Milan Fashion Week: All black and white at D&G while checkerboard reigns at Versace

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VERSACE

TOM FORD

PRADA

EMPORIO ARMANI

FENDI

MILAN — Italian luxury label Dolce & Gabbana (D&G) presented a mainly black and white collection at Milan Fashion Week on Saturday, deconstructing tuxedos to present an array of dresses and suits for women next spring.

The show, simply called “Woman,” opened with a dark pinstripe jacket and hot pants worn with stockings. Asymmetrical black chiffon polka dot dresses followed, with many designs bearing bows tied at the neck.

Designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana dressed models in see-through black lace dresses and black jackets worn with micro shorts. Trouser suits were slim and cropped at the ankle.

The designer duo played with tuxedo styles, cropping jackets or turning them into one-shouldered dresses.

Some outfits bore white collars or details from white tuxedo shirts. A selection of all white suits, jackets, and lace dresses also featured in the spring/summer 2024 collection, as did dabs of leopard print on shiny macs and dresses.

Dolce and Gabbana embellished their outfits with bows, ruffles and floral embroidery.

Models carried small handbags and wore stilettos or flat thigh-high black boots.

Milan Fashion Week, where the likes of industry heavyweights Giorgio Armani, Versace, Gucci and Prada present their collections, ends on Monday.

VERSACE
Checkerboard dominated Versace’s catwalk at Milan Fashion Week, with designer Donatella Versace serving up the print on dresses and suits for women’s wardrobes next spring.

Models wore collarless jackets and short feminine dresses in pastel colors as well as boxy satin jackets paired with billowy shorts in Friday night’s show.

There were also denim outfits, skirt suits in darker black and white tones as well as shiny evening dresses.

Accessories consisted of flat ballerina shoes and hair bows.

In show notes, the designer described her Spring/Summer 2024 line as “fresh and graphic.”

“This is a Versace summer with color and shine, tailoring and soft draping,” she said. “This collection is joyful and sharp.”

GUCCI
Gucci’s new designer Sabato De Sarno sent out a glamorous, skin-baring lineup of minimalist designs for his first fashion show on Friday, drawing praise for a highly anticipated debut which owner Kering hopes will help revive sales at its flagship brand.

Models filed down a darkened, concrete runway at the label’s Milan headquarters, a former aircraft factory, parading short shorts paired with suit jackets, strapless mini-dresses, trim sweatshirts, and tank tops with plunging neck lines.

Mr. De Sarno “knows what we need in the moment, clean luxe sportswear that isn’t cheeky sexy,” said fashion critic Kenneth Richard, editor in chief of industry publication The Impression.

Federico Giglio, chief executive and business manager of Italy-based high-end fashion retailer Giglio.com, said the collection was “a new way to see luxury — wearable without the need for excess, that keeps with the times.”

Friday’s catwalk presentation serves as the aesthetic foundation of a broad reset of the French group’s prized label — key to creating buzz and reigniting sales, even if the new designs won’t hit stores until early next year.

Thomas Chauvet, analyst with Citi, said the first glimpse of Mr. De Sarno’s vision for the brand showed “a clear evolution from prior brand aesthetics, likely to attract a slightly older demographics and command higher price points.”

“Gucci is the opportunity to fall in love with fashion, ancora,” Mr. De Sarno said in a post on Instagram in the run-up to the show, using the Italian word for “again.”

The brand plastered the word ancora on huge advertisements that marked the date of the show, alongside the Gucci logo — in white lettering, on a burgundy backdrop — covering buildings around the world, including in New York, Chengdu, Bangkok and London.

Debut collections can generate mixed reactions, and even positive press reviews are not always a proxy for future commercial success. However, the fashion show will “definitely impact investors’ perception of De Sarno’s capacity to trigger an inflexion in Gucci’s aesthetics,” said Antoine Belge, analyst with Exane BNP Paribas, before the show.

“The climax is not for right away — it’s sometimes the second or third shows that are the most important,” Kering chief executive officer (CEO) and Chairman Francois-Henri Pinault told reporters ahead of the show, before greeting front-row guests Julia Roberts and Ryan Gosling.

