From my vantage point, one admittedly muddled by some 4,000-odd miles of choppy Atlantic — that’s approximately 6,500 km, for those metric-leaning folk — Milan Menswear Fashion Week seemed to almost comically portended the classic idiom of never judging a book by its cover. Headed into the days-long scramble of designer shows, pouty models and some diabolicamente good street style, reports that powerhouse names like Gucci and Fendi had shifted their focus to the increasingly unisex womenswear schedule and the notable absence of JW Anderson and Martine Rose gave the impression of a possibility uneventful, if not gapping schedule.
In reality, everywhere I have looked for the past half-week, be it Vogue Runway stills or InsideHook Creative Director Kevin Breen’s Instagram stories, something absolutely fascinating and objectively exciting seems to be cropping up. Prada’s wild ride of a show proved only outdone by the flocks of plaid-clad celebs milling around the Fondazione Prada. Canali and RL put sartorial wit (and velvet) front and center, whereas Zegna walked it (and John Turturro) over rolling hills. New names made new waves. Old ones, too. And, wouldn’t you know it, Jordan and Luca of JordanLuca got surprised married (at JordanLuca, obviously).
Fashion Just Found Its New Favorite Holiday
The Year of the Snake is almost here. The capsules have already landed.The clothes weren’t half bad, either. Fur, faux and otherwise, felt omnipresent, as did the charming square-toe western boot, in faded paisley glory. (This cowboy ain’t dead yet!) The sheer amount of patterning — flannels, chevon striping, herringbone — was staggering. Contrasting fabrics were profuse. Suiting options, in their various forms, remained bountiful. A delicate balance was struck between supremely wearable and unironically art project-coded. Everything felt both completely routine and fairly novel.
All of which to say, bunk schedule notwithstanding, Milan Fashion Week produced menswear highlights aplenty, more than enough to unpack and virtually all of which will inevitably have an outsized impact on your timeline, wardrobe and quite possibly your wallet. Read on for my major takeaways from the Milan Fashion Week menswear shows.
Fashion Season? Try Open Season.
Sometimes, it’s helpful to state the obvious, if only to put it out in the open so that you might have an I-told-you-so moment down the line. The naked truth, then, is that fur was unequivocally the dominant trend of AW25. Parda, D&G, Giorgio Armani — faux trim and massive, hairy coats festooned these and more shows in a near-universal manner, often paired with tanned leather or stapled to an accessory. Not so much mob wife, as I’ve seen it described, as more of a prohibition-era homage, in the vein of town cars and smoke cigarettes indoors and lucrative ad deals and, before that even, proper old Hollywood. Offensive to PETA types? perhaps. A driving design dogma, at least for the next two commercial seasons? Surely.
Prada’s Savagery Refuses to Be Curbed
For those who haven’t had the pleasure of poking through Prada F/W25 (or poking through the guest list — hell, poking through the Rem Koolhaas set design), hearing GQ’s Sam Hine describe the vibe of the collection as if ”[Raf] Simons and Mrs. Prada had raided a Minnesota thrift store then dressed their cast in the dark,” sounds particularly cutting, if not foreboding of an uncharacteristic flop from the house that has routinely ranked top three brands in the world for going on a decade.
Upon closer inspection, however, it’s a characterization that feels both acutely emblematic of the runaway Americana aesthetics of “Unbroken Instincts”, and like a rarified compliment of the highest degree. There’s so much to unpack from the collection of clothes Ms. Prada and Simons, the forever odd couple, now half a decade into their joint venture, sent sauntering (mosey-ing?) down the industrial runway — high-concept jumpers beaming directly at obnoxiously pointy leather boots within a three-storied scaffolded hadron collider — but, at the core of it all, the clear and charged field of not just of the deeply human instincts (between oodles of faux fur and twinky frames, there was much of that) the collection is named for, but of, frankly, superior taste.
It takes a genius — two geniuses — to commit the type of raw conceptual highway robbery that something like look 10 demands from the consumer. Simons himself admitted as much backstage, beautifully quoted by Hine; “It’s the process that is for us very interesting and important right now, to work very instinctively and kind of savage—savage in the sense that things can come together even if they seem like they’re not supposed to be together.” And, here we are, ready to lust over dirty shearling and skin-tight orange trousers. That’s something more than calculated theme or excellence, even. That’s pure, unbroken instinct.
Classic Houses, New Moves
Armani, Dolce, Zegna. These are names anyone could recognize, brands and houses and prolific figures with literally centuries of history and expertise between them. How they continue to innovate is between them and god, but Christ, do they innovate. Emporio Armani, in particular, felt unbearably fresh this season, with a host of flirty cuts and wild prints, mouthwatering fabrics in pinks and greens and purples, another signal of the brand’s grand comeback cum revival cum dominance. Another season, another chance to show off.
Minor Brilliances Abound
The aforementioned sparseness vibe was not totally without warrant. The causal observer might be fooled into thinking that the quantity of production at Milan Fashion Week was, in fact, severely down, given that there were only 16 shows slated on the official schedule. Only 14, if you consolidate all the Armani, not that this is advised. This lean runway circuit did not, however, account for the dozens of “presentations” running parallel to the major menswear shows, which ranged from heavy-hitting luxury players — Cucinelli, Brioni, Ralph’s Purple Label — to more street cred-y labels Our Legacy and C.P. Company, in varying degrees of showcase, and were as much a space for exciting artistic innovation as Zegna’s transformed Allianz MiCo. These events have become boundary-pushers as much as the produced, multi-million-dollar house shows, drawing in both creative talent and celebrity in serious fashion.
Of particular interest (to me) was a buzzy, head exhibition by futuro-militarist-grunge label GR10K, which blew minds (again, mine), with a performance art-esque presentation set against a bombed-out classroom that featured chanting, a drum kit breakdown, blue furniture and, naturally, the brand’s latest batch of industrial-complex-chic conceptions. Major cosign.
On the other end of the spectrum, Italian sartorialists Canali unveiled their batch of classic menswear and tailoring — in expected taupe and navy, but, in a welcome surprise, cut a shade freer than one might expect from a nearly century-old purveyor — in a quintessential Milanese showroom, complete with delicate marble carpeting, veined marble walling and handsome marble models (real men, statuesque features). Both equally solid, in their own right, and a win for the anti-runway community.
All Eyes on a Grown-Up Magliano
In an increasingly compacted landscape — the sheer logistics, not to mention the financials of showing have taken a serious toll on budding designers — Magliano has emerged as Italy’s great hope for establishing the next great fashion brand. Founded by Luca Magliano, the namesake label has both subverted expectations and delighted industry cognoscenti in reason seasons — this season, in particular, felt material in its ability to establish the indie darlings as a serious staple of the circuit.
In a 4D checkmate, and an almost entirely unpredictable turn of events, Magliano FW25 committed to…predictable. The collection was less wandering, darker and more grown up than previous shows, almost like a Gen-Z thrift junkie cosplaying as a hardened nine-to-five businessman with two bratty kids and a mortgage, and more in line, at least in tenor, with some of the adjacent, more reserved menswear, Luca’s inventiveness was no less omnipresent. What this means for the label remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain, it’s that Magliano remains the one to watch.
More Like This
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
