Vogue Editors Share Highlights From Milan Fashion Week

The Run-Through with Vogue

Vogue editors Nicole Phelps and Luke Leitch recap the most significant moments from Milan Fashion Week, focusing on major designer transitio

Key takeaways

• Glenn Martens is concluding a successful six-year tenure at Diesel to focus entirely on Maison Margiela.
• Prada's recent collection utilized Velcro as a tool for deconstruction, focusing heavily on skirts as a versatile canvas.
• The Emporio Armani presentation marked the final appearance for long-time designers Leo Del Orco and Silvana Armani.
• Demna's Gucci show used a simulated retail environment to explore themes of commerce, desire, and postmodernism.
• Marni's second collection by Meryl Rogge is noted for its ability to connect with Gen Z through 90s and early 2000s nostalgia.

Main topics

• Diesel and Glenn Martens
• Prada's skirt collection
• Gucci's store concept by Demna

Notable quotes

He's making beautiful classic music with instruments that seems basic and it's not necessarily classical, it's quite punk.

Conclusion

A detailed critical retrospective of Milan's creative shifts that sets

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:05) This is The Run-Through. I'm Nicole Phelps, and I am joined here by my friend and colleague, Luke Leach. Ciao, Luke. Speaker 7 (0:13) Ciao, Nicole. Speaker 3 (0:15) We are speaking Italian because we just spent the week in gorgeous, sunny Milan, and we've arrived to a little bit of rain in Paris, which hopefully will pass quickly. We are going to talk about everything we saw in the Italian fashion capital. Speaker 7 (0:34) Absolutely. And before we reconfigure our minds to speaking French or speaking bad French, in my case, it's nice to take this moment to look back at the really intense week we've just had, right? It was nonstop. Speaker 3 (0:48) It started with a bang. The first day was Tuesday. And of course, Tuesday ended with Vogue World, but it began with a couple of... Big moments. We had an all-skirts collection from Prada, which we'll dig into shortly, and Goodbye from Glenn Martins, which really was a bang. Speaker 7 (1:07) You know, a lot of fashion, however much we gild it and we intellectualize it, both menswear and womenswear and everything wear, at the end of the day, a lot of it is about display and sex and sexual attraction. Speaker 7 (1:24) Since he started six years ago at Diesel, Glenn Martens has always been very inclusive, very sex positive, very much about acknowledging Diesel as a denim brand, not as a traditional fashion brand, and one with a much larger audience, and trying to speak to what he has detected, the generational direction that he saw in people in their teens and 20s. And I think that really... culminated with a bang that we saw on Tuesday morning. It was a great show. It was tinged with sadness because he's done such a good job there, but he's going on to be able to devote himself to Maison Margiela. Full Speaker 3 (2:06) time. Speaker 7 (2:07) Yeah. It was one for the road. Speaker 3 (2:10) Yes. And so we're speaking in innuendos, but I remember sort of halfway through nudging you and I said, wow, that couple across the way, they're really making out. I Speaker 7 (2:20) know. I felt I was focused on my staring fixedly at the clothes and typing. Until I Speaker 3 (2:26) nudged you. Speaker 7 (2:26) Until you nudged me. I really felt my age. I felt like a slightly disapproving old dower jerk going, oh my gosh, that's really inappropriate. The hands are all over each other. And then as I looked around, I was like, oh, okay. fine. You know, Glenn had mentioned to me backstage just before that there was a surprise, and we agreed that it was better to let surprises be surprising. And it was just the latest example, but a great example in the way that he is also very dynamic in his conception of the fashion show, form of fashion display that is close to our hearts, very close to Broke Runway's heart, but that is often pursued in a very similar way again and again, and is really can be subject to great experimentation in theater. The risk with a show like that is that you don't focus on the clothes. And I think it was a beautiful summation of everything, you know, all of his material experiments, his very metaphorical tearing away of the clothes from the body, his treatment of fabrics that in the traditional hierarchies of material might not be seen as so precious, but his treatment of them with great reverence and abandon. He's making beautiful classic music with instruments that seem basic and it's not necessarily classical, it's quite punk. But I think he's done a great job and it's also really been really good for him as a bridge between Y Project and Margiela. I think it's in all of and even his collaborations with people like H &M. You can see Everything he does, he takes a little bit and it adds to the sum of his experience. And I'm personally looking forward to see what he does now with full focus at Margella. But at the same time, I'm very happy to have witnessed the Glenn period at Diesel. Speaker 3 (4:07) Likewise. Let's talk about... Prada, which, as I just mentioned, was entirely devoted to skirts. That's interesting because, of course, Mucha Prada is a devotee of the skirt. I've never, and I don't think you probably either, have ever seen her in anything but a skirt or a dress. And one time, way back 20 or so years ago, She told Ingrid Sishi, the late Ingrid Sishi on the Charlie Rose show, that the skirt for her is like a T-shirt. And I think she meant the way that T-shirts have become a way for everybody to express their feelings or their tribe or maybe some