Menswear’s tale of two cities: Florence and Milan’s myriad of ideas leave you to decide what you want for SS24.

When we talk about the idea of what menswear is in the context of trends and ideas, for many years it will provoke a polarising reaction of different sorts - “Menswear is limited and boring!” “There isn’t enough creativity for people to engage with it” “Iti is made to suit customer needs, therefore it does not need to communicate artistically”. As this season’s Florence and Milan shows began in full swing, a 31 degree heat and the dire need to cool down stepping into different myriads of creativity, it became clear that menswear has turned its corners around to invoke a certain spark of attention - the pure unadulterated joy of trying new (and old) things in new (and old) ways.

Whether it would be taking the men’s silhouette sleeve by sleeve and collar by collar at Prada, or the quirky symbolism of workwear drawn into leather aprons and tool belts at Fendi, or a New Carolean era proposed by Charles Jeffrey by looking at 17th century dressing and whirring it into AI to create new patterns, this time around Italian fashion went off-script and decided to do what feels right for them. As we continue to run at full speed ahead into a AI-led era of creating, replicating, recycling and reintroducing trends that move vastly different to any design cycle and their longevity deeply questioned, each designer is presented at a crossroad when thinking about how to present their collection - do we engage with what popular culture tells us to talk about, or do we stick to our own conversation and introduce our human points of view? Well, luckily in Milan you can have both, and more.

Fendi.

How can you honour a century-old legacy and map out the next 100 years? With curiosity and reminiscent nostalgia of her grandmother Adele Fendi (the founder of the house of Fendi), Silvia Venturini Fendi revisited the very core values that launched this house into becoming a global influence, by setting a futuristic tone with the opening of the brand new Fendi Factory in Tuscany.

“It is time we honour not just the creative director, but the artisans and the whole team behind it.” Fendi ushered backstage after the SS24, the subject of which was the “corporate artisan”. Borrowing accessories in the face of tool betls, wrapped around aprons, reworked in denim, and measuring tapes in hand, the Fendi man is hard at work. Proportions stayed trutful to the trick of the trade - a signature amalgamation of fine camel leather jackets next to trompe l’oeil pattern print graphics, meeting clogs in all cream tonalities, making the colours reflect upon the terracota landscape that surround Tuscany. After all, the displayed ideas are coming fresh from the house.

On the accessories front, the Fendi Kengo Kuma principles bridged its Japanese roots with the Italian attention in leather, bringing archtectural principles to the signature Peekaboo and Baguette Soft Trunk. For Silvia Venturini Fendi, this is the time to stop, reminisce and soak up real-time history at its peak - she has taken 100 years of family craftsmanship and expanded them into the future with innovation, curiosity and crisp confidence of what Fendi (and specifically the Fendi man) means to her.

Maison Valentino.

Is there a certain recipe for rebirth? What feeling triggers the urge to change, escape and reinvent ourselves? A few questions that Pierpaolo Piccioli was asking himself when thinking about his return to the menswear stage, and staging his first menswear show in four years. Staged at the Universita Degli Studi in Milan, the alma mater represented the home of learning, and the sacred place one gets to explore the world that feeds their soul, all along taking exerpts from Hanya Yanagihara’s novel ‘A Little Life’ that deals with the reality of human suffering, abuse and how the spirit of love always prevails.

The collection’s silhouettes ushered an exploratory play on the human senses: oversized and relaxed silhouettes meeting Piccioli’s brilliant eye for colour, painting a canvas-like image for the wearer. Seen through embellished Hawaiian shirts, woven into elongated coats and printed onto co-ord wide shorts, the joy of flowers is seen protruding outwards from each garment, acting as a symbol of transformation - flowers keep on blossoming even after the deepest of winters. The nature of the collection borrows silhouettes from workwear - wide pressed shorts, a skinny elgonated tie and an oversized shirt, as Piccioli uses it as a base on printing some of Yanagihara’s most personal quotes - “We are so old, we have become young again.”

Ushering a sense of reconstructed masculinity, Pierpaolo is not afraid to deconstruct, question and reflect upon each and every sartorial code that has been implemented from the past - and remove its connotation. In his universe, feelings are the ones that guide the wearer, not societal expectations. We cannot escape the past, but we can learn to make peace with it and hold it close in our walk across life.

Dsquared2.

