At Milan Fashion Week, Italian Craft Loosens Up

Milan Fashion Week‘s collections remain grounded in the codes of Italian fashion: exceptional materials, precise tailoring, and generations of specialized craftsmanship. For Spring/Summer 2027, heritage houses didn’t simply repeat those signatures. Instead, they loosened them up. Trousers pool over shoes, traditional tailoring takes on slouchier proportions, and leather moves from the expected loafer or handbag to perforated trenches and silk-like surfaces. Utility enters the equation, too, without pushing glamour aside. At Brioni, Tod’s, Max Mara, Brunello Cucinelli, FENDI, and MALO, the season is less about reinventing Italian style than finding new ways to wear what these houses already do exceptionally well.

Brioni: Lightness and Ease

Forever inspired by its birthplace of Rome, Brioni continues to build a wardrobe for men and women around great tailoring, thoughtful details, and plenty of ease. Spring/Summer 2027 offers just a peek at what is possible through its La Donna Atelier project, where fabrics and details become increasingly personal. This season, leather makes its womenswear debut, adding dimension to structured Jardigans and safari-inspired jackets. The Jardigan’s hybrid nature moves deftly between womenswear and menswear, while shades of white, blue, Roman red, and orange look plucked straight from the Eternal City.

Fits are looser and slouchier, but still perfectly considered—trousers pool with just the right amount of fabric over the shoe, paired with a crisp white button-down with a popped collar and little more than cuff links. Add a rust-orange Jardigan and the whole thing instantly shifts gears. Formalwear gets playful too, with matching trousers and blazers in luminous orange, pale blue, and silver. Beading appears sparingly on white lapels and a cropped jacket, while suede and nubuck lend more casual pieces their tactile appeal, giving softness a little structure and shape

Tod’s: Italian Attitude 

At Tod’s, the Italian attitude is less about dressing up than knowing how to make the everyday look good. Rooted in the house’s Made in Italy principles, the collection finds luxury in material and technique, with leather once again doing much of the talking. Pashmy leather takes on a silky touch, while the trench becomes a centerpiece in perforated leather, nappa, Windsilk, and cropped proportions. Leather biker jackets bring a tougher counterpoint, and flashes of natural, saffron yellow, red, and blue keep the palette from playing it too safe.

The Gommino returns in new constructions for Spring/Summer 2027, alongside the Gommino Bilbao and a sporty sneaker-ballerina hybrid. From the archives, the Candy bag is elongated into its namesake shape, while T Signature bags and belts highlight artisanal stitching. Clothes aren’t meant to sit too perfectly either: tops slip off one shoulder, a perforated white trench makes its presence known, and a red dress edged in beige resembles an oversized scarf folded around the body. The accessories do the rest, turning understated dressing into something distinctly Tod’s.

Max Mara: Far Horizon

Intrepid explorer Freya Stark, wildlife photographer Osa Johnson, adventurer Eva Dickson, and aviators Amelia Earhart and Beryl Markham set Max Mara’s Spring/Summer 2027 woman in motion. Channeling the globe-trotting women of the 1930s, “Far Horizon” imagines a wardrobe for lives that demand both endurance and elegance. Linen and gabardine establish the utilitarian language, with the safari jacket as a standout, while a duster coat is draped and knotted to one side for a touch of urban-jungle glamour.

Camiknickers become shorts, skirts turn fluid, and slinky knits soften all that utility. Tailoring acts as armor: cargo vests layer over jackets in matching fabrics, while leather straps and D-rings nod to aviator gear. Bags are made to move, appearing as crossbodies, clutches, and rucksacks. Even overalls get an organza treatment, while a voluminous trench is cinched low with an adjustable belt. Whether trekking across an archaeological site or racing across town at rush hour, Max Mara makes the case that endurance needn’t come at the expense of style.

Brunello Cucinelli: Harmony of Design

Spring/Summer 2027 at Brunello Cucinelli is all about contrasts. “In nature, the ultimate expression of savoir-faire…[is] the coexistence of contrasting qualities,” read the show notes, reminding us that “what matters is not perfection, but harmony.” That idea plays out in form, color, and texture: raffia meets organza, sailor stripes get flashes of gold, and workwear mingles with crochet. Bomber-jacket details and utility codes are softened through a feminine lens, while fluid lines bring a new lightness to daywear. The palette moves through white, American khaki, cardamom, clay, pecan, and wheat, with jolts of red, blue, sunflower, and gold.

