Milan Fashion Week has shown that it’s well and truly back in business this week, going full force with a packed out schedule of 67 physical shows for Fall/Winter 2022.
Gucci made its return from a two-year hiatus from the fashion week calendar, bringing with it a collaboration with Adidas, while other heavy hitters like Fendi, Prada, Bottega Veneta, and Versace made sure to impress with their latest collections. Other memorable moments include Ferrari’s first fashion week outing and Moschino bringing a gilded baroque manor to life, Beauty and the Beast style.
Read on for our roundup of the biggest and most buzzworthy highlights this Milan Fashion Week.
Versace
Fiercely alluring and unapologetically powerful describes the Versace Woman evoked in the Fall/Winter 2022 show, and the one item that embodied that spirit was a Donatella Versace signature: the bustier. Undoubtedly the star of the show, the Atelier Versace bustier appeared repeatedly in various incarnations, from being incorporated as a part of microdresses to peeking out underneath oversized blazers and overcoats. A subversive thread ran through the collection, emphasised by frayed tweed miniskirt suits, metal chains, and latex leggings, while the tension of contrasting textures are further punctuated by pops of acidic pink, avocado green, and deep red.
Moschino
For Moschino’s Fall/Winter 2022 womenswear collection, Jeremy Scott almost seems to have raided a palatial 17th century European home, grabbing all manner of furniture, fittings, and decorative items to repurpose into runway ensembles. Starting off with a nod to Franco Moschino’s cutlery brooches and hot-and-cold faucet handle accents on tuxedo jacket-dress and sculpted blazers, the motifs escalated into those of crystal chandeliers, golden harps, and heavy draping curtains. Grandfather clocks, Oriental dividing screens, and Renaissance paintings became evening dresses, while gilded birdcages, candelabras and lampshades served as headwear. Drawing inspiration from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the set recreated its famous bedroom scene, while the collection itself was an exploration of the significance and surrealism associated with such opulent finery.
Prada
Spilling out of its futuristic, space-ship-like stage, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ Fall/Winter 2022 Womenswear Collection showcased ‘An Ideology of Prada’, which commemorated the history of everyday life and living, bringing a sense of significance to each moment. Pieces recollecting Prada’s past coalesced as ‘tradition passes culture between generations’. Bomber jackets are embellished with oversized paillettes, masculine-shaped coats are given a touch of whimsical pastel arm bands, and white tank tops are layered upon with embroidered sheer – a way of agitating the conventional and imbuing meaning into the pragmatic and everyday.
Gucci
Rejoining Milan fashion week after a two year break, Gucci’s Fall/Winter 2022 collection was presented on a stage filled with funhouse mirrors that warp and transform visions of reality through mechanisms of magnification and constrictions. According to Alessandro Michele’s show notes, clothes, like the mirrors, “are capable of reflecting our image in an expanded and transfigured dimension.” Reflected in the mirrors was his co-ed collection, featuring a heavy dose of trousers suits in endless variations, from velvet and corduroy to plaid and pinstripes. It was however, the collaboration with Adidas that turned heads, the athletic brand’s logos and stripes incorporating rather seamlessly into hats, blazers, shirts, and even corsets.
Onitsuka Tiger
For its first physical Milan Fashion Week show since the pandemic began, Onitsuka Tiger once again brings a contemporary collection that ingeniously unites fashion with sport and innovation with tradition. For the Autumn/Winter 2022 show, Andrea Pompilio channels the Japanese fashion of the eighties, with a focus on thoughtful layering of different textures and embellishments to create unexpected silhouettes. Heavy, loose-fitting T-shirts and kaftans recall the youthful urban energy of boys and girls in Tokyo, while the largely black palette is occasionally interrupted with fiery prints blazing from the hems of trousers and sweaters. Notable accessories include transparent framed glasses from Kaneko Optical, quilted nylon platform sneakers, and punk-inspired, flat-soled leather shoes.
Ferrari
In a bid to conquer both the track and the runway, Ferrari debuted its first fashion collection back in June 2021 at its headquarters in Maranello. This time around, Ferrari sped into Milan Fashion Week to showcase its Fall/Winter 2022 collection, with Rocco Iannone returning as designer. Drawing from the brand’s automobile signatures, pieces incorporated car interior fabrics, colourful jumbled wire prints reminiscent of technical circuit boards, and the Prancing Horse motif, multiplied and overlaid on top of each other. According to Ferrari, each look in the collection reiterates the marque’s heritage of ‘Italian excellence’, weaving together speed, passion, creativity and legacy in its bold silhouettes, strong prints, and intricate detailing.
Fendi
Fendi’s Autumn/Winter collection, opened with Bella Hadid in a sheer chiffon slip dress, embraced by a furry cropped jacket. The ensuing ensembles would similarly include sultry, see through tops, trousers and jumpsuits that seemed to almost unravel with wavy frills. Kim Jones jumped into the archives after being inspired when he saw Delfina Delettrez, Silvia Venturini Fendi’s daughter, wearing a printed silk shirt from Karl Lagerfeld’s S/S 1986 collection for the fashion house. Combining the chiffon pieces with Lagerfeld’s A/W 2000 line, the runway show also saw corseted shirts, tweed jackets, half-peplum skirts, and fur coats. Finally, to honour the Baguette’s 25th year, Fendi brought back archival editions of the iconic bag in cashmere, shearling-lined metallic leather, and intarsia mink.
Bottega Veneta
After Daniel Lee’s unexpected exit as creative director at Bottega Veneta, all eyes were on his successor, Matthieu Blazy, and his inaugural collection for the house. Opening the show was a deceptively simple white tank and jeans ensemble, which on closer inspection revealed the blue ‘denim’ to be made of nubuck leather. ‘Bottega Veneta is in essence pragmatic because it is a leather goods company. Because it specialises in bags, it is about movement, going somewhere; there is fundamentally an idea of craft in motion,’ read the show’s notes. True enough, the brand’s woven ‘intreccio’ bags shined as they swung alongside thigh high leather boots, accompanying a line up of double-breasted pea coats, fringe-filled circle skirts, eclectic knitwear, and asymmetric minidresses.