Milan Fashion Week Debuts by Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Jil Sander, and More
As another Milan Fashion Week nears its end, Whitewall is taking you through some of our favorite collections for Spring/Summer 2024. Here, you’ll find details on the latest from Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Jil Sander, The Attico, and Ferragamo.
Gucci Enters an Era of Uncomplicated Luxury for Milan Fashion Week
A collection made for the joy of living walked Gucci’s Milan Fashion Week runway, representing the abundance of passion, confidence, art, desire, and any number of other joyful things that may come with the human experience. As the house settles into a new era of uncomplicated luxury with new creative director Sabato De Sarno, we saw its codes and heritage emerging in new shapes and forms, as enduring styles receive fresh and youthful updates. Simplified styling highlighting a particular shape or textural finish gave off a kind of irreverent sensuality that maintains the house’s cool kid attitude we’ve come to know and love. There were pieces in denim, patent leather, jersey knits, silky sheens, crystal beading, and more, including those like micro shorts and sailor jackets, mini dresses in trapeze shapes, crisp tailoring with blazers revealing bare chests, and the iconic horse-bit loafer re-imagined with a stunning platform.
Courtesy of Bottega Veneta.
The Best of Milan Fashion Week from Bottega Veneta
The individualized pleasure of getting dressed as one likes and an undeniable need to reconnect with nature, were the two facets behind Bottega Veneta’s debuts, introduced in a vast industrial hall painted with birds, crabs, snakes, and other creatures. A nomadic hybrid of place and time converged in Mathieu Blazy’s tactile fabrications with an earthen feel and imaginative silhouettes with intriguing details and voluminous sculpting. From chunky knits to raffia fringes and smoothly finished leather to the house’s signature intrecciato weaving, the garments were imagined in beautiful, naturally occurring colors (like sage green, soft blue, red, tan, and yellow) and possessed a certain handmade beauty one only finds in thoughtful, artisanal items. Standout looks still on our minds include a textured sweater with a structured neck, paired with supple leather trousers featuring a folding front flap detail, a dress with sculpted ruffles in three colors of tactual woven fabrics, and a fringed blouse and skirt in red and tan leather.
Courtesy of Jil Sander.
Get Technical with Jil Sander’s New Archetypes
Jil Sander’s Milan Fashion Week debuts saw the house’s contemporary gaze continuing its path to re-establishing wardrobe archetypes for men’s and womenswear. Designers Lucie and Luke Meier pulled from an array of references and shapes that blurred the lines between the masculine and the feminine. A wardrobe was created that felt highly technical, professional yet creative, and devoid of any nostalgia. Suiting was spacious and structured, featuring cropped pants with pleats, boxy vests, sleeveless blazers, and unique variations with cut-outs, plays on shape, or cape overlays at the shoulders. The form of the dress became one not specific to gendered norms, evolving into pieces like long tunics, styles derived from overcoats, and more traditional iterations, including pieces featuring knit tops with full skirts and eveningwear styles in glossy satin or airy chiffon. Each look was executed with special attention to detail, from styling choices to the garments themselves—including silver discs adorning collar lapels, dual-strand belts, knit skull caps, a crossover between a loafer and a Mary Jane shoe, chunky necklaces or fringed neck overlays, and a selection of leather purses and handbags.
Courtesy of The Attico.
The Attico’s Debut Runway Show During Milan Fashion Week
For The Attico, “The Morning After” becomes a time of excitement and possibility, where feelings flutter and clothes are hastily thrown on to get out the door, straps falling from shoulders, and borrowed jackets thrown over the shoulders. The result is indisputably glamorous, unapologetic, and intermingles high with low and day with night—is she just waking up or is she just going to bed? Gilda Ambrosio and Giorgia Tordini played on volume ranges from barely-there gowns and tops with cut-outs and sheer materials, to oversized pants and all-encompassing outerwear with plushy furs, wrapping cowls, and enormous mutton leg sleeves. Walking the streets of Milan for the house’s first-ever runway show, we saw standout looks like a red gown made from strands of draped fringe styled with a trench and sparkling heels, a pair of oversized cargo pants worn with a sparkling bra and a feathery overcoat, and a belted double-breasted jacket with enlarged shoulders paired with oversized denim and pumps.
Courtesy of Ferragamo.
Milan Fashion Week Debuts by Ferragamo
In Ferragamo’s Milan Fashion Week presentation, we feltthe push and pull between tension and freedom running throughout the house’s new designs for Spring/Summer 2024. Creative director Maximilian Davis drew parallels between the Italian way of dress and that of the Caribbean, the collection echoed things we recognize, but with a new twist that was at once chic and elegant, but fun and comfortable. Sartorial staples took on new updates—like blazer dresses sans collars, suiting separates dressed down with tees, or effortless tuxedo-derived pairings for eveningwear. Dresses ranged from miniature and fitted (like a little black dress featuring a thick leather panel across the hips) to long and flowing, the silhouettes varying with details like crisp, hugging bodices, ruched seams, asymmetric sleeves, thigh-high slits, and thick, layered skirts. The collection featured solid-colored garments with the occasional two-toned graphic print or color blocking, imagined in a professional palette of black, white, tan, and gray, with optimistic bursts of aqua blue, emerald green, and red