Knitwear is the ultimate shape-shifter here—embroidered, crocheted, meshed, honeycombed, or transformed into skirts, T-shirts, and accessories. Lightweight knits float over crisp cotton poplin, while flat caps, bucket hats, berets, and knitted headbands finish the looks. The contrasts are strongest in the styling: a billowing crochet skirt with a crisp button-down, or a suede safari-inspired sleeveless jacket with balloon trousers and barely-there heels. Thin sandals, loafers, and delicate heels ground it all. Somehow, the opposites never compete, they simply find their balance.

FENDI: The Push and Pull

At FENDI, Italian craft is expressed through the friction between materials. Maria Grazia Chiuri cites E.E. Cummings’s poem “i like my body when it is with your” in the show notes, setting up the push and pull that runs across 71 looks. Yet the contrasts never feel tense. Clothes take on an emotional weight, becoming another layer around the body while simultaneously concealing and revealing it through lace, embroidery, and flashes of transparency. Masculine and feminine codes move freely between models, undoing familiar hierarchies of who wears what.

The tension instead comes through material: gloss against matte, silk beside animal print, velvet with parchment-like surfaces, and weight against near weightlessness. Lengths and consistencies are layered, while asymmetric, off-the-shoulder styling keeps silhouettes slightly undone. Fur appears as scarves and sharply contoured edges lend some looks an almost Pop Art graphic quality. The palette remains predominantly black, punctuated by jolts of color. Prints are relatively scarce; at FENDI, it is the fabrics themselves that do the pattern-making.

MALO x George Cortina: Cashmere with Character

Known for its ultra-soft knitwear, MALO teams up with New York-based stylist George Cortina for a 12-piece menswear capsule that brings the house’s archival cashmere techniques into the present. The idea is effortless masculinity through a cinematic lens: the ease and sprezzatura of 1970s leading men, reworked through contemporary fit, color, and proportion. “The longer I immersed myself in it, the more I was reminded of cinema’s leading men from that time: their distinction, their wit and the effortless character with which they wore clothes,” says Cortina.

Sweaters, cardigans, polos, bombers, and a knitted tailored jacket take cues from Newman, McQueen, Grant, Hemingway, Delon, Belmondo, Brando, Cooper, Agnelli, and Lancaster. The standout is “George,” a knitted cashmere jacket modeled after Cortina’s own Savile Row blazer, balancing the ease of a sweater with the polish of tailoring. And cashmere needn’t be quiet: grass, melon, flamingo, sunshine, lavender, vin rouge, and marine bring an expressive, cinematic palette to MALO’s signature softness.

A New Lightness at Bottega Veneta

Before the first look appeared, Bottega Veneta’s Spring/Summer 2027 show came not from the clothes, but from the seats. Each Karton Hocker stool by Illya Goldman Gubin was first embraced by Creative Director Louise Trotter and then coated in resin, its crumpled form reflecting the depth of her relationship with the guest for whom it was intended. Some bore deep impressions while others remained almost pristine, turning the seating into a surprisingly personal portrait of designer and audience. A handcrafted leather flower—tulip, peony, or lily—rested atop each stool, punctuating the otherwise white space with color.

For Louise Trotter, the season centers on movement and the anticipation of summer, as blooms awaken and Milan emerges from its nocturnal slumber. That sense of release moves through the clothes. Tailoring loosens, leather becomes lighter, and traditional dress codes soften as masculine and feminine elements blend rather than compete. Craft remains central, particularly through Bottega Veneta’s signature intrecciato. Its woven construction becomes another expression of collaboration and the human hand, where slight imperfections are allowed to remain visible. The palette is largely restrained, leaving silhouette and material to do the talking, interrupted by occasional florals and fringe. There is an airy optimism to the collection: clothes opening, shifting, and lightening with the season. Like the flowers scattered throughout the space, they emerge from winter ready to bloom.

MSGM Looks to the Stars

Massimo Giorgetti begins MSGM’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection by remembering the childhood ritual of looking at the stars—an ordinary act of wonder that many leave behind as they grow older. Some stars are already extinguished, their light surviving only as a memory; others remain present but unseen. For Giorgetti, looking upward again becomes a kind of psychological homecoming: “The same spirit, under a new sky. On a blank page, but with the same story in our hands.”

That rediscovered sense of wonder runs through the clothes. Vivid blue, pink, green, purple, orange, and black collide with neon florals, stripes, star patterns, palm-tree motifs, and visible dye creases. Familiar MSGM archetypes remain, but their proportions and combinations shift: skirts and coats are layered, contrasting materials meet unexpectedly, and flashes of black formalwear are interrupted by light-blue stripes. The result retains the spontaneity that has always animated Giorgetti’s work without simply returning to the past. Childhood becomes less a nostalgic destination than a creative instinct to recover—the freedom to look at something familiar and, once again, see possibility.