The quietly potent, poised edge of the menswear shows in Milan is slowly detaching from timeless classics and that long reigned the runways: this season, after a stellar line-up of brands that showcased their Spring/Summer 2024 collections, the quiet shapes and breezy volumes ruled supreme, forging a new path for the highly-coveted trend of quiet luxury.

MSGM

“Sogno Off Road”: inspired by Massimo Giorgetti’s Tanzanian trip, the MSGM Men’s Spring/Summer 2024 collection is like a dream interrupted, when the early morning sun illuminates uncharted lands, heralding the dawn of a new day — an invitation to embark on an exploration of boundless territories awaiting discovery. As one dream fades, another unfolds, blurring the lines between imagination and reality: wonders materialize before our eyes, surpassing the limits of our wildest fantasies. Its nature reveals itself in its purest form — a dream brought to life, experienced with eyes wide open.

The collection's hues dance between the ethereal and the terrestrial. Earthy tones reminiscent of sand, brown or green, celestial sky blues and lilacs.

Vibrant orange hues ignite the collection with a fiery energy, just as they set the African horizon ablaze during savannah sunsets. Fabrics are organic and tactile, prints have natural textures, they are delicate and elevated. On black tailored looks, frayed cotton mimics the texture of zebra coats, while cow prints recall the animals roaming on African plains.

ETRO

While visiting his hometown, Marco De Vincenzo stumbled all of a sudden onto a copy of Cesare Ripa’s Iconology: a seventeenth century repertoire filled with allegorical images depicting virtues, qualities, and vices. The encounter triggered a detour among esoteric arcana and amusing representations full of hidden meanings. A detour that originated in the past but swiftly led to the present moment. Only at a superficial glance allegories look in fact like relics of another time. If allegories use figuration to express concepts, what are memes, GIFs, and even tiktoks if not ways to allow images to say something else, or just simply communicating thoughts in non-verbal ways? And isn’t the act itself of putting together an outfit, also, an allegorical deed that charges image-making with communicative powers?

The new Etro collection stems from such intuitive, deliberately non-scientific thinking.

It is imbued with both ease and sacrality, condensed in flowing shapes that barely touch the body and rhythmic patterns that swarm all over it, either mixed or matched. Generous blazers, bermudas, jumpsuits, fuzzy jumpers, football tops are mixed with long cardigans and thick blankets that turn into coats.

Summer memories surface and accumulate, blending with those of his grandfather and ancestors: the ploughed fields, the sowing, the harvest.

JORDANLUCA

Cosmetics magnate Leonard Lauder's popular phrase, the "lipstick index", was coined in recognition of a singular fact - that sales of lipstick (and associated makeup) are inversely commensurate with the health of the economy. In other words, when times are hard, people buy lipstick - that most strident, armour-like and statement-making of cosmetics.

This idea is the launchpad for JORDANLUCA SS24, which also marks the first full collection of womenswear, presented alongside menswear.

Lipstick is represented by the recurring red detail that threads its way through the collection. It's no accident that red, a colour historically associated with power and ritual, also evokes blood, life, murder, sex and death, all reiterative themes in SS24. Among the various greys, browns, neutrals and muds, flecks of red appear and then recede throughout a collection that touches on glamour, crisis and the philosophy of absurdism.

NEIL BARRETT

The Spring/Summer 2024 Neil Barrett collection is a return both to the runway at Milan Fashion Week and to the core codes of the brand. It goes back to the roots of Neil Barrett, in the 1990s menswear Minimalism he pioneered, and to emblematic fundamentals of his style. A precision, a respect and love for materials, a uniform element, an obsession with detail. This collection is anchored around these foundational elements, re-inventing solutions for dressing. The notion of workwear - uniforms for industry - underpins the clothes.
Constantly contrasted, these garments share a purpose and duty, engineered for function, designed for life. Here they are elevated through superlative fabrics, reinvented in hue, proportioned and refashioned. Harking back to 1990s Minimalism, formal tailoring becomes informal by loosening the fit. The exactitude of an underpinning to looks, a stripe of white, becomes a graphic thread through the collection.

GIORGIO ARMANI

Narrating a certain style is a constant process of writing and rewriting. It involves examining familiar elements from different angles to craft new plots and weave new stories. Giorgio Armani’s story always stems from the same unwavering urgency: to clothe the present with a vibrant, authentic sign fashioned from dignity and elegance. This collection reiterates the code while weaving a new storyline: forms are soft and lengthened, intertwining threads either actually woven or evoked in prints that imitate knots, weaves with a summery feel, and geometric motifs for rhythm.

The body is never overtly exposed but the energy that animates the lightweight volumes is palpable. Intertwining notes of blue, sand and natural tones provide the chromatic completion to this particularly light and fresh collection, which includes shoes and sandals similarly characterised by knots and weaves. A story in which everything comes together.

MAGLIANO

“More tears have been shared for the granted prayers than for the Unheard ones.”

Teresa D’avila “five minutes on the runway are more effective than a life-time in Therapy” Bruno pompa At Palamagliano - both a finished building and a construction site - for the first time, a proper runway works as a sincere invitation: ‘come see us’. But it is also an excuse for giving something back. The words printed on the clothes are prayers, epigraphs and Thanksgivings for who is here and who will be. Graphics punctuate important pleads, impudent dares, impressed as to not be forgotten. The Clothes become talismans because of the events that have occurred. As the money that Alda Merini - our season’s whirling heroine - ìtrousers and working overalls, wind-breaking jackets: all These clothes deconstruct and break into devices for glamour, a Wretched couture. What remains are the attire’s protective and Technical features, but they are shredded, torn into pieces, till the last hem of their function becomes the precious element.