The menswear season continues with Milan Fashion Week S/S 2024, with the Italian city hosting an interesting collection of runway shows, previews, and premieres. Among them is Valentino’s special menswear show, which opened on June 16th. The show, titled ‘The Narratives,’ held at the Università degli Studi di Milano Statale, is a departure from the house’s recent co-ed shows in Paris—a tribute, according to creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, to house founder Valentino Garavani, who showed his first menswear collection in Milan in 1985.
Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren Purple Label will return to the Milan Fashion Week schedule, while British labels JW Anderson and Charles Jeffrey Loverboy will continue to present their latest collections in the city. Prada, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Emporio Armani, Giorgio Armani, Tod’s, Missoni, and Zegna are among the elevated Italian houses looking to identify the menswear season ahead, with shows on the afternoon of June 19th.
Here, is a round-up of the best of Milan Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2024:
GUCCI
Gucci’s latest menswear collection, the last created by the company’s own designers before the arrival of new creative director Sabato De Sarno, looked to the house’s “iconography” for an exercise in “adaption, deconstruction, and reconstruction.” The ‘Horsebit’ loafer, introduced by Aldo Gucci in 1953 and features a miniature metal clamp similar to those found on a horse’s bridle. Since then, it has become one of the house’s most identifiable emblems, appearing across clothing, handbags, and shoes; The collection itself flashed across screens in the space, consisting of what the house called its ‘classic men’s wardrobe,’ encompassing louche wide-leg tailoring, oversized embroidered denim, and sportier short sets featuring Gucci emblems ranging from the horse-bit to the house’s signature GG boucle.
Valentino
The Valentino show invitation was a special copy of Hanya Yanagihara’s 2015 novel A Little Life, a sprawling exploration of male friendship in New York City. The novel served as an apt counterpoint to a collection that creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli described as an attempt to “redefine an identity of men, to re-examine the meaning of masculinity.” The poetic offering combined sartorial elegance – much of the collection focused on tailoring, gently oversized – and a live soundtrack from New York musician D4vd in the courtyard of Milan’s Università Statale di Milano. – Much of the collection was tailored, gently oversized, or elongated – with romantic flourishes ranging from blooming floral prints to quotes from Yanagihara’s novel printed on bags and shirts. ‘A strength can be found in fragility, a power in gentleness, a perfection in imperfection,’ Piccioli wrote in the collection notes, referring to “the life of men, the life of their clothes, the reality of masculinity now.”
