheer joy of fashion.
From Prada and Diesel to Max Mara, Bottega Veneta and Gucci, the week brought a string of notable collections from some of Italian fashion’s biggest names. Now, attention turns to Paris for the final round of the season’s shows.
Armani's new era
Following in the footsteps of the late designer Giorgio Armani is no small feat, but Silvana Armani has done just that with her first collection for the house her uncle founded, closing out Milan Fashion Week.
In an intelligent reworking of the fluid elegance for which the house is known, Silvana delivered a collection that felt unmistakably Armani, yet distinctly updated.
Gone were the smiles Giorgio insisted his models wear, and gone, too, were the hats he adored. In their place was a more relaxed take on familiar codes: luxurious, fluid fabrics appeared as wide-legged trousers and slinky tops, alongside silvery sequinned jackets tucked into trousers, oversized shirts, metallic tuxedo jackets and sheer, floor-grazing dresses. It was Armani, but looser, younger, more undone. One suspects he would have approved.
Dolce & Gabbana's Sicilian daydream
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana turned to Sicily as inspiration to celebrate their house's unabashed extravagance in a show called Stravaganza Siciliana. The resulting collection was a study in craft, memory and the pleasure of making the past feel personal and new.
Texture did much of the talking via antique lace bloomers, silk pussy-bow blouses, and a knitted skirt scattered with oversized flowers and trimmed with fringe. Denim was treated with a similarly indulgent hand, with low-rise, wide-leg jeans embroidered with orange beads recalling coral, or cinched with emerald-studded clasps and oversized brooches. An ultra-wide pleated style was finished with floral applique.
Shoes encompassed beaded skyscraper heels, red ankle wellies, gold Mary Janes, flat sandals and leather knee-high boots.
Bottega Veneta's in-between act
Actor Jacob Elordi may have distracted the front row at Bottega Veneta – wearing an olive Harrington and loose chinos as he watched his girlfriend, Kendall Jenner, walk in the show – but Louise Trotter’s third collection had a quieter concept in mind: lightness.
The British designer explored the transition between winter and summer, describing it as the moment between “protection” and “de-robing”. The familiar leather craftsmanship remained, but now softened with crisp fabrics, lace, fringing, crochet and easier silhouettes.
Scooped-neck dresses and satin pea coats retained generous proportions, while trim tailoring was paired with chinos and gauzy pink trousers. Baby Intrecciato (the house's signature weave) scarves were wrapped around waists, while leather earrings looked almost hand-moulded.
Fringe provided much of the movement, featuring on the aforementioned scarves, forming bubble skirts and spilling from enormous bags. The palette brightened from lilac and butter yellow to vivid red, before arriving at handmade white lace and crochet.
While craft remains the language of the house, here Trotter made it feel lighter and more wearable.
Demna's Gucci multiverse
Gucci’s spring/summer 2027 show took place inside a Milan convention centre transformed into a giant Gucci shop. Titled The Store, it presented creative director Demna’s first fully formed vision for the house after a year spent deciphering what Gucci means to him.
His answer is not one Gucci, but several, it seems: equestrian polish, Milanese bourgeois dressing, 1990s glamour and rebellious youth culture, seen as riding jackets and boots, crisp trenches and even slinky evening dresses recalling Tom Ford’s era.
The most persuasive looks twisted codes. Bomber jackets, rugby shirts and tartan kilts were punctuated by oversized horse bits, while low-slung jeans were held up by multiple belts and layered with chains. Menswear looked back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, with cropped trousers, bare ankles and loafers.
Moschino's reignition
For their Moschino debut, Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo began with a simple idea – to study the archive without becoming trapped by it.
The founders of the label Sunnei arrived with a manifesto that included “reignite Moschino without imitating it”, alongside instructions to tell the truth, to understand the archive and to “speak to real people”. They took the last point literally, inviting more than 400 friends, photographers, editors and industry figures to walk the runway alongside the models.
The clothes followed the same pragmatic logic. Architectural volume was balanced with precise construction, with layering providing interest, as stacked tank tops, cropped jackets over protruding shirt hems, and checks set against checks. A yellow-and-black checked jacket sat over an elongated pink plaid shirt and olive trousers.