sort of political slogan. She sort of puts all of her personality in the skirt, or she thinks that it's a good canvas for doing that. Speaker 7 (4:58) It's the ideal canvas for where she comes from because she's so interesting as a character. She's from this very established family that created Prada, the brand from the 1910s. And then of course, she famously as a student was quite political and left-wing. So she's always been her personality and again. Her makeup and her history have always been a kind of competitive yin and yang swing between this kind of classical Milanese lady. You know, the mid skirt is such a Milanese piece. But then she takes it as a template and she plays with it in a very free and sometimes radical way. And this season, I think it was very interesting that there was this kind of metaphor for her approach, which was the use of Velcro everywhere. So she could just really, you know, you could deconstruct it. You could stick things on, stick things off. It was like sort of Meccano skirts. And there were beautiful prints. There were reissues, I think, though I'm not such a skirt, Prada skirt pro. But it was great. And let's not overlook this sort of extraordinary pieces that came with the skirts. Speaker 3 (6:04) These barely there bras, which were very barely there. Speaker 7 (6:08) They looked like sort of recuperation garments for soccer players who'd strained their shoulders. Speaker 3 (6:13) With little butt bags or fanny packs hanging off of them, those little like coin purses hanging off the arm strap. Speaker 7 (6:21) They were definitely a strong gesture. And I think they were there as kind of styling points against the skirts and actually to help make the skirts the main screen that we were all watching. And I would say it's probably no coincidence that in the new Prada Galleria store and the Prada Sphere exhibition that I went into preview the week before, there is... a fabulous display of skirts from the history of Prada, which are kind of resolving like marionettes on their own in the space. And we see back to the very first, I think it was 88, the very first Prada show, some of the pieces that were there. So I think there was also almost using the skirt as a page on which to express elements of Prada's history, but it didn't feel like a historical show. It felt like You could imagine a lot of people wanting to go out and get those skirts. Speaker 3 (7:10) Well, speaking of Prada history, that was one of my favorite elements of the mega Vogue World show at the Galleria, which was the fifth Vogue World show, but really dove into the archives of so many of Italy's most illustrious brands. And it was quite fun to see the ugly chic. The very iconic ugly chic skirt from Prada. I think it was like a 1996 collection and such famous, famous Versace pieces. Maximilian Davis from Ferragamo ran up to us after the show and talked about how exciting it was for him to see the old Romeo Gigli robe coats with the embroidery on the lapels. And for... Fashion insiders, fashion lovers, I think there was a lot to look at and enjoy in that show, don't you think? Speaker 7 (8:03) In terms of Vogue World and seeing the vintage pieces, I found it a very interesting idea to see pieces that we all know about. We might have seen in museums, we might have read articles from people who were there and nostalgic kind of swoonings from people who said this was defining to my time. But again, to see those pieces in a contemporary runway context is to see how they really connect with an audience and connect with your eye when they're moving. Speaker 3 (8:31) So let's just jump ahead briefly because, of course, there was an Emporio Armani show on the schedule. Not a show, but a presentation. And it was the last collection of... Leo Speaker 7 (8:46) Del Orco and Silvana Armani. Leo has been at... Mr. Armani's side for many, many years. And Silvana is his niece and has also been Women's Design Director for many, many years. And following Mr. Armani's death, they were the succession planned by Mr. Armani. But of course, as we started hearing rumored in around the time of menswear, and as manifested just about 10 days ago, Dario Vitale, the man who's at the center of sort of all of the energy, I would say, of excitement in terms of designer speculation and people being excited about his energy. But he's already in place as the head of accessories and the creative director of Emporio. But the general thing about the presentation was that it was Silvana and Leo's last show. And they didn't have a show. They had a presentation. The first mannequins were two white suits, which represented them. And I thought it was very interesting because it was about... It said, oh, it's about time. And you thought, oh, this is going to be quite sad. But actually, it was about accrual, the way that things are added with time, the way that layers are added. So there was acid washing that made things look marbleized in a very beautiful way. There was the addition and encrustation of salt crystals on garments and bags, which is not something I'd want to wear to, you know, on the metro in the morning, and certainly not in this Parisian rain, because I'd be like... leaving a slate melting. But it was very beautiful. And it was a very cool way to end what is effectively an interregnum moment. I think it would be a mistake to put too much pressure of hype onto Dario Vitale's debut next season. Speaker 3 (10:30) Nonetheless, people will put plenty of hype on it. Nonetheless, people will, which Speaker 7 (10:32) is why I want to be that voice of reason. But I think you have to give people a couple of seasons. We know what he's done to