At Milan Fashion Week, Fendi puts Italian cultural icons in the spotlight

The average fashion show lasts about 10 to 12 minutes. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it experience that no high-definition drone has managed to capture or stream effectively.

This was especially true for Fendi’s spring/summer 2027 catwalk presentation, held last week in Milan’s design district. Attendees got their first taste of sensory-maxxing at the entrance, where a giant neon sign spelled out the title of e.e. cummings’s poem I like my body when it is with your and glasses of champagne reflected the large, shiny letters. Inside the venue, a glass-walled hallway, which served as the runway, divided rows of guests (actors Monica Bellucci, Rachel Zegler and Yara Shahidi among them).

The opening look – a salt-white dickie paired with a black lace-trimmed slip, accented with leopard print heels – sent stadium-strength strobe lights flashing. As models in sheer mid-calf dresses, lace-trimmed slips and cape coats that fused Napoleonic, Greco-Roman and art deco motifs strode down the glass path, the space transformed into something like an homage to David Bowie’s 1987 Glass Spider Tour. Yet the muse behind Fendi’s collection wasn’t Bowie, but Italy’s late pop queen Raffaella Carrà, whose hit song Rumore played throughout the show. Known for ahead-of-her-time, sex-positive anthems such as A far l’amore comincia tu (which loosely translates to, “If you want love, initiate it”), Carrà advocated for female liberation.

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In another groundbreaking hit, Luca, the singer professes her love for a gay man with golden hair. The song is thought to have been inspired by Florentine costume and fashion designer Luca Sabatelli, one of the few publicly gay fashion cognoscenti of the seventies who dressed Carrà for many years, and his presence is all over Fendi’s collection.

As Carrà biographer Adriana Pannitteri chronicled, when the duo first met, the singer set parameters for her visual identity, saying (loosely translated): “If you dress me in a sequined jumpsuit, I’d even go grocery shopping, but if you bring me a beautiful Valentino dress, I’d say no, because I’d look like a secretary. To be Carrà, I need things that are absolutely original and that shine.” Sabatelli bought so many crystals, it’s said, that he caused a Swarovski shortage in Italy.

Fendi’s chief creative officer, Maria Grazia Chiuri, peppered references to Carrà’s costumes throughout the show, with matte finishes, velvet, fur and lots of silk.

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But odes to Carrà and Sabatelli weren’t nostalgic. Chuiri recast the looks in a mainly black-and-white palette and followed her penchant for day-to-night dressing. Pieces such as a diamanté black cap (a Carrà signature) and precision-cut dresses were a complete modernization of the Italian icon’s wardrobe. Of particular note were lace dresses in dusty rose and a deep U-shaped vest.

Meanwhile, Peruvian ready-to-wear designer J.Salinas used the full colour wheel in his spring/summer collection. Fuelled by his deep appreciation for retablo – devotional hand-painted boxes that often depict spiritual matriarchs – the offerings played with deep, saturated colour.

Many of the dresses and accessories featured Salinas’s favoured material, an alpaca and cotton mix, one of which used more than 30 contrasting colours in complex crochet lines. The result was a rainbow runway that included a look with an intricate handmade sun hat the size of a tire and a matching crochet dress the colour of a ripe strawberry. Contrasting yet complimentary organza dresses, the most eye-catching being a lilac creation that flowed down the catwalk like a moon jelly fish.

Creative director Alice Yu, whose namesake fashion house was founded in China and is co-produced in Italy, also mined her ancestry for her latest collection, Eastern Nomads.

The designer’s handmade looks are created alongside Milanese craftsman and Chinese artisans and can take more than three months to complete. To showcase the sculptural pieces, made primarily using chiffon, lightweight cotton, openwork lace and deconstructed knitwear, Yu opted for a gallery space instead of a runway show.

A corset created with Beihai shell carving, a practice typically used in antique furniture, hung suspended at the exhibit’s entrance. Yu explained that the craft can be traced back to China’s Han Dynasty.

“We are in a period when AI is trying to overshadow the conversation, but I want to share my fashion heritage with the next generation because I think fashion is a form of anthropology,” she said. “It explores the evolution of human beings, our development, and how clever we are. To design clothes this way is to understand our past and bring it into the future through slow craft, not fast machine thinking.”