Here, compiled for easy reference, are our reviews of the Spring Summer 2025 Men’s shows from Milan Fashion Week.
Gucci
There’s a misconception that all fashion should be escapist — that it should offer some respite from reality and fuel our senses into uncharted territory. Today, it’s become a running theme for most designers that they’d hardly ever look toward our immediate surroundings for inspiration. So when a collection presents memoirs of the every day, interestingly, it can also become the freshest thing you’d ever see. Enter the age of anti-anti-fashion, where things that reflect the real world are now hot on the desirable scale. And putting himself in the middle of this is Sabato De Sarno at Gucci. For Spring Summer 2025, the creative director drew attendees at Milan Fashion Week to the authentic places where he finds freedom at.
Read the full review here
Fendi
Sometimes, fashion needs a little push. But for most of Silvia Venturini Fendi’s career, the woman behind Fendi’s menswear and accessories, that push has always been about refining our interests — to create a system of desire so tightly wound up you’d always feel like you need to be part of it. And her insights on fashion are so fresh it seems almost instinctive that she’d be responsible for creating new trends. Like the Baguette: a commercially viable bag that has had the pleasure of transformation; creating what we now refer to as an It bag; making her one of the most crucial voices to 21st-century culture.
Therefore, when the creative director looks back at her first menswear collection in 1990 for inspiration, you know it’s time we start paying attention. Because when an introspection in fashion occurs, it’s less a fixation on the past but a glimpse into the future. And according to #SS25, we’d all be wearing asymmetrical polos that sport a missing sleeve, or swap our pocket-heavy bags for flimsy, soft tote bags in the time to come. Uniforms will form the base of our outfits, ballerina-esque footwear will be an essential, while Fendi jerseys and F-branded caps will replace all need for statement pieces. Its Selleria stitching will make its way to men’s most casual pieces, and the check pattern will find its place in fashion again. Again, these are all trends she’s meticulously crafting — we’ve just yet to notice them.
ZEGNA
Nobody could have expected that it would be ZEGNA that had the might to make an entire room rise in applause this season. Once beholden to the sartorial before becoming a prototype for street fashion, it became clear today that the years of refinement by artistic director Alessandro Sartori have turned ZEGNA into a powerhouse, and one simply unmatchable. Perhaps it was the music — a thrilling orchestral piece that hammered the atmosphere with dramatic, fast-paced rhythmic beats. Or the set — a reflective field of tall, spiky, yellow linen which, upon closer inspection, was made of metal. Maybe it was the surprise of Mads Mikkelsen closing the show when the actor walked the fields dauntingly; you would be lying if you said you weren’t moved by his performance.
Ultimately, it was Spring Summer 2025’s message, no two human beings are alike, that awed. “Now that our reformed vocabulary has been established,” mentions Alessandro Sartori. “It is the moment to focus on how items are or can be used, on the singular ways they mould to individual personalities.” On the runway, the ages of models ranged from young to old, with both male and female present. As each of them grazed past the linen fields, you can’t help but feel its resemblance to real life, where you’d wonder about the life they’ve lived, the stories they’ve told, and the people they’ve met. There are certainly no exclusions here.
Prada
What’s an obstacle if it’s only ever just an illusion? At Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ 8th co-directed men’s show, Prada finally receives a taste of the rave. Not just any part of the escapist subject so intertwined with Simons but rather the moments of a high that blurs the lines between reality and deception. It’s about a night out at a house party and you start entering that stage when you’ve had too much to drink. Your head spins, you can’t tell your friends apart from strangers, and everything begins to feel weird. You get the point: it’s a reverence for youth. This time, however, we’re taken into the POV of its intoxicated guest.
But how do you express such self-referential chaos through clothes? You make use of trompe-l’œil. What seemed like layered cardigans over sweaters were optical tricks done so by colour blocks. Then came the belts sewn directly on pants but don’t function as belts, below the waistband to create that sense of unease. Tailored jackets come pre-crumpled, as though encasing its wear forever. And sleeves come intentionally cropped, shrunken from their original shape. It’s easy to imagine them as wrecked versions of the clothes cool kids wear within the rave continuum. You can almost feel how much better the clothes would look with hard liquor spilt on them. Put on an over-played techno song and you will get it; that’s as Prada as it gets.
Dolce&Gabbana
Italy once defined fashion before it became old. Now bordering along the disapproval of internet-defined trends, it’s been harder to discern their place in fashion. But there’s still one thing they get right all the time: romance; the kind that’s been in their movies; defines their spoken language; that rare persuasion from a culture to simply look at beauty.
So when Dolce&Gabbana — one of the truest Italian houses out there — titles its #SS25 men’s collection Italian Beauty, they’re neither addressing the cheap satin sets nor sartorial office attires that’s plagued its street senses for a decade now. They’re looking for answers within its old, unruffled charm. Specifically, the moments of its fashion history that’s been impassive to global influence and doom-scrolling gimmicks.
And it’s a heck of a statement, considering that just not too long ago, it was exactly these things that felt like a necessity for survival as the house came face to face with its relevancy.
Once you are done with this story, click here to catch up with our June/July 2024 issue.
