And so concludes one other Milan Style Week, a season marked by its debuts: throughout the week, Maria Grazia Chiuri offered her opening imaginative and prescient for Fendi as the home’s first sole artistic director, younger Belgian designer Meryll Rogge made an expressive debut at Marni, and Demna hosted his first runway present for Gucci – a virile mediation on intercourse and the physique which had everyone in style speaking. In the meantime at Giorgio Armani, Silvana Armani – the niece of the late eponymous designer – made her ready-to-wear debut on the home. Although true to Mr Armani’s well-established codes, she stated this was ‘a brand new perspective on the Armani type’ – gentle, fluid and purposely ‘imperfect’.
Alongside, there have been standout exhibits from Prada – in a feat of fast modifications and professional layering, 15 fashions wore 60 seems with out pause – and Bottega Veneta, the place Louise Trotter conjured Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini in a riot of color and texture. Whereas at Jil Sander, Simone Bellotti discovered new freedom in his sophomore runway present after the rigour and restraint of his debut.
Right here, reported by Wallpaper* style & magnificence options director Jack Moss and contributing author India Jarvis, the 14 standout exhibits which outlined the week.
Fendi
Picture 1 of 5
‘Much less I, Extra Us,’ was the mantra Italian designer Maria Grazia Chiuri selected for her debut as sole artistic director for Fendi, emblazoning it throughout the runway which stretched the size of the home’s Milanese HQ on By way of Solari. Chiuri is keen on such mission statements: for her debut assortment as the primary feminine artistic director of Dior in 2016, she printed the title of Nigerian creator Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book-length essay ‘We Ought to All Be Feminists’ throughout a T-shirt. Over the 9 years which adopted, she would champion quite a few ladies artists and collaborators.
Her mantra at Fendi is maybe a feminist one too, even though Chiuri additionally confirmed menswear on the runway (and will likely be equally in control of the home’s mens- and womenswear traces). It was, partially, a reference to the collective power of the formidable Fendi sisters: Alda, Carla, Paola, Franca and Anna Fendi, who took over from their dad and mom, home founders Edoardo and Adele Fendi, in 1946. Talking earlier than the present, she stated that individuals converse too usually of Karl Lagerfeld’s affect – the designer was artistic director of the home for 54 years – and never sufficient of the sisters, who employed him and would work alongside him till the corporate was bought to LVMH in 1999. ‘I would love individuals to recollect all that they created at Fendi,’ she asserted.
Chiuri, who started her profession at Fendi in 1989, working with the sisters till her personal departure in 1999, stated she credit her working ethic to them: ‘They had been my mentors. They gave me my profession. And I felt a part of their teamwork.’ Within the present, the thought of collaboration got here by tasks with ladies artists SAGG Napoli (vibrant football-like scarves had been created alongside the Naples-born artist) and the property of Mirella Bentivoglio, whose slogan-like works appeared throughout clothes. However the concept of a collective ‘us’ stretched to dissolving the divide between mens- and womenswear, too, the designer stated: ‘Female and masculine stop to be classes of opposition and turn into adjectives used to explain shared qualities,’ envisioning not two separate collections however ‘one wardrobe’.
