Though London’s fashion week offering was a little more modest than usual (the main event being Martine Rose’s sweat-drenched takeover of a working man’s club in Highgate) the SS24 collections picked up significant momentum in Milan, a place where designers are conferred a level of spectacle and grandeur that outstrips the humble venues beloved by British fashion designers. And that’s not to mention Paris, which offers up its finest landmarks every time a fashion designer so much as takes a breath.

DSquared2 was the first out Milan’s gates – inviting Julia Fox and Rocco Siffredi and Esther Cañadas to walk – followed by JW Anderson, Charles Jeffrey, Prada, and first-timer Andersson Bell. And then came Valentino, Magliano, Gucci, and 107 ALYX 9SM – all of whom proposed something a little more subdued for the season. Below, we travel over the best bits from the SS24 edition of Milan Fashion Week. 

VALENTINO 

Over the past year or so there has been a culture-wide revisiting of A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara’s divisive 2015 novel that chronicles the horrific and tireless abuse suffered by a gay and disabled Harvard grad – which has metabolised through tender-queer fan pages, theatre, and, now, fashion. Pierpaolo Piccioli’s SS24 collection for Valentino had been decorated with incredibly lengthy passages from the book – like “things get broken and sometimes they get repaired. And in most cases, you realise that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully” – which figured on leather totes, tailored suits, and denim trousers. Despite the mournful tone, the collection was an attempt to bring emotional depth into the lives and wardrobes of men. Boxy shirts were surfaced in delicate embroideries, abbreviated shorts were worn with macho blazers, and long-stemmed floral appliqués imitated neckties. Piccioli connected the collection to the concept of Kintsugi – the Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with golden seams – as if to suggest there is strength in being fragile. 

MAGLIANO

Luca Magliano received the prestigious Karl Lagerfeld award at this year’s LVMH Prize – a recognition which might seem to suggest that his namesake brand is now a completed project – but his SS24 show took place in a building site, with an elevated runway surrounded by metal fences and tarpaulin. A feeling of chaos and disorder was evoked in the clothing, too: threadbare necklaces strung together from old coins, denim jackets soiled with unknown substances, and blazers multiplied and then warped into operatic shawls. Some models held cigarettes in shrunken feather boas, others had their arms strapped to the side with restrictive swags of fabric. As Magliano described, the collection was based on the notion of “wretched couture”, which repositions lived-in, moth-eaten garments as memory-rich “talismans”. 

GUCCI

Gucci’s latest collection was last to have been designed by its in-house design team – Sabato de Sarno will present his debut collection later this year – and so, in the absence of a creative sensei, the brand proposed an ‘essential’ Gucci wardrobe for SS24 made up of louche sport sets, wide-legged tailoring, and monogrammed denim. The central protagonist was the house’s signature horsebit loafer, which was introduced by Aldo Gucci in 1953 and has percolated across most collections ever since. In lieu of a traditional catwalk, the brand hired Milanese curator Alessio Ascari to create an immersive space in Milan’s Spazio Maiocchi exhibition space, where a shoal of international artists unpacked the legacy of the horsebit via film, installation, and floor-to-ceiling AI-generated images. 

DOLCE & GABBANA

Almost two episodes of the current season of The Kardashians have been dedicated to Kim’s SS23 collection with Dolce & Gabbana but this season Stefano and Domenico wanted to return to the purest distillation of the brand – “the tank-top, the coppola, the rosary, the black, the jacket, Sicily,” as the accompanying show notes read. Titled “Style”, the collection unhitched itself from fashion’s fast-fleeting obsessions and instead considered what it means to be timeless. The proposal comprised handsome nip-waisted tailoring, floral-embroidered organza sets, behemoth overcoats, and aqueous knitwear, with everything being in service to the greco-roman bodies that D&G has always worshipped – chests big and brawny beneath unbuttoned coats, broad shoulders wrapped in sashed jersey, biceps swinging from twisted tanks.

107 ALYX 9SM

Matthew M Williams debuted a strange shoe at his SS24 show for 107 Alyx 9SM: a ballet slipper with an enclosed five-finger Vibram sole. Though there were plenty of lug-soled boots, rollercoaster buckles, and oversized bombers within the collection, perhaps it suggests that the imposing hypebeast aesthetic has come to a close. That shoe was probably the most experimental style that Williams put forward – he himself described the collection as “looks that I would wear. Very direct, not over-styled, and immediate.” That would describe the plaid shirts, normcore denim, and grommeted windbreakers – which had a put-together feel compared to the grubbier leather trench coats, caps, cargo pants, and gilets that looked as though they had been burnt at the edges and plunged into a large tank of grease.

ZEGNA

For SS24, Alessandro Sartori scattered 192 balls of unprocessed yarn in and around a sun-drenched piazza in the middle of Milan. Those bales – a new trademark Oasi Linen – had been transported from the label’s specialist producers in Normandy and comprised roughly 70 per cent of Zegna’s entire collection. It was there, in the linings of loose leather jackets, in coral-hued ribbed-knit cardigans, in the jacquard embroideries of v-neck shirts and shorts, and in languid trousers. All of this was in service to the label’s ever-evolving idea of formality and shifting attitudes towards tailoring. “At Zegna we keep rethinking what an efficient wardrobe should be like today, further delving into the idea of creating a system of elements – tops, bottoms, underpinnings and accessories – that can be combined and self-styled however one prefers,” the designer explained.” It’s the idea of the uniform that prompts non-uniformity.”