Escape, Intimacy, and Excess Define Milan Fashion Week's Spring/Summer 2027 Previews

The fashion week cycle is well and truly under way. After a return to form for London Fashion Week, it is now Milan's turn. While the week kicked off with an unorthodox show from Prada, a teary farewell at Diesel and a spectacle of Italian excess at Vogue World, it continued on to be a little more grounded.

Max Mara's linen excursion

Fabrics have always been Max Mara’s real luxury, so it was fitting that linen took centre stage for spring/summer 2027. Titled Far Horizon, the collection drew on the female adventurers of the 1930s, including aviator Amelia Earhart and transcontinental driver Eva Dickson.

Safari jackets, utility shirts, practical vests and cropped cargo trousers came in restrained shades of khaki, taupe and brown, paired with suede backpacks. Linen can be unforgiving – easily crumpled and often relegated to holiday wardrobes – but here Max Mara made it look impossibly smooth, closer to silk than a summer staple. The references were romantic, but the clothes remained resolutely wearable. It is a particular skill of creative director Ian Griffiths, who has spent almost four decades at the house, drawing on strong female figures and translating their stories into clothes that feel fresh, modern and desirable.

Marni's restless mood

Meryll Rogge’s second collection for Marni suggested that an archive is not something to preserve, but to edit. After a debut that respectfully referenced founder Consuelo Castiglioni, she pushed the house into more restless territory here. The clothes felt younger and deliberately unfinished: metal loops were exposed, embroidery stopped midway, and garments appeared caught between sketch and final form. Rather than simply showcasing craftsmanship, Rogge questioned what a finished Marni garment should look like.

Slim, tubular silhouettes defined the collection, with leather and duchesse-satin shift dresses providing structure. Elsewhere, texture took over, from micro-sequinned melange knits to a wallpaper-print windbreaker and neat checked coat that nodded to the past without slipping into nostalgia.

Roberto Cavalli's archive

Archival Roberto Cavalli is having a moment. Rare printed leathers from the 1970s are surfacing on the vintage market, while pieces from the punkier Just Cavalli era are being snapped up on resale platforms. Creative director Fausto Puglisi has clearly taken notice.

For spring/summer 2027, he dug deep into the archive, turning up the animal prints, velvet devore and embroidery, and giving them a decidedly clubby edge. This was a collection for going out: miniskirts, bike shorts, halter tops, hot pants, lace-edged camisoles and low-rise embellished jeans arrived in a riot of pattern and texture, cutting through Milan’s prevailing neutrals. After several seasons of quiet-luxury restraint, Milan’s mood appears to be loosening. Puglisi, for one, is making clothes designed to cause a little trouble.

Alberta Ferretti's beautiful escape

Lorenzo Serafini’s A Beautiful Escape for Alberta Ferretti was an invitation to leave reality behind, if only temporarily. The collection moved between sea and land, holiday and memory, with saturated blue, rust and mustard softened as though by the sun, alongside ivory, black, lilac, pistachio and powder pink.

Fabrics were liquid, light and almost weightless. Floral prints dissolved across iridescent Japanese grounds, while slip dresses, lingerie details and kimono jackets met balloon trousers and fluid layers. Bias-cuts and satin allowed everything to move freely around the body. The mood was exotic but uncomplicated: an old-fashioned idea of escape made light, sensual and modern. Clothes for somewhere warm, with nowhere in particular to be.

Fendi's sense of intimacy

Maria Grazia Chiuri opened her Fendi collection with an EE Cummings line projected into the show space. It was the kind of intellectual framing the designer has long brought to her work. A sense of intimacy ran throughout.

Underwear became outerwear, silk met animal print and velvet met parchment, while lace, embroidery and intarsia were layered freely. Glossy and matte surfaces collided within the same looks. Italian actress, singer and dancer Raffaella Carr and Luciano Fabro’s monumental Mirror Cube were key references, but the most compelling idea was physical: dressing as something intimate and slightly unruly. Dressing gowns moved on to the street and jewelled shoes punctuated the finale, as Chiuri imagined clothes as a second skin, responsive to emotion rather than rules. The result was one of Milan’s more convincing propositions: sensual, specific and less interested in fashion as costume than in the person wearing it.

Prada's unorthodox runway

Prada opened the spring/summer 2027 season in typically unorthodox style, presenting a collection composed entirely of skirts. No dresses, trousers or shorts. Just skirts.

At Fondazione Prada, the house’s converted factory and cultural space in the south of the city, models strode across a Perspex floor illuminated by strip lighting, as if walking over a giant photocopier. The skirt appeared in almost every imaginable form: sensible grey tailoring, crystal-flower evening wear, jaunty neon florals, pleated candy-coloured nylon and draped printed silk. There were sheer and layered versions, Velcro fastenings and cotton treated to resemble leather. Some were merely fragments of skirts – apron-like panels slung around the hips without quite meeting.

Miuccia Prada rarely wears anything else, and the show notes made her fixation explicit: “Engineered for freedom, the skirt is a Prada obsession. At once autonomous and interdependent of the clothes around, its definitive graphic silhouette, linear and modernist, offers the single fixed parameter for projection of ideas.” Those ideas emerged through the styling. Skirts were paired with tiny bralettes, fluffy jumpers and tucked-in technical windbreakers, as well as biker jackets, camisoles and slim-cut shirts. The message was clear: whether tidy, loose, rebellious or vaguely unhinged, skirts are the future – and can be worn however you please.

Glenn Martens' farewell at Diesel

Elsewhere, Glenn Martens presented his final collection for Diesel, the label he has led since October 2020. He began by planting dancers from the French collective (La)Horde among the audience. They soon leapt into action, headbanging to the soundtrack.

The collection was classic Diesel, filled with Martens’ reworked denim and trompe-l’oeil effects. Oversized jackets, barely-there looks and head-to-toe leather appeared alongside distressed knitwear and cutaway streetwear in a show “envisioned as an immersive party at a club you never want to leave”. Martens remains creative director of Maison Margiela.

Italian fashion's Milan takeover

Vogue staged Vogue World Milano beneath the glass-vaulted roof of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Italy’s oldest and most prestigious shopping arcade. Billed as a celebration of fashion, craftsmanship and culture, the five-act spectacle brought together leading Italian houses.

Armani Privé, Bottega Veneta, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Ferragamo, Gucci, Prada and Valentino were among the brands that created one-of-a-kind looks. Jennifer Lopez attended in a dramatic black lace Dolce & Gabbana gown, while Dakota Johnson wore an oversized jacket and sheer skirt by Valentino. Rapper MGK walked the runway and model Alton Mason performed somersaults in a Brunello Cucinelli suit.