As such, the A/W 2026 outing – which eschewed theatrics in favour of a extra pragmatic strategy – moved between modern, elongated tailoring and thrives of romance, from layers of sheer tulle and lace (some evocative of her work at Dior). In the meantime fur – the founding materials of the home – got here again to the fore, with Chiuri introducing the ‘Echo of Love’ challenge whereby purchasers can have their previous furs remodeled in an act of circularity. Throughout vivid two-tone chubby fur coats and patchworked fur purses, all of the supplies had been sourced from leftovers in the home’s fur division – one other act of practicality over spectacle. ‘Style will not be leisure. Style is a job. I’m that sort of designer,’ she stated. Jack Moss
READ: ‘Much less I, extra us’: Maria Grazia Chiuri lays out her imaginative and prescient for Fendi in Milan
Jil Sander
Picture 1 of 5
After a superb debut final season, Simone Bellotti continued to cleverly hone his imaginative and prescient for Jil Sander with a sophomore assortment which he stated was impressed by the thought of ‘residence’. Introduced in the home’s stark Milanese HQ – this season, heat was added by the addition of a rust-coloured carpet which had been put in the size of the higher flooring – the previous Bally designer stated he was fascinated about residence as an ‘an emotional area the place one lives, feels protected and belongs to’, resulting in a group which diverted from restraint and rigour of final season in direction of one thing freer, extra eclectic. Certainly, the designer stated this was a group about ‘stream, flou [and] motion’, with Bellotti imagining clothes imbued with a lifetime of their very own by an intriguing use of sample reducing – whether or not raised shoulder traces, curving seams, folded waistlines, or deliberately puckered tailoring (the slashes by clothes additionally returned from his debut). In the meantime evocative moments of color and sample added visible richness: flashes of electrical blue and leopard print met materials evocative of interiors – a nod, Bellotti elucidated, to his father’s profession as an upholsterer. ‘The query this season is whether or not abandon can convey restraint,’ he stated of this newly liberated strategy. Jack Moss
MM6 Maison Margiela
Picture 1 of 5
Considered one of life’s nice pleasures is watching different individuals, and what higher place to sit down and do it than a practice terminal? It’s a pleasure that MM6 Maison Margiela tapped into for its A/W 2026 present – one designed across the comings and goings of passengers in an ‘archetypal practice station’, on this case Milano Centrale. An archetype is a recurrent, even fixed, precept, whereas a station is innately transient – how do the 2 meet? At MM6 it was with ‘a veritable spectrum of individuality’, and ‘sartorial actions rooted within the real appreciation for clothes as they’re, searching for methods to see them anew, which is the place the enjoyable lingers.’
What does that seem like? It seems like pea coats with bunched and scrunched hems, loosely tacked to disclose quilted or flannel linings. Clashing stripes with verify – one thing you would possibly serendipitously pair when hurrying to dress. Backless khaki trench coats and skirts. And many tucking: hair tucked into jumpers, jumpers tucked into denims, denims tucked into high-gloss Wellington-style boots.
There was a powerful equine theme too – afterall, 2026 is the 12 months of the firehorse, a logo of ahead motion and independence that’s characteristically MM6 – from horse motifs printed on outsized T-shirts and teddy fleeces, to full cotton flounced skirts with a decidedly American frontier really feel. A practice station welcomes every kind of individuals going every kind of locations, in spite of everything. India Jarvis
Prada
Picture 1 of 5
This season, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons performed a intelligent runway trick: as an alternative of the standard 40-or-so fashions forged in a given season, the pair selected simply 15 to stroll the A/W 2026 present. In a formidable act of timing, they wore 60 seems in whole, strolling the runway 4 occasions every in fast succession, achieved by eradicating a layer of clothes throughout every fast change. Whenever you realised the self-esteem (for me, I questioned if Bella Hadid had a doppelganger or secret twin after what appeared like an impossibly fast reappearance on the runway), it made for one of the vital thrilling Prada exhibits of latest occasions – there was a near-breathless vitality to the spectacle. (Certainly, chatting to one of many fashions backstage, she stated she had by no means sweated a lot, or walked to date, in a runway present throughout her profession.)
