Fashion
Best of Milan Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2025
Jan
Milan Fashion Week Men’s arrives this weekend in the Italian fashion capital with a somewhat depleted schedule: with Gucci and Fendi choosing to show co-ed during womenswear week next month, and JW Anderson sitting the menswear season out, there is plenty of chatter about the relative sedateness of the four-day-long event, and thus its future.
Despite this, there are enough highlights to retain a largely buoyant mood, not least the continuing pull of Prada, whereby co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons set the fashion agenda season-on-season with increasingly cerebral collections which are nonetheless rooted in the reality of clothing (an intriguing invite arrived in the form of a slice of metal scaffolding, engraved with the Prada logo). The show will take place tomorrow afternoon (19 January 2025).
Elsewhere, there is the usual run of Italian mega-brands: Dolce & Gabbana’s musing on red-carpet style took place earlier today to a backdrop of flashing paparazzi (‘the public and private sides of cinema icons,’ described Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce of the La Dolce Vita-inspired collection), while at Emporio Armani the eponymous designer explored the idea of ‘seduction’ in typically louche style. Zegna, Giorgio Armani, Dunhill and rising Bologna-based label Magliano will round out the week, alongside a slew of presentations, from Tod’s and Brunello Cucinelli to Our Legacy, Stone Island and C.P. Company.
Here, reporting live from Milan, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss unpacks the highlights from Milan Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2025, as they happen.
The best of Milan Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2025
Dolce & Gabbana
Dolce & Gabbana A/W 2025 menswear
(Image credit: Courtesy of Dolce & Gabbana)
Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce are well-versed in red-carpet dressing: they have outfitted pretty much every Hollywood power player since they founded the Italian maison in the mid-1980s, their clothing a mainstay of premieres and award ceremonies the world over (including dressing a coveted Best Actress Oscar winner in Susan Sarandon for Dead Man Walking in 1996). For this season’s menswear show, housed in Dolce & Gabbana’s Metropol space (fittingly, a former cinema) the pair turned the runway into a burgundy-hued red carpet flanked by hordes of sharply-dressed paparazzi, whose cameras flashed and whirred as the models made their way onto the runway (the show’s title, as printed on the crimson invite, was ‘Paparazzi’).
The inspiration, they said, began with Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, a longtime touchpoint for the designers and the film in which the word ‘paparazzi’ was first coined. Its influence was felt particularly in the latter half of the collection – a series of riffs on the tuxedo, nipped at the waist with a cummerbund or adorned with glimmering crystal brooches and buttons – though the collection largely played with a more contemporary imagining of a leading man, recalling D&G collections of the early 2000s in bulked-up faux-fur jackets, slouchy denim jeans and cargo pants, baker-boy hats, and flourishes of leopard print and sequins. ‘The public and private sides of cinema icons… an actors’ lifestyle from dawn to dusk, from the comfort of free time to the elegance of the red carpet,’ the pair described of the collection, which in its undone glamour continued their astute return to the codes which defined Dolce & Gabbana in the 1990s and 2000s.
Emporio Armani
Emporio Armani A/W 2025 menswear
(Image credit: Photography by Piero Cruciatti/AFP via Getty Images)
Giorgio Armani said that he was thinking about the idea of ‘seduction’ this season at Emporio Armani – the power of clothing to ‘draw people in, to captivate’. He largely did so through a rich and tactile catalogue of fabrics, from molten velvet – used for typically fluid tailoring – to glimmering lurex knitwear and patchworked brocades. The latter conjured a mood of travel, which continued in an evocation of a uniform for traversing mountainous realms, from enveloping yeti faux furs to puffer jackets and hiking backpacks. To describe these shifts between the functional (crossbody–bags, technical outerwear, utility pockets) and more typical moments of Armani-esque glamour, the designer said he was interested in exploring the interplay of ‘extremes’. It made for a satisfyingly eclectic outing, continuing Emporio Armani’s raison d’être – to create a truly all-encompassing (and here, all-weather) wardrobe for men. As ever, it ended with a rapturous reception for the designer, who will continue his celebratory 90th birthday year with his latest collection for Giorgio Armani on Monday morning (20 January 2025).
Stay tuned for more from Milan Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2025.
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