This year, designers and CEOs share one common goal: getting cautious shoppers to buy luxury amid persistent inflation and economic uncertainty. Such was evident in the succession of shows in the latter half of Milan’s autumn/winter 2024 fashion week.
Big bosses and buyers say they’re more interested in wardrobe classics over flashy showpieces, prompting recent trends such as “quiet luxury” or “stealth wealth”. The problem is that when everyone designs with the same logic in mind, it results in repetition. As one industry observer commented: “all the shows look the same”.
Ferragamo’s collections are typically slick and well-articulated under creative director Maximilian Davis. Seeking to offer a more personal “glimpse of the direction” he was headed in, the designer produced a limited-edition zine (only 1,000 copies were made) containing inspiration, such as still lifes of Caribbean seashells and fruits.
On the runway, that was reflected in the form of heavy wool coats worn on top of see-through organdie dresses, drop-waist jackets with extra-wide belts and head-to-toe leather looks entirely in one colour. The collection had some memorable pieces, such as dresses embroidered with hand-sewn layers of leather that looked like enlarged sequins and elicited “wows” from the audience.
But on the whole, it struggled to stand out in an unfortunate season where many designers presented similar offerings in a minimalist Italian luxe vein. Anyway, Davis has a larger problem to contend with. While his designs are revered by a fashion crowd, diminishing sales — a 7.6 per cent year-on-year drop to €1.16bn in 2023 — suggests difficulty in convincing the 97-year-old company’s older customer base to buy new.
Plus, Ferragamo’s history is rooted in accessories, not ready-to-wear. While the brand has been betting on influencers to drive interest in the Hug handbag, first unveiled at the AW23 show, there hasn’t yet been a hit bag or shoe style. One can’t help but wonder if — and how much — resistance to change comes from the Ferragamo family, who remain owners of the business.
Fighting a different battle is Bottega Veneta, whose sales slipped 2 per cent last year, despite creative director Matthieu Blazy’s sophisticated and desirable output season-on-season. In his fifth collection for the house, Blazy leaned into his love for innovative fabrics — for SS23, he famously dressed model Kate Moss in leather that looked like denim — and invigorated ordinary wardrobe staples.
Core to Blazy’s thinking was reduction, to strip away excess, but not so much that it was too minimal, he shared backstage. Inspired by desert flowers, which are adaptive and able to withstand adverse conditions, he also sought to “express a certain form of resilience” and “hope” by offering something for the Bottega Veneta wearer that was “real, pragmatic and functional”.
Opening the show was an immaculate take on the pea coat, which was oversized, with rounded shoulders — another prominent silhouette in Milan — and paired with flared trousers with fringed ends. Noteworthy were the distressed dresses and skirts that followed; some had been heated and moulded, others boiled and shredded. A new fil coupé was also developed and used in the closing looks, intended by Blazy to resemble flame and carbon.
Bally’s design director Simone Bellotti hit another home run with his sophomore collection for the Swiss luxury house. While his predecessor, the young Californian designer Rhuigi Villaseñor, riffed on hip hop and other iconic American influences, Bellotti’s version, inspired by traditions from Switzerland and its links with nature, felt less trend-chasing and therefore suitable for the 173-year-old label owned by JAB Holdings.
While there was less razzmatazz, it wasn’t drab. In fact, quite the opposite. Long and short curve-shouldered coats, worn with smart trousers or skirts, had a lightness to them while sure to keep their wearers warm. There was playfulness in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments, such as fur peeking out from under a dress that had been slightly hitched up by a safety pin design, or on the back of some models’ shoulders, visible only when they turned around. Models also held flowers and little trinkets in their hands.
“The language is the same but I added a bit more layers,” says Bellotti. “I’m still going deeper, searching for my idea of what a Swiss brand like Bally could be.” For now, it proved the designer’s ability to deliver a high quality collection and evolve the brand beyond its footwear heritage.
At Jil Sander, designers Luke and Lucie Meier played with texture and silhouette, offering cocooning capes and padded dresses (some of which popped in a bright primary blue or red); matelassé and leather down coats with rounded shoulders, some gently nipped in the waist; and tailoring that felt looser but still had shape to it. Details such as silver fringing were applied to some scarves, hats and trousers, to break up the monotony.
Black was the dominant colour at Dolce & Gabbana, whose Tuxedo collection featured suiting and cropped jackets, paired with tiny shorts or trailing wrap skirts, and also at Versace, where founder Donatella expressed “rebellion” and a vision to design for someone “courageous but nice inside”.
Her punk rock models were dressed in tweeds made from shredded fabrics that came from the brand’s couture division, sharp tailoring and chainmail gowns — complete with slim stilettos, heavy kohled eyes and spiky hair. Yet for all its rock’n’roll energy, the collection felt weak.
Italy’s longtime family-owned brands aren’t always able to seamlessly adjust to new realities. At 89, Giorgio Armani still runs the show at his eponymous brand, which rounded off the week with a collection of floral gowns and plush velvet separates that were elegant but there wasn’t much else to write home about.
Evolution is not an issue for Milan’s independent labels, which are led by designers who have new ideas and the guts to experiment. However, few are able to truly cement themselves on the official schedule as a must-see brand.
Proving the exception to the rule is Sunnei, the brainchild of Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina, who have made a name for themselves with their joyful designs and unique show formats. For AW24, models wearing colourful striped puffers and knits walked to a recording of their inner dialogues. Some pondered their clothes, while others thought about their lovers or evil bosses.
Showgoers always have a good time at Marni, which returned to Milan after travelling shows across New York, Paris and Tokyo. Presenting his collection in a cavelike space covered entirely with white paper, designer Francesco Risso was inspired by Virginia Woolf letters that invited her friends to the countryside, advising them to “bring no clothes”. Not in the literal sense, but in the metaphorical sense to let go.
Risso felt that was important to do and sought to challenge the rigid structures and “oppressive” notions of society through his clothes. Instead of starting with a mood board of sourced imagery, in the usual way, Risso and his team locked themselves away in a room and sketched whatever came to mind. It was just “raw instinct, almost primal”, says Risso — that inspired the leopard-print coat and dresses shaped like a trapezoid.
Much of the palette was otherwise subdued, with the focus kept on silhouettes that “exalt and extend the body”. Although, for the closing looks — “the final explosion”, as Risso called it — hand-painted duchess dresses and faux fur coats looked like colourful works of art. It was surely one of those you-had-to-be-there moments.
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