However this was no gimmick: post-show, the co-creative administrators stated the gathering was a mirrored image of the way in which that ladies put on clothes on a given day – the removing of a coat to disclose a cocktail gown, the addition of a shawl. ‘It’s about life, and the way you gown every day with the garments you will have,’ stated Simons. ‘About actual, human individuals.’ The clothes themselves had been infused with Prada-isms: purposeful marks of damage (some appeared stained or creased; others noticed layers of cloth torn away to disclose one other beneath) met an insouciant, bourgeois-inflected glamour in embroidered stockings, feathered and beaded footwear and a use of satin and organza. A sense of utility, in the meantime, got here in uniform-style tailoring and riffs on traditional outerwear types, from the parka jacket to the raincoat. ‘As a girl, your life is layered – every day calls for not solely a shifting of garments, however a richness of identities inside your self,’ stated Mrs Prada. ‘You make selections, you resolve who you need to be.’ Jack Moss
Max Mara
Picture 1 of 5
Is a rising curiosity within the historical past and aesthetics of the Center Ages a response to the hyper-digitised, blue-lit world of immediately? An idealised fantasy of a pre-capitalist society? Or maybe a byproduct of the recognition of the romantasy style? Regardless of the reply, for Max Mara’s Ian Griffiths, whose unlikely seasonal muse was the Eleventh-century diplomat and army commander Matilde di Canossa, ‘there’s something so strikingly of the now about so-called Darkish Age design’.
Griffiths’ interpretation of pre-enlightenment period clothes noticed tunics in luxurious, butter-soft suede, ankle-skimming cashmere coats and hooded clothes paying homage to the coif shapes worn by Di Canossa and her contemporaries. Standout items included a caramel-coloured bias-cut silk robe with a mohair, funnel-necked yoke; a suede muff worn belted across the waist; and a taupe wool playsuit accessorised with the gathered suede, elbow-length opera gloves that had been seen all through the present. Griffiths has been with the home since graduating from London’s RCA in 1987, and over the 4 a long time which have adopted, there’s no person who is aware of the Max Mara girl higher than he. The A/W 2026 assortment provided new-yet-medieval twists on the tried and examined home codes, which maintain this girl returning to the model, season after season. India Jarvis
Emporio Armani
Picture 1 of 5
Following the loss of life of its eponymous founder within the autumn of 2025, Emporio Armani took an comprehensible hiatus from displaying at menswear week in January, however returned for A/W 2026 with a mixed males’s and ladies’s runway outing. ‘Maestro’, as the gathering was titled, was not solely a story machine, however an ode to Mr Armani himself – the eminent composer, conductor, and virtuoso of style symphonies for nearly 50 years.
The imaginative backdrop for the season was, in response to present notes, a music college, and the maestro – and maestra, for this can be a co-ed conservatoire – who stepped out in Leo Dell’Orco and Silvana Armani’s first collectively developed assortment wore loosely tailor-made overcoats and dishevelled denim, and student-y equipment together with baker boy caps, backpacks, and ties simply seen beneath outsized striped knits. Leg heaters styled over patent leather-based pumps evoked the coolness of a rehearsal auditorium, whereas the present’s second act noticed slightly extra performance-ready items within the type 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, should you like – the fashions turned out in Lydia Tár-esque monochrome. Tight leggings or flowing slacks on the underside, white gown shirts on high, every with a unique button, brooch, pin, collar, or embroidered flourish. ‘A easy and rigorous assertion – now greater than ever rebellious – of modernity and self-awareness,’ that would solely be Armani. India Jarvis
Marni
Picture 1 of 5
The Belgian designer Meryll Rogge selected to collaborate with Formafantasma on the runway set for her debut present as artistic director of Marni. Reworking the home’s Milanese headquarters with wood-effect panelling and fabric-covered benches – recalling a banal workplace area, or entranceway to a Milanese house block – the area was punctuated with mirrored panels which had been painted with ‘fragments drawn from quotidian life’, from workplace chairs to cigarette lighters. ‘The construction of the set suggests a bourgeois inside picket body, hints of home structure – however fragmented, barely taken aside. It feels acquainted but unsettled, as if a room has been fastidiously disassembled and reassembled in one other order,’ Formafantasma’s Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin informed Wallpaper*.