Talk about naughty. Dean and Dan Caten have never shied away from talking about fantasies and sex, but this season they explored ultimate pleasures further. Staging their co-ed collection right outside of Milan, the fifteen foot tall screen displaying excerpts from 80s adult films gave us a hint that things are about to heat up big time. As the collection opened with a set of a 1980s Palm Beach boudoir and a film director with a camera, the beginning of the collection urged us to let loose, and remove all preppiness contexts from the oversized polo t-shirts, tennis skirts and knit vests. Bridging both ends of the spectrum, the Caten twins wanted to nod back to the country club - reworked, slashed, and made effortlessly cool, sexy and sensual.

Each look weighed on its own personality, something Dsquared2 has been thinking about since last season - the preppy jock, the sexy red carpet star (represented by iconic supermodel Esther Cañadas) , the Rodeo Drive diva (played by Julia Fox), or the Beverly Hills IT girl (in the face of Alex Consani), and the lustful film director (featuring none other than Italian adult film star Rocco Siffredi).

You can tell that Dean and Dan Caten are having fun self-referencing their rich archive of the naughties where Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell were the poster girls for the DSQ sex appeal, into a collection that has a playful construction and borrows one another in a sexual act of creating garments - a mini skirt cut from a men’s tie, seashells and rhinestones as tops on slashed denim, or nude mini dress that houses a built-in corset and bra, making it easy to slip into and go into the night. After all, at Dsquared2 clothes are meant to be taken off.

Dolce&Gabbana.

Stile. In the invitation to Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s SS24 show, there was a small pocketbook, which previewed some of the key components of the new looks, expanding upon what stile means to them. “Respect for identity, and for an image that has been created over time.” A statement ushering the D&G identity that has been emphasised over and over, season after season. Now, it’s time to look back at it and see it in a different light. A retrospective of their inspiration throughout the years followed the successful womenswear show back in February, with Kim Kardashian picking out her most sought after bits across the 1990s and 2000s, now it was menswear’s turn to reflect back on some of the sensual debuts throughout the years.

The collection sees the Dolce man as a sculpture - the 90s sex appeal, crafted and draped into it, yet protruding away from it in monochrome tailoring, deep plunging v-necks embellished with heavy bejewelled crosses, or a protruding sense of coziness with layers of cashmere seen across skinny legging-like trousers under oversized long-form coats. The minimalism in embellishment left the body to do all the talking, and bring an updated solution to a menswear need for a multifunctional and long-standing understanding of stile.

Neil Barrett.

Welcome back on the runway, Neil Barrett. The designer was beaming with joy talking with his closest friends and colleagues, expressing “love for the detail, and a sharp focus on the core of my brand”. Having created his brand back in 1999, the designer first explored the idea of slick, chic and humbly personal menswear in his first seasons, and those very sartorial codes were back this time around too, only with a little more breathing space and relaxed nature, as shorts were elongated and shoulders were dropped to give a contemporary feeling to the wearer.

Staging his show in his headquarters in Milan, the feeling of returning onto the stage felt confident, measured and on his own terms, presenting a colour palette of bitter yellows, deep dark dusty blues and soft greys, with attention towards the finishings of the fabrics, combined with notable footwear in the face of slouched, high boots that brought forward an updated modern uniform - something the designer has been researching and working on in the last few seasons. The Barrett universe isn’t about shock factor, it is about well designed and technical - equal parts innovation and soft exploration, that gives the wearer exactly what they didn’t know they needed.

JORDANLUCA.

“Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have, but I have it…” These Lana Del Rey lyrics sounded off in complete silence at JORDANLUCA’s finale, and just like this collection, they represented something a lot bigger. Luca Marchetto and Jordan Bowen are not just designers, but artists whose personal lives have led them to tell deep human truths through their craft - their menswear has explored difficult themes of angst, abuse, anger, loss and love. This time, with their first full co-ed collection, they explored the socioeconomic phenomenon of “The Lipstick Effect”, and how human it is to hold onto small moments of hope and beauty in times of hardship.

