3 major takeaways from an extravagant, maximalist Milan Fashion Week

The Glossy Podcast

The hosts of The Glossy Podcast dissect three dominant themes from Milan Fashion Week, marking a decisive industry pivot away from quiet luxury toward maximalism

Key takeaways

• Jill Manoff identifies the 'Mathieu Blaise effect' as a defining Milan trend, characterized by layered prints, imperfect styling, and a joyful rejection of quiet luxury minimalism.
• Zofia Zwieglinska highlights maximalist footwear, pointing to experimental designs like Margiela's six-layer rainbow flip-flop, Bottega Veneta's fishnet flats, and Fendi's transparent mesh shoes.

Main topics

• Maximalist styling and layering
• Experimental footwear trends

Notable quotes

The pressure of going first. I did this intentionally.

Conclusion

The episode equips listeners with a clear understanding of how maximalism,

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:04) Hello and welcome back to the Glossy Podcast. I'm your host, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi, and we have a full house today. I'm here with both our international reporter Zofia Zviglinska and our editor-in-chief Jill Manoff. Hello, guys. Speaker 1 (0:17) Hi. Happy to be here. Speaker 2 (0:20) Thank you both for being here. This is a fun one. We've been covering fashion month. We did New York Fashion Week discussion with me and Jill. We did London Fashion Week discussion with me and Zofia. And now all three of us are here to discuss Milan Fashion Week, which wrapped up on Monday. And then next week, we will finish it off with a Paris Fashion Week discussion. Milan Fashion Week had a lot to unpack, so we decided to split it up a little bit. And we each... came to this recording with one big theme that we saw in Milan that we want to talk about. We do not know what each other's themes are, so it will be a surprise to each of us. I figure we go through each one. Each reporter can say kind of what they saw and what they thought about it, and we'll bounce off each other and go from there. But we worked out an order ahead of time, so there was no confusion. Jill, would you like to share your theme from Milan Fashion Week? Speaker 1 (1:09) The pressure of going first. I did this intentionally. Break the Speaker 2 (1:13) seal. Speaker 1 (1:14) I was like, what if they took mine and I'd have nothing to say? I'd just be sitting here. But no. Speaker 2 (1:19) I didn't think about that. Speaker 1 (1:21) But I'm calling my theme the Mathieu Blaise effect. And I will just say this has many components. But honestly, it's that kind of look that is. piled on more is more. You think of the tweed with the sweeping skirt. And there was a lot of that. And I think that the star of these shows in Milan were the stylists because the clothes were one thing, but there was a lot of talk about how they were paired and how they were put together. That was what was the interesting thing. A lot of words were like imperfect. or rumpled or in place yet slightly askew. And in terms of the more is more effect, like at Dolce & Gabbana, there was like one critic called it like a maximalist pile on. And there was a lot of that in terms of the styling. It's often with accessories. I think this season more so it was with the clothing. You saw it at Jill Sander where Speaker 1 (2:30) a stylist who often works with W and some other publications. Another critic said, you know, the stylist has a gift for unexpected color pairings. It gave the collections minimalism, a welcome jolt. So it was really about how it was pieced together. Somebody referenced the fact that, you know, more clothes on one body gives you the opportunity to show off more pieces at a time when that's so important, when you have maybe 60 looks and you want to show more than that. But also, Also, it was kind of an opportunity to, I don't know, spark joy, show joy. It felt very joyful, but it was about the color pairings, the mixing of prints, kind of how things were pieced together. I'll start, I'll stop there. And I have more to say, but yes. Would you all agree? Well, I Speaker 2 (3:20) completely agree. And this is good because my theme, which I will get to later, is similar, but it's not direct overlap. But I totally agree that there was. Definitely a lot of maximalism, a lot of, like, prints jumbled together and patterns and materials jumbled together. The Prada show in particular, I thought, had a lot of that where it was, like, one dress but, like, stratified where, like, the top part was one material and then the second was, like, polka dot below that and then the bottom was, like, something else entirely. Yeah, I'm wondering, I'm thinking back on London and New York, though, and I don't recall seeing, I feel like in New York I saw more... like monochrome, like colorful, but like one color as Speaker 3 (3:59) opposed to Speaker 2 (3:59) like a bunch of crazy colors. Do you think it's just a Milan thing or did you see that at the other weeks? Speaker 1 (4:05) I think in general, it's kind of a rejection of like minimalism as we know it. Like maybe there were solid colors, maybe they were, it was a single color as opposed to all of this like blocking and chaos. But I think that obviously brands need to be inspiring right now. You need to inspire that sale. Whereas, you know, with Quiet Luxury, it's kind of, if you know, you know, and you know, you may know and you can't afford it, then what? And you're going to go to Uniqlo where you can basically get the same, the same look. And that doesn't do anything for the brands outside of the 1%. So I think like inspiring a purchase, that's what it was all about. And getting the... viewer excited. But I think we've seen it. We did see it in New York to some extent. I think the styling was better done in Milan. Speaker 3 (4:59) What do you think? I will say that Tory Burch was definitely an example for me of like the kind of maximalism and mixing of prints. And I think it was very effective with her collection. Definitely one of the standouts for New York as well. I'm wondering if she's taking a few leaves out of the Milanese playbook for that. Speaker 1 (5:17) Yes. And I said it wasn't always done with like accessories, which is. more common. But then you look at like the Laurel Piana collection and it was all, all the interest was added via hats, which is interesting because otherwise it was pretty plain Jane. And, you know, and you think about it, maybe they're leaning into that. Maybe these they're making these hats. Like you think about their ball cap, which is succession, and maybe that was a hot seller. And they're kind of trying to lean into that. But it did just seem like it was a random accessory to bring something new to the mix, which is funny, but at least it wasn't just the plain Jane. Speaker 2 (5:56) Yeah, it's funny, though, because I feel like Laura Piano was the poster child for quiet luxury minimalism. So it's interesting. I also noticed that They had a lot