It linked with Rogge’s imaginative and prescient for her tenure on the Italian home: to create one thing which felt each acquainted and modern, evoking Marni’s founding rules together with her personal distinctive twists. ‘I’ve a really private connection to Marni,’ she stated. ‘It’s a model that formed my design sensibility throughout my early life, and thru the present I needed 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 mixtures, not solely in its amalgam of nostalgic prints, swinging paillettes and boldly graphic jewelry, but in addition in the way in which a sweater could be worn with a cocktail gown, or a vibrant sporty parka over a swimsuit and tie. Rogge’s personal twist on the Marni protagonist was a newfound toughness, figured in some nice leather-based trousers and skirts, some with Western-inspired detailing. Of their slung-on sensuality – imbued with a sure Nineteen Eighties nostalgia – they could nicely fill a niche for individuals who are already lacking Dario Vitale’s Versace. Jack Moss
READ: Formafantasma created the ‘acquainted but unsettled’ present set for Meryll Rogge’s Marni debut
Sportmax
Picture 1 of 5
If there are a couple of thematic concepts that inevitably crop up and play out in numerous methods by completely different manufacturers in anybody season, then for A/W 2026 one such instance may very well be journey. At Loro Piana and MM6 Maison Margiela the car of alternative was a practice; at Sportmax, the journey gave the impression to be taken by air. ‘Dynamism’ was the phrase they used, however ‘aerodynamism’ could also be simply as apt – because the model itself places it: ‘There isn’t a litter weighing the Sportmax girl down.’
Attire had been close-fitting and body-skimming however with motion within the draping, worn with lengthy wraps which fell backwards over the shoulder like wings. Among the weightier outerwear nodded to aviator-style jackets with their gargantuan lapels and collars, and contrasting textures and materials. Clutches had been spheroid, nearly discus-shaped; one might think about them flying by the air with ease. Flashes of pores and skin had been seen beneath a sort of jumbo mesh impact leather-based, used for tops which had been worn as a base layer beneath extra autumn-winter appropriate coats and gilets. Pace and motion had been the defining traits of the gathering – even the present itself was a very fast-paced affair – because the present notes stated, the Sportmax girl has ‘locations to go’. India Jarvis
Gucci
Picture 1 of 5
Previous to his debut runway present for Gucci, the mononymous Georgian designer Demna stated he had been trying to find the ‘Gucciness of Gucci’, a visit which took him to the Tuscan metropolis of Florence, the place the home was based as a leather-based items firm in 1921. There, he visited factories and the archive, although it was stood in entrance of Sandro Botticelli’s The Delivery of Venus on the Uffizi Gallery – just some hundred metres from the Palazzo Gucci on Piazza della Signoria – that Demna had his lightbulb second. ‘Standing in entrance of it, I felt overwhelmed,’ he wrote in a letter distributed earlier than the present. ‘The wonder in it was unconditional; it was absolute. It made me realise how deeply the Italian Renaissance formed the whole lot I perceive about artwork, about proportion, about want, and about magnificence. After I left the museum and stepped into Piazza della Signoria, the very first thing I noticed was Palazzo Gucci. In that second, I understood the place Gucci holds inside Italian tradition.’
It was a part of the explanation why he staged the A/W 2026 assortment amid an imagined museum constructed in Milan’s Palazzo delle Scintille, clad in marble and populated with plaster recreations of historic sculptures (the huge statues had been 3D-scanned and crafted by Tuscan artisans to seem as if hewn from marble). This was a veneration of Gucci as an expression of Italian type and insouciance: after the present, he stated this opening act was merely about capturing a sense, slightly than something extra intellectually overwrought. ‘I hope I made you are feeling Gucci immediately,’ he stated, expressing a want for Gucci to turn into an ‘adjective’. ‘That was my principal goal with this present.’