The collection explored the colour red in a deeply psychological way - is it blood and murder or is it birth and life, and what is the spectrum of emotion that humans can take? The brilliance in this collection came from the well-defined passion exuded with each look - the archetype of a woman who has layers and individual depth, whether she was in a sensual latex skirt draped across, a dazzling silver dress protruding outwards, or a power-play Wall Street-inspired suit skirt combo - the JORDANLUCA woman has been through things in her life, and she keeps moving forwards. Speaking of Wall Street, the menswear came in full JL glory, with references juxtaposing the severe urban hustle with savouring the present moment - time to only focus and act now, without thinking ahead. The perfection in this collection was completed by creating a visual language of womenswear and menswear that is non-binary - silhouettes are borrowed, reinterpreted and offered for us to choose what we want to wear, instead of being told. The accessories, in the face of thorn heels, rose-thorn bags, dynamic sunglasses and 80s menswear ties windswept in the looks, completed a well-defined universe in which the wearer can dive straight in and feel represented.

The hope seen across each look is one that we all have experienced throughout our lives at one point, in fact, the reality of the human experience is that we all are much closer to each other than we think, and this is what Marchetto and Bowen confidently tell us each season in their shows with sharing a small part of their soul to speak upon modern archetypes - ones that feel real, important and can make us feel a tiny bit less alone walking across an unknown life.

MSGM.

Where do we go when we fall into the darkness of the night? Exploring uncharted territories, seeking adventure and curiously following the unknown were all themes of Massimo Giorgetti wanted to bring out and explore further, prompted by his recent Tanzanian trip where he set out to explore more of the planet’s most beautiful scenery. Staging his show in a vault in Milan, the designer chose to capture the moment of anticipation - a new dawn that awaits discovery, giving a collection that is captured in an image in his mind that he will remember forever.

The collection combines the signature MSGM silhouettes in the face of relaxed, oversized tailoring in earthy tones in the face of camel, and soft grey, and bright pops in hues of lavender. The other side towards the collection seized Giorgetti’s wanderlust adventures - his images of the Tanzanian savannah directly printed onto boiler suits, tanks and relaxed trousers, and the deep sunset horizons of Africa taken and applied as a tie-dye effect across tailoring and washed-out denim creating a range of spectrum of exploration to the clothing.

Within the show space, models walked curiously with torches in the dark, stepping out into a mood of new beginnings as Massimo Giorgetti raises a conversation about beginning new adventures, in a collection that shoots and scores at being equal parts exploratory and exciting for its wearer, putting them into a new spotlight of adventure.

Magliano.

What does a runway show constitute in the eyes of Luca Magliano? “A proper runway works as a sincere invitation: ‘Come see us’. But it is also an excuse for giving something back.” Magliano started the season with expressing prayers and epigraphs, expressing gratitude and honouring the importance of the people around us. As one of fashion’s biggest poets, he wanted to also honour the legacy of Italian writer Alda Merini, drawing a parallel to how clothes become talismans representative of events that have happened, almost like a personal diary of style - our associations with clothing run deep into our psyche.

The collection featured the magical touch of Luca Magliano - the hem lines and silhouettes were windswept away and across the body, giving a sincere moment of being caught in the act of experiencing what is ahead of you, masterfully creating character as each model walked across the palazzo made to seem as a construction site, covered in sheets across. The casting told half of the story, as Magliano sought to employ real-life by putting not just models, but people from all walks of life who took onto the energy of the story: his brilliant experimentation is seen with workwear and stripping it away from its context, carefully playing with technical garments that are deconstructed, shredded and ripped apart.

The mastery of technique allowed us to forget about the garments and rather witness clothes as mnemonic forms of storytelling: when function is stripped away from its intention, all we are left with is the indisputed art of the moment, or as Luca Magliano calls it: “wretched couture”.

Etro.

Marco de Vincenzo is drawing upon accidental allegories in order to communicate intuitively. The designer stumbled across a specific book whilst visiting his hometown of Messina, which filled its pages with anonymous allegories, tucked away and urging him to read between the lines. Fascinated by this fateful discovery, the designer took the idea to apply it as inspiration, drawing new, hidden meanings behind Etro’s symbolism and the legacy of the Italian house.

Bringing it forward to the present time, De Vincenzo drew timely parallels with the modern ways of non-verbal communication - GIFs, memes, TikToks and obscure references telling a lot more than what meets the eye, and entire generations communicating in vastly different languages. The collection, featuring expressive motifs, long and oversized silhouettes reminiscent of the ones you would find at a skate park, urged the designer’s aim to communicate Etro’s history to a new generation of people - luring them in with tactile soft silk shirts, football jerseys, bermudas and tailoring vests that aim to be discovered and reinterpreted by the wearer in casual contexts.