The collection avoided nostalgia in favour of an everyday wardrobe with attitude. Rather than reproducing Franco Moschino’s visual pun-laden language, Messina and Rizzo revived his instinct for irony using clothes to question fashion while keeping them thoroughly wearable.
Max Mara's linen excursion
Fabrics have always been Max Mara’s real luxury, so it was fitting that linen took centre stage for spring/summer 2027. Titled Far Horizon, the collection drew on the female adventurers of the 1930s, including aviator Amelia Earhart and transcontinental driver Eva Dickson.
Safari jackets, utility shirts, practical vests and cropped cargo trousers came in restrained shades of khaki, taupe and brown, paired with suede backpacks. Linen can be unforgiving – easily crumpled and often relegated to holiday wardrobes – but here Max Mara made it look impossibly smooth, closer to silk than a summer staple.
The references were romantic, but the clothes remained resolutely wearable. It is a particular skill of creative director Ian Griffiths, who has spent almost four decades at the house, drawing on strong female figures and translating their stories into clothes that feel fresh, modern and desirable.
Marni's restless mood
Meryll Rogge’s second collection for Marni suggested that an archive is not something to preserve, but to edit. After a debut that respectfully referenced founder Consuelo Castiglioni, she pushed the house into more restless territory here.
The clothes felt younger and deliberately unfinished: metal loops were exposed, embroidery stopped midway, and garments appeared caught between sketch and final form. Rather than simply showcasing craftsmanship, Rogge questioned what a finished Marni garment should look like.
Slim, tubular silhouettes defined the collection, with leather and duchesse-satin shift dresses providing structure. Elsewhere, texture took over, from micro-sequinned melange knits to a wallpaper-print windbreaker and neat checked coat that nodded to the past without slipping into nostalgia.
Roberto Cavalli's archive
Archival Roberto Cavalli is having a moment. Rare printed leathers from the 1970s are surfacing on the vintage market, while pieces from the punkier Just Cavalli era are being snapped up on resale platforms.
Creative director Fausto Puglisi has clearly taken notice. For spring/summer 2027, he dug deep into the archive, turning up the animal prints, velvet devore and embroidery, and giving them a decidedly clubby edge.
This was a collection for going out: miniskirts, bike shorts, halter tops, hot pants, lace-edged camisoles and low-rise embellished jeans arrived in a riot of pattern and texture, cutting through Milan’s prevailing neutrals.
After several seasons of quiet-luxury restraint, Milan’s mood appears to be loosening. Puglisi, for one, is making clothes designed to cause a little trouble.
Alberta Ferretti's beautiful escape
Lorenzo Serafini’s A Beautiful Escape for Alberta Ferretti was an invitation to leave reality behind, if only temporarily.
The collection moved between sea and land, holiday and memory, with saturated blue, rust and mustard softened as though by the sun, alongside ivory, black, lilac, pistachio and powder pink.
Fabrics were liquid, light and almost weightless. Floral prints dissolved across iridescent Japanese grounds, while slip dresses, lingerie details and kimono jackets met balloon trousers and fluid layers. Bias-cuts and satin allowed everything to move freely around the body.
The mood was exotic but uncomplicated: an old-fashioned idea of escape made light, sensual and modern. Clothes for somewhere warm, with nowhere in particular to be.
Fendi's sense of intimacy
Maria Grazia Chiuri opened her Fendi collection with an EE Cummings line projected into the show space. It was the kind of intellectual framing the designer has long brought to her work.
A sense of intimacy ran throughout. Underwear became outerwear, silk met animal print and velvet met parchment, while lace, embroidery and intarsia were layered freely. Glossy and matte surfaces collided within the same looks.
Italian actress, singer and dancer Raffaella Carr and Luciano Fabro’s monumental Mirror Cube were key references, but the most compelling idea was physical: dressing as something intimate and slightly unruly.
Dressing gowns moved on to the street and jewelled shoes punctuated the finale, as Chiuri imagined clothes as a second skin, responsive to emotion rather than rules. The result was one of Milan’s more convincing propositions: sensual, specific and less interested in fashion as costume than in the person wearing it.
Prada's unorthodox runway
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 – apron-like 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's Milan takeover
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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