The essence of ‘Gucci-ness’ that Demna landed on was considered one of unbridled sensuality, a morning-after-the-night earlier than glamour which borrowed from Tom Ford’s transformative tenure on the home within the Nineteen Nineties (all the way in which all the way down to a recreation of his 1997 double-G G-string, which right here appeared as an in-built thong in a robe worn by Kate Moss to shut the present). Different clothes had been constructed with out seams or with curved hemlines with the intention to emphasise the connection between physique and garment, whereas muscled male fashions burst out of skin-tight T-shirts and denims. Slung on jackets, lean tailoring, and a ultimate flurry of shimmering night robes accomplished the look. ‘[I think] it’s due to my relationship with myself, to my very own physique, to the way in which I need to see myself,’ he stated. ‘I need to really feel like that. I need to really feel horny.’ Jack Moss
Tod’s
Picture 1 of 5
It takes deft craftsmanship to imbue leather-based with actual lightness – in spite of everything, leather-based is best referred to as a cloth of safety and toughness. However Tod’s’ A/W 2026 ready-to-wear was characterised by a levity of contact that would solely be the handiwork of a home that makes an artwork out of leather-based (and a designer who’s received pedigree in relation to this specific materials).
In Matteo Tamburini’s newest, leather-based might have been the protagonist, however the plot itself was all about artisanal excellence – a reality bolstered by the true craftspeople stitching, folding, or carving objects within the entryway to the venue at Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea – cherry-picked by the model for his or her spectacular talent. Amongst these had been brothers Vincenzo and Manuel Aucella, coral artisans and cameo carvers who symbolize the fourth era of a household custom that started in 1892 (that’s round 30 years earlier than Filippo Della Valle began the shoe-making enterprise that will later turn into Tod’s).
As for the garments themselves, feather-light asymmetrical leather-based clothes fluttered with all of the delicacy of a silk handkerchief, blanket-style outerwear enveloped luxuriously concerning the shoulders, and saddlery strategies and hand-finishing synthesised custom and modernity. Total, the impact was a masterclass in Italian craft and sprezzatura. India Jarvis
Ferragamo
Picture 1 of 5
The Nineteen Twenties had been a formative decade for Salvatore Ferragamo: in 1927, he based his eponymous footwear firm in Florence after coming back from Los Angeles, the place he labored as a shoemaker for the burgeoning movie trade in Hollywood. The British designer Maximilian Davis has discovered fertile artistic floor within the decade, with latest collections channelling what he sees because the ‘liberated magnificence’ of the period – one wherein conventions of gown had been interrupted and marginalised teams discovered new freedoms (final season, Davis evoked the Harlem Renaissance, the proliferation of Black artwork, tradition and mental output from the New York neighbourhood within the Nineteen Twenties).
This season, in one of many curving Giovanni Muzio-designed higher galleries of the Triennale di Milano museum – dimly lit and sheathed with floor-to-ceiling curtains – he evoked the Nineteen Twenties speakeasy, ‘a locus of liberation; an area the place conventions of sophistication and identification are disrupted’. As such, a louche, after-dark temper infused the gathering – negligées, molten-gold clothes and vampish stilettos all featured – whereas riffs on maritime apparel had been a nod to those that frequented such consuming spots. Although the evocation of the sailor additionally nodded to the notion of journey which informs the Ferragamo story – the transformative expertise of shifting away from your private home looking for one thing new.
‘That’s one thing that each Salvatore and my circle of relatives skilled – he left his residence in Italy for America earlier than returning residence, and my household moved from Trinidad and Jamaica to Manchester,’ stated Davis. ‘All of them crossed the water to find new beginnings.’ Jack Moss
Dolce & Gabbana
Picture 1 of 5
Dolce & Gabbana’s A/W 2026 assortment was an assertion of brand name identification, stated designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, all the way in which all the way down to a front-row cameo from Madonna – maybe essentially the most well-known home muse and the present face of The One perfume. The musical powerhouse watched on from the entrance row because the pair carried out their very own best hits: an outing near-entirely of their signature vampish black, replete with home hallmarks – lingerie-inspired silhouettes, hourglass LBDs, and, after all, loads of lace. Although maybe most fascinating this season was the tailoring: if finest recognized for his or her body-contouring clothes, the pair have at all times possessed a powerful sartorial prowess, right here encapsulated in some good tuxedos which nipped on the waist and flared throughout the shoulder, impressed by archival silhouettes from the Nineteen Nineties (they’d make a terrific Oscars search for these wishing to eschew the standard princess robe). Submit present, Domenico and Stefano had been eager to clarify that drilling into the archive was not about ‘nostalgia’ however ‘presence’, ‘a language constructed on roots which can be nonetheless alive – Sicily as emotion, black as energy, lace as intimacy, tailoring as authority,’ they stated. Jack Moss
Bottega Veneta
Picture 1 of 5
The actual pleasure of fine style is that it’s a murals you’ll be able to really contact – and with Louise Trotter’s sophomore assortment for Bottega Veneta, contact is strictly what you need to do. The shaggy, curvaceous shapes she creates out of fibreglass must be felt to be believed. Nice piles of shearling cry out to be fondled. Even much less instantly showy items, like a tailor-made gray coat with exaggeratedly spherical shoulders and cinched waist which was produced from a thick, nearly foamy trying material, was simply begging to be squished between the fingers.
