How to describe Milan Fashion Week?

As the third stop of the four major international fashion weeks, Milan Fashion Week is living in the "wild" of London and the "grand" of Paris, and is the smallest city of the four major venues, but it has developed its own unique characteristics over the past half century.

Thanks to the industrial restructuring after World War II, the textile industry and handicraft traditions flourished here, and the emergence of fashion ready-to-wear trends made it the center of the roots of Italian fashion in the 1960s, and witnessed the emergence of Prada, Valentino, Versace, Giorgio Armani and other brands from the local to the world.

"In the constant and change interwoven," is perhaps the best summary.

In Milan, there are time-honored handicraft workshops that continue the family tradition, and there is no lack of fabric and technology research and development with the blessing of modern industrial technology, just like the Emmanuel II cloisters standing in the local city center, which has laid the foundation of the modern commercial center while maintaining the most classical aesthetic core for centuries.

When reviewing the schedule of Milan Fashion Week in the spring and summer of 2024, we can still find ideas for observation in the "unchanged" and "ever-changing", and the fashion show season after season certainly needs the blessing of new elements and new concepts.

However, for the brand established and developed in the city of Milan for decades or even hundreds of years, no matter how the show and design change, their own history, creative vision and style of persistence is always the same, which can be described as "all changes."

In the Prada Spring/Summer 2024 women's fashion show, the design of the show continues the waterfall installation of the last season with colored mucus flowing down the river, and the change lies in the interpretation of the key points of the collection by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons.

"I'm tired of talking about ideas -- let's talk about clothes," Miuccia Prada explained after the show. "Prada doesn't talk much about craftsmanship, at least not as much as other brands, but we want to show what we can do," Simons adds.

As the two said, the show notes did not mention any creative ideas about fashion design, but clearly listed the material and technical characteristics of each set of looks.

From the lightweight worsted organza and transparent silk Haze dresses to the silver chain fringe jewelry element belted skirt, the collection is delicate, delicate and accurate, echoing Miuccia's statement before the show, "We don't want to philosophize, we don't want to come up with a story about clothes."

For this series, we wanted to focus on the work - the method, the technique and the values. The clothes say it all."

This year marks the 110th anniversary of the creation of the Prada brand, but Miuccia Prada has no intention of turning the show into a grand celebration, but in the form of a sword, leaving ingenuity in the details.

Let's take a look at the handbag carried by the model, which is decorated with hand-carved human head clasps, tongue sticking out in anger, seemingly joking, but it is Miuccia Prada's symbol of the family history, around 1913, his grandfather Mario Prada created this package in moire silk and added surreal sculpture decoration. Today, the bag is reimagined in soft goat leather and recycled nylon.

At the end of the show, in addition to the curtain call of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, the design director Fabio Zambernardi, who has worked for the brand for nearly 30 years, also came to the stage on the occasion of his departure, bringing a warm moment in the Milan Fashion Week this season.

On the first day of Milan Fashion Week, Kim Jones created a very quiet collection for Fendi, with elegant color stitching, extraordinary fabric quality and Jones's good sense of proportion. Even the iconic double F was cleverly integrated into the dark grain, bringing the whole collection directly into the daily wardrobe of modern women. His inspiration is also those who rush through the streets of Rome in the morning, knitwear, cardigans, skirts and dresses overlap, combine and intertwine, full of life scenes immediately emerge in front of us.

But Jones's "quiet" change is based entirely on the brand's history and heritage. In this collection, you can see Karl Lagerfeld's pragmatism in Fendi's spring/Summer 1999 collection, especially the plain-colored knitted halter dresses at the end. The smooth texture of the female body is outlined like an elegant sculpture, which perfectly echoes the supermodel lineup of Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Amber Valletta, Kate Moss, etc. These designs will also be like these guests. Become a timeless symbol of the classic fashion industry.

When Kendall Jenner took to the stage in a sleeveless dress in a very 1960s style, everyone lamented that Versace had become more simple and fresh, a far cry from the previous collections presented in Los Angeles and Cannes.

But in fact, the shift is still reflected in the Versace archive, with Donatella choosing as his starting point some "exceptional moments" in his brother Gianni's creative style - the Autumn/Winter 1995 collection, "which I think looks fresh and modern." "She said.

More pastel colors, more hidden Baroque prints, and shorter cuts and proportions give the new Versace a light and agile look.

But it also brought back memories of the '90s, especially when Claudia Schiffer, the supermodel for Versace's Fall/Winter 1995 collection, appeared at the end of the season.

And even for the post-00s who are not familiar with the phenomenon of the golden generation of supermodels, the collection is colorful, practical and romantic enough to open a new era of Versace-style sexiness with Donatella's archive of neglected hot pants, crop tops and cardigans.

In terms of design, Matthieu Blazy, the current creative director of Bottega Veneta, is undoubtedly "fickle". The innovative combination of clothing materials and processes is like a magic trick in his hands. If you are careless, you will willingly fall into his elaborate "trap", laments that the boundaries of craft can be so broad and endless.

This season is another chapter Blazy opened after the conclusion of the "Italy trilogy", from Italy, he chose to take us to the world, "my idea is to merge the world.

We draw inspiration from all over the world: South America, Southeast Asia, Russia, Brittany, Sicily... We're trying to bring them together and create some kind of new culture."