Designers play to the strengths of men at Milan Fashion Week

During Milan Spring/Summer 2023 Menswear Week, we were invited to the homes of a few designers – sort of. Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons created a small paper house with cut-out windows at the Prada Gargantuan Art Foundation. Donatella Versace opened the main doors of the label, a baroque palazzo in the center of Milan first bought by her brother, the founder of the label Gianni; Zegna took his fashion pack more than two hours outside of Milan to a historic mill in Piedmont, at the foot of the Alps.

A half-dozen other Milanese designers offered similar ideas for a season when, with masks largely removed and audience numbers approaching pre-pandemic levels — although there was no press or buyer representation from important Asian markets — the original Milanese menswear felt like a return to normal. Instead of a “new normal”.

So the push back home all seems strange, as if designers are experiencing collective Stockholm syndrome, missing the WFH locks and locks of the past couple of years – even though going home means getting back to what you’re doing. The best. The Milan shows don’t speak in a unified voice, instead allowing brands to carve out their own territories and play to their strengths.

The word was strong, for example for a vision at Versace, where models clutched ornate vases from the brand’s furniture range like shoplifters trying to outwit security guards. The clothes, with their colorful, baroque patterns and many wordy Versace logo-prints, seem to have been created with a new generation in mind. Versace recruited 1990s supermodels like Marc Vanderloo and Helena Christensen to model the label’s redux version of its 1991 theatrical mask print.

If Versace hinted at the past, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana basically borrowed Marty McFly’s DeLorean and dug into their back catalog to re-issue it, a collection of iconic images from the past 30 years. After a few seasons of fleeting, strange trends, it was a relief to head home and find their heart. It also featured a return to the unapologetic brutality of the early 2000s, with their range of work ranging from glitzy, crystal-encrusted shirts and slinky drapes. The perfect mid-1990s suit, wide at the shoulders, nipped in at the waist and slim in the legs, makes everything old suddenly new.

From time-travel to globetrotting. The theme of the late Silvia Venturini’s Fendi menswear collection was her family name, but sadly the results were sleek and stylish, with loose-cut shirts, moccasin slippers and frayed, flared dance pieces – that fabric was one of the few trends. It can be seen everywhere in Milan. “Denim represents freedom for me,” said Fendi backstage, and her styles include not only real things, but hyper-luxe imitations. If you want a mink coat printed like a denim jacket, Fendi is your go-to. It was a touristy vibe, but the idea seems to be hitting home, your memories – here he adds many of the label’s best-selling bags and jewelery with gold-encrusted pebbles. After a few seasons of formality, this Fendi was in a slower, more relaxed mode. It felt more real.

Was much true about Jonathan Anderson’s Milan debut? This set played more with the surreal sets he had been exploring for a few seasons. While some of the designers in Milan seem to be pining after Gen Z, Anderson seems to truly and instinctively understand their thinking. And what they want is to be known, and not in a beige suit. This set was hilarious – meme-able, maybe – with bicycle handlebars and soup can lids stuffed into sweaters, and a model dressed as a giant loofah. But it was also memorable, which is more than half of his work in a busy landscape.

The kids don’t seem to mind the patrician Giorgio Armani, whose fashion is inherently personal. The clothes they wore this season were on Armani’s home turf: models strutted in deep, navy and bottoms without a single pair of socks between them. At the end, a skinny, sockless, navy-clad Mr. Armani took a bow.

Prada and Zegna, the most powerful collections in Milan this season, both approach the same idea – reinventing the familiar – for different ends. Zegna’s creative director, Alessandro Sartori, wanted “casuality,” but he was also thinking about “the future of tailoring.” That means using newly woven fabrics — some are heat-pressed for wear or into techno-terry fabrics similar to bocce wool — or their interiors are backed by traditional canvas, though leaving raw details about linen and cotton tailoring. As the tailoring softened, sportswear was stiffened with hyper-luxe dupioni silk. It was that contrasting interplay that made this collection pop, along with colors that didn’t look like anything else, like fluoro-limoncello or dusty chocolate-grey.

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons wanted to keep things simple. “The collection is about simplicity as a concept, as a choice,” Prada said before the show. Simone is a fan: “We’re fascinated by the idea of ​​’casual’ clothing.” Formal looks are new here, with clean-cut beige or Vichy-check caban coats layered over each other and then, more often than not, over leather tanks and shorts. The idea of ​​design was something here, to change the effect of design materials – the coat looks a little worn on bare legs and short shorts.

It had a heavy fashion impact as a show, with models wearing cowboy boots with raised toes that look like footwear for next season. And it’s a certain measure of genius that the coats have made so much of the fashion press and that buyers have been rooting for them even in the 35C Milanese winter. Everyone in the room wants to take at least one home – and that’s the point of these shows.

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