Allegorically, Marco de Vincenzo has an agenda of uprooting Etro’s house codes and bring them new force of life across generations by giving them the new wave gravitas, and he has served it justice by giving a playbook of the Etro core of values, and now the ball is in the wearer’s court to interpret it and engage.

Prada.

When asked backstage about her instinct towards Prada’s SS24 sticky and sweet spectacle, Mrs. Prada expressed one sentence “Fluidity, and the body around it.”. Talking about the concept of fluidity, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons extrapolated all meanings behind it and applied it to the entire experience. The show space? Made from sheets of metal that intercept with each other to create a limitless sight, oozing with clear slime from its walls, wrapping us in a cocoon of thought - constructing and deconstructing each detail to the SS24 collection.

Both Prada and Simons started by questioning the canons of menswear and examining a men’s shirt, using it as a starting point to all garments in the line-up, brilliantly taking apart, putting together and taking apart again suits, raincoats, active sportswear, reporter jackets. As outerwear took on the silhouettes of traditional tailoring combined with sportive nuances, the tailoring itself perfectly veered off into a direction of sportsmanship - sleeves elongated, waists cinched, combined with exposing shorts that hone in on the body.

The colour spectrum, seen across strong and decisive hues in the face of vibrant greens, dark blues, earthy browns, greys and monochrome, even further emphasised the Prada staple of appliqué floral shirts that stood on their own as historical endoctrines of the special feeling behind the Prada wearer. There was also the accessories, paying homage to fluidity in the face of sunglasses wrapped around the face, sculpted and moulded as a natural extension, and the bags, slouched under one’s arm solidified a fluid regeneration of menswear and its archetypes, and whether they will even be part of fashion’s evolving future. The place is here, the time is now, and Mrs. Prada and Raf Simons are going for it. Will you?

Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY.

Ah, these New Caroleans. As we awake under a completely new Carolean era under King Charles III, Charles Jeffrey asked the question of what exactly does this mean for British identity, and more specifically the future queer community? As the designer settles into his brand’s current home in Milan, showing his second season here, the whisper of influences for the season brought the collection into its own time capsule - Shakespearean and New Romantics influences are cut short, brought forward and examined through a joyfully queer feeling.

With a casting of his collaborators, friends and particular archetypes of people that he has encountered throughout his life, Jeffrey put his vision into real-life urging us to interact with the garments, see the historical references such as 17th century fabrications and traditional 1660s garbs in the form of cobalt kilts and pleated dresses, or tartan armour built into jumpsuits and trousers, employing them to the current context of the world and from a queer POV, where each design is an honest thought to its community.

To combine his passion for futurism, the designer also put all of his research and exploration for the season into an AI generator, coming up with new patterns, silhouettes and colour palettes that merged the past and the present. Designing this collection during a time where he trained for the London Marathon also urged him to create looks and silhouettes that feel active, futuristic and disrupt the narrative - after all Charles Jeffrey is a London rebel.

JW Anderson.

Jonathan Anderson wants to ease into and restart again for SS24. Showing a co-ed collection of SS24 menswear and Resort 24 for womenswear, the Northern Irish designer wanted to examine things from an ease perspective, the JW way which meant construction, tactility into natural extensions of the body. Looking at how knitting has become the new craze amongst all of us, the designer brought together 2/3 of his collection through knitwear techniques - sharp rugby polos with popped collars in blue and white stripes, deep plunging v-necklines on melange sweaters, or even curving spirals onto knitted dresses protruding forwards - a comfort into masterful techniques for clothes that you wear with equal parts of comfort and quirk.

A spotlight across the collection was his trusted use of leathers into weaving bags and accessories, paying specific attention to weaved leather tops in deep blues and maroons, matched with panelled leather trench coats that flopped outwards and created their own patterns as they moved. The quirky JW sense of protrusion is visible all across with shorts panelled with extra fabric on the sides resembling a jean tag, or extra cushioned rugby shirts, inspired by his father Willie Anderson, captain of Ireland’s Rugby team.

Backstage after the show, the designer talked at length about the subconscious techniques and feelings that become second nature to one’s design process, which further informed how this collection came at ease to him, signalling “this is who I am, and this is my reset into ease.