It’s the mark of a proficient designer that to explain their work as ‘wearable’ doesn’t simply imply ‘industrial’, or, worse ‘boring’. The Sunderland-born designer, whose earlier artistic director roles had been at Lacoste, Joseph, and Carven, makes garments which can be infinitely wearable, however right here the phrase would possibly imply issues that really feel actually great to really put on. On the sensible aspect: items have pockets, footwear are flat, and baggage are roomy. The extra flamboyant clothes are countered by straightforward tank tops and shirts. However greater than that, there’s a sensuality and tactility that units Trotter’s work aside. Is that this the byproduct of being one of many few ladies making womenswear on the head of a luxurious home? Regardless of the case, there’s little doubt that she is without doubt one of the most credible designers working immediately.
The A/W 2026 assortment carried what Trotter described as a ‘suggestion’ of Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini – two of Twentieth-century Italy’s most erudite and subversive exports, and unlikely associates. Each figures have been introduced again to the forefront of the cultural dialog in recent times – operatic prima donna Callas was performed by Angelina Jolie in a 2024 biopic, and earlier than that her life and lonely, untimely loss of life was dramatised on stage in an opera challenge conceived by Marina Abramović and co-starring Willem Dafoe. Dafoe, in flip, has performed Pasolini, the poet and filmmaker whose brutal homicide, presumably by the hands of far-right thugs, was commemorated on its fiftieth anniversary within the autumn of 2025 by a sequence of cultural programming and new publications. If these sound like unlikely characters to affect a ready-to-wear assortment, take into account that Callas and Pasolini had extra in widespread than simply tragic ends: formidable inventive expertise, potent sexuality, and assured private type amongst them. For Trotter’s debut final 12 months she described her use of intrecciato as a conceptual machine in addition to a literal braiding method – by citing these two artists she is articulating a continuation of that weaving precept, but in addition making a daring declaration of what Bottega Veneta, below her stewardship, goes to be. India Jarvis
Giorgio Armani
Picture 1 of 5
The Armani Privé present in Paris marked the debut assortment from Silvana Armani, the late Giorgio Armani’s niece, who labored intently with the designer in his lifetime and was a becoming successor to uphold his legacy. On Sunday in Milan, she made her ready-to-wear debut at Armani, deciding on the home’s headquarters on Brera’s By way of Borgonuovo to point out the A/W 2026 assortment (the tackle was additionally the positioning of Mr Armani’s private Milan residence). On the time of the Privé present, we wrote that she had offered a group ‘not of divergence however of continuance’, and the identical may very well be stated of this assortment – it felt recognisably Armani in its louche, unstructured tailoring and interaction between Japanese and Western tropes of gown – although there was a better feeling of softness and ease. Certainly, Silvana Armani stated she was searching for lightness in each building and spirit: jackets had been assembled with out padding, wrapped silhouettes appeared thrown on, and the slouchier, pleated trousers – held in place with large belts – felt modern in proportion. She referred to as it ‘a brand new perspective on the Armani type,’ one which she stated was knowledgeable by being a girl, designing for girls. ‘It’s fluid, enveloping, completely imperfect.’ Jack Moss
Supply: Wallpaper