One of fashion’s biggest success stories in recent years, Gucci has fallen behind rivals like LVMH-owned Louis Vuitton and Dior that capitalized on strong post-pandemic appetite for luxury goods.

Since parting ways in November with previous creative director Alessandro Michele, whose eclectic, gender-neutral styles were credited with soaring sales and profits in the 2015-2019 period, the group has been laying the groundwork for the brand reset with more elevated and timeless looks.

Gucci’s long-time CEO Marco Bizzarri is due to leave the company after the show, to be replaced by managing director Jean-Francois Palus — Pinault’s right-hand man — for a transitional period.

TOM FORD
British designer Peter Hawkings made his Tom Ford debut at Milan Fashion Week late on Thursday, offering an array of sleek suits, slinky dresses and towering stilettos for women next summer.

Models wore fitted trouser suits as well as jackets paired with tiny matching shorts, figure-hugging long frocks and short leather dresses.

There were also velvet suits, unbuttoned silky shirts and tasseled dresses and skirts.

Show notes said Mr. Hawkings took inspiration for the Summer 2024 collection from late Detroit-born Black supermodel Donyale Luna, who was a muse for artist Andy Warhol and photographer Richard Avedon.

Accessories included colorful stilettos and oversized sunglasses for the line, which favored a color palette of ivory, blue, brown, black, and various pinks.

Mr. Hawkings was named creative director at the fashion house in April, taking over from American fashion designer Tom Ford, who founded the eponymous brand in 2005 after leaving Italian luxury label Gucci.

PRADA
Models walked amid slime falling from the ceiling at Prada’s catwalk show on Thursday, as the Italian luxury label presented its latest womenswear collection at Milan Fashion Week.

Designers Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons opened the Spring/Summer 2024 show with an all-grey shirt and shorts look, worn with a patterned scarf on top.

The catwalk was split in half by clear slime pouring down in the middle, a similar feature to Prada’s menswear show in June.

Models wore shirts and jumpsuits with exaggerated shoulders and extra long sleeves, high-waisted belted shorts and sheer skirts. Jackets were large and box-shaped.

Fringes dominated many looks — featuring on floral patterned shirts as well as hanging from belts as if forming skirts.

Dresses in pastel colors had loose, white sheer top layers. There were also all-black leather looks, some with studded pattern motifs.

Footwear consisted of slip-on heels in bright colors, studded pumps as well as all black brogues. Models also wore large headbands that resembled hats.

At the end, Prada and Simons were joined for their end-of-show bow by long-time design director Fabio Zambernardi, who is leaving the group, sources have said.

EMPORIO ARMANI
Designer Giorgio Armani chose light breezy looks for his Emporio Armani line, dressing models in loose shirts and jackets, crop tops and shorts.

Models wore short dresses and lightweight trousers in neutral and pastel shades. For the evening, colors were bolder on sparkly sequined tops paired with long floaty skirts.

Mr. Armani will host the show for his main Giorgio Armani line on Sunday.

FENDI
Milan kicked off its catwalk calendar on Wednesday last week, with Italian luxury label Fendi exploring the “ease of dressing with a certain Roman freedom” at its womenswear fashion show.

At Fendi, founded in Rome in 1925 and now part of French luxury conglomerate, designer Kim Jones combined the “masculine tailoring” of leather coats with materials, such as kid mohair, that convey “a more fluid and feminine sensibility.”

Models, all wearing leather gloves, paraded among giant white bags, clad in warm browns, beiges and oranges, as well as a soothing sugar paper color and an occasional lemon yellow.

A patchwork of fabrics recreated Fendi’s F logo on coats and dresses through “a playful and abstract exploration” of the symbol Karl Lagerfeld created in 1966, a year after joining the Roman brand as creative director.

Reinterpreted in multiple ways over the years, the logo was born as a double F in a square. Also, the color palette was largely taken from Mr. Largerfeld’s 1999 Spring/Summer collection, Fendi said.

“In Rome there is an elegance in ease and not caring what anybody thinks — that is the real luxury. In this collection I wanted to reflect that,” Kim Jones said in fashion notes.

“It is not about the spectacle of being looked at, but the reality of wearing and the confidence and chicness that comes with it,” he added. — Reuters