By Neha Mehrotra
From New York to London and now Milan, this month has witnessed a veritable downpour of prestigious fashion weeks. Milan Fashion Week exuded the best of glamour, with this season featuring a spectrum of styles from charmingly vibrant to tastefully nostalgic. The runway bore witness to a fusion of couture extravagance and wardrobe staples. Oversized blazers, skirts, and pants with asymmetrical waistlines, boxy shirts, and hemlines emerged as not mere garments but as manifestos of sartorial excellence.
From Sabato De Sarno’s Gucci debut and Prada’s timeless pieces to Versace’s Barbie summer collection and Diesel’s innovative technology, designers went back to the basics for the Spring 2024 collections in the most sophisticated way possible. In this curated selection, we present to you the crème de la crème of the runway, showcasing the finest looks that Milan Fashion Week had to offer.
Fendi
Fendi’s SS24 Milan Fashion Week presentation drew inspiration from Rome’s classical statues. Guided by Kim Jones, the creative director, the collection seamlessly blended soft pastels with bold primary colours like canary yellow and cornflower blue, resulting in a distinctive Milanese aesthetic. The collection included a range of daytime separates, including cropped pants, luxurious Croc jackets, airy shirting, and beaded dresses that added shimmer and sparkle to the lineup. Monolithic versions of Fendi’s iconic handbags in sculptural white added a touch of ancient antiquity to the show. Featherweight ribbed knitwear made a comeback, contributing body-contouring dresses to the collection’s appeal.
Roberto Cavalli
Welcome to the jungle! For his SS24 show, Roberto Cavalli’s collection featured a vibrant, tropic theme inspired by the flora and fauna of the jungle. The collection was an ode to the trends of the 70s—we’re talking flared pants, maxi dresses, bold prints and patterns, fringe detailing, and wide collars and cuffs. Apart from the animal motifs, cheetah-print tunics, and snakeskin bell bottoms, the designer most notably adorned the garments with pink flamingo feathers through swinging tassels and fringed edges. The animal motifs included the feathers of a bird and big cat motifs.
Gucci
Sabato de Sarno, the new creative director of Gucci, ushered in a fresh era with his debut show at the renowned Italian fashion house. He called his first Gucci collection ‘Ancora’, translated as ‘Now, also then’. De Sarno’s approach was inspired by the urban streets and featured inventive takes on wardrobe staples like tank tops, hoodies, and jeans, alongside crystal embroidered baby doll dresses and outerwear embellished with shimmering metal tassels. Additionally, the collection also introduced ‘Ancora Rosso’, an oxblood-red hue inspired by the interiors of London’s Savoy Hotel. It paid homage to Guccio Gucci’s (the founder of Gucci) early career as a bellboy there.
Prada
The Spring/Summer 2024 collection from Prada showcased the brand’s distinct utilitarian style, experimenting with everyday attire and presenting breezy looks. The collection included fringed shirts and belts with distorted prints, barn jackets paired with intricate metallic shift skirts, and patchwork leather dresses. It was a fusion of the 1920s and the 2020s, featuring oversized shoulders and sleeves with cinched waists. Each look was complemented by satin pumps or kitten heels.
Diesel
The brand showcased a collection that celebrated denim, funky street style, and timeless designs. In their Spring-Summer 2024 collection, Diesel combined popular early 2000s fashion items like cargo pants, bra tops, and hoodies with modern fabric innovations. They played with denim, making it look faded or giving it a spray-paint effect. Some clothes had a rugged appearance, as if they were falling apart. There was also a latex dress that tightly clung to the body in a nearly nude shade, blurring the line between being see-through and providing coverage. The designer added his twist to the fabrics with devoré, a burning technique that makes garments appear almost as though they are disintegrating in real time.
Georgio Armani
The invitation for Giorgio Armani’s collection bore the evocative title ‘Vibes’. The designer expounded on his intention to imbue every facet of this presentation with a symphony of colours, sensations, and emotions that reverberate through the senses. Armani wove undulating silhouettes, where jackets bore traces of 3D waves on the surface, silk dresses swayed with gentle ripples, and pleated trousers displayed hazy, dreamlike prints. The collection also included cropped shirts, jackets, sheer blouses, and strapless dresses, all artfully layered over trousers.
Bottega Veneta
Bottega Veneta’s collection drew inspiration from the rich sartorial traditions and dress codes of its home country, Italy. The fashion house presented a vast tiled map of the world, complete with illustrations of penguins, sardines, crabs, and roosters. It was a collection about travel—real and imaginary—in which the designer imagined his protagonist picking up elements of inspiration on journeys around the globe. The collection began with the holiday-goer: a model clad in a knitted swimsuit, carrying a rope-like woven beach bag slung with a pinstripe shirt on top. The character was also brought to life through exceptional woven dresses, some adorned with oversized pom poms, serving as the show’s grand finale.
Dolce & Gabbana
The Italian luxury label Dolce & Gabbana presented a mainly black and white collection at Milan Fashion Week, titled ‘Woman’. The design duo Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana deftly toyed with tuxedo conventions, presenting a play of cropped jackets and transformations into resplendent one-shouldered dresses. The runway featured models in see-through black lace garments with tailored black jackets coupled with micro shorts. Some ensembles were graced with white collars or embellished with intricate details reminiscent of the classic white tuxedo shirts. The presentation continued with asymmetrical black chiffon polka-dot dresses and a profusion of designs adorned with elegantly tied bows at the neckline.
