After Milan: What Really Deserves a Place in the Collection
There is a gesture in the Milan collections that interests me: taking a recognisable motif and letting it lose definition.
In Missoni’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection, stripes and geometric patterns loosen in the knit, fray, almost dissolve. At Etro, prints look faded by the sun, while paisley becomes barely perceptible or moves into an appliqué. These are two different approaches. In both, though, the brand stops asking the motif to make itself recognisable at first glance.
It is a signal worth watching. Not yet a trend to hand to a design team with the instruction, “Do something with this.”
A faded print is easy to copy. Understanding why that motif should lose definition takes more work. At Missoni, the change also happens through the structure of the knit. At Etro, it lies in the treatment of a motif that has long been part of the brand’s language. In another brand’s hands, the same surface might simply look like fabric gone wrong.
When I watch a show to understand what might enter a collection, I separate four things. Surface is what I see first: colour, print, embroidery. Shape is the cut that gives a garment its proportions. Then there is how it behaves on the body: how it falls, opens, layers and moves. Finally, there is its potential as a product. Can that gesture work across several categories? Does it hold up in a less extreme version? Does it make sense for the customer and the brand’s price point?
Images answer some of these questions, but not all. They cannot tell us how comfortable a garment feels after an hour, what it costs to produce or how it will sell. Pretending to know all that from the front row, or from a screen, remains a fairly common habit.
A Shared Signal Does Not Belong to Everyone
There is another possibility I am watching: dressing by adding and removing pieces, recombining them without losing the character of the look. Missoni describes clothes that change over the course of the day, with knotted shirts, knitwear and denim. Fendi brings clothes close to the skin into conversation with lingerie and both men’s and women’s wardrobes. What the brands say they intend is not enough to establish that the collections are moving in the same direction. We need to look at the complete outfits and the details, especially where styling risks doing the work the garment should do.
One shirt knotted over another can suggest freedom in a photograph. If it only works after twenty minutes in front of the mirror, that freedom takes rather a lot of effort. If the weight, length and openings genuinely allow the wearer to change how it is worn, the choice has already changed the product.
Meanwhile, the third signal is no longer an empty space.
The bra has come out from under the clothes. In Milan, it appears as an explicit part of the look: at Prada, a bra top can take the place of a shirt above a skirt; at Fendi, it enters an arrangement of garments that reveal and cover one another.
The question is not whether we have seen it before. It is what happens when a brand decides to treat it as a garment. Construction, fit and the way it is offered to the customer all change. A bra designed to stay under a dress can get away with details that become a problem when worn on its own. A bra top intended to serve as an upper garment has to work without the runway jacket, too.
Prada and Fendi suggest two different answers. That difference is precisely what makes the signal worth following: it deserves a place in a collection when each brand can give it a function of its own.
I use the same test for all three: where does it appear, what changes in the garment, what remains when the styling is removed, and what product could it generate for that brand? This also makes a decision to reject it understandable. A signal can be interesting and still need to stay out of a particular collection.
How I Arrived at This Question
September began with consistency becoming a cage. I looked at the point where a code, repeated without further development, stops attracting attention. Then, writing about new creative directors and archives, the question became: which part of that memory can still generate product?
As the shows began, my focus shifted. A runway show is not a collection separated the image from the assortment. New York asked what remained of desire once the spectacle was removed. In London, I reached the product from two directions: irony built into the object and an idea that has to hold up in the material and on the body. In Milan, the Velcro on Prada’s skirts brought me back to the line between a code that generates variations and a detail repeated simply to be recognised.
In Milan, the work changes again. Recognising a good idea is not enough. You have to decide whether to take it, transform it or leave it with the brand that gave it life.
Of the three signals, I would develop the bra as a garment. The motif that loses definition remains under observation: Missoni and Etro show how interesting it can be when it already belongs to the brand’s language. I would leave layering as a ready-made formula on the runway. If only the combinations change and the garment underneath stays the same, the novelty ends with the look.
This reading covers four collections, not the whole Milan week. The calendar still includes Monday 28’s digital presentations, the day Paris opens as well. I would especially like to return to the bra top after seeing the products away from the runway.
Romina Tosi
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