Milan Fashion Week A/W 2025 highlights: No. 21 to Gucci

Following a quiet week in London, Milan Fashion Week arrives in a state of flux: with two of its biggest houses, Gucci and Fendi, without creative directors (the latter for its womenswear collection with Silvia Venturini Fendi still heading up menswear and accessories), there is the slight feeling that this is an in-between season as its major players reorientate themselves in the hunt for new creative leads. That said, Fendi has plenty to celebrate – 100 years, in fact – which it will do with a landmark co-ed show on Wednesday evening (26 February) designed by Silvia Venturini Fendi (afterwards, seats will be pushed back for a party). Meanwhile, Gucci, who opened proceedings on Tuesday afternoon (25 February) also hosted a co-ed show, which took place on an enormous mirrored runway in the shape of the house’s Aldo Gucci-designed interlocking-G logo – a perennial symbol of Italian luxury.

Elsewhere, the city’s powerhouses Dolce & Gabbana, Emporio and Giorgio Armani, Ferragamo, Dolce & Gabbana and Prada will each show their latest collections (at the last, expect a set to rival the scaffold-and-carpet construction at the house’s A/W 2025 menswear show earlier this year). Finally at Missoni, a new era awaits the Italian house as Alberto Caliri – a longtime fixture of the Italian knitwear house – steps into the spotlight as new creative director.

Here, Wallpaper* fashion feature editor Jack Moss – with additional reporting by Orla Brennan – unpacks the best of Milan Fashion Week A/W 2025, as it happens.

Gucci

It is 50 years since Aldo Gucci – son of house founder Guccio Gucci – designed the house’s interlocking G emblem, based on his father’s initials. Yesterday afternoon (25 February), the symbol was blown up in size, becoming a vast mirrored runway for the house’s ‘unified’ A/W 2025 collection, which combined womenswear and menswear in a single show (in clever theatrics, depending on which size of the double-G you were on, you saw the men’s collection then the women’s, or vice versa).

It marked the first show since the departure of creative director Sabato De Sarno earlier this year, meaning the collection was conceived by the in-house ‘design office’ and served as something of an in-between collection while the house confirms De Sarno’s replacement. As such, the return to the symbol – a perennial motif that has survived through Gucci’s various iterations, from the era of Tom Ford to Alessandro Michele – had a steadying quality, with the collection notes speaking of a return to Gucci’s ‘foundational’ values. Namely, a mood of insouciant Italian elegance and ‘sprezzatura’, ‘stylised and sumptuous, character-driven and individually adaptable, and here, they are brought together once more’.

It lent the collection a retro, 1970s-inflected glamour: for women, chubby faux-fur coats over lace slip dresses, colourful bejewelled tights and leggings, and ladylike flourishes, from headscarves to leather gloves, while the menswear riffed on classic tailoring in a range of hues and textures, from wipe-clean overcoats to a fluffy mohair button-up. Given that this is a house in flux, it made for a desirable and largely cohesive outing, infused with a feeling of dynamism that sometimes felt missing during De Sarno’s tenure. At the end, the ‘design office’ came out for a shy final bow – how long they will remain collectively at the helm remains to be seen. JM

No. 21

This season, Alessandro Dell’Acqua said his latest collection for No. 21 began with a ‘rereading’ of three memorable Sofia Coppola films: Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette. The first, he said, inspired the collection’s plays on the little black dress that provided the show’s opening act (here refigured as a micro-mini or with two black bows on the chest); the second, clashes of girlish lightness and heavier men’s fabrics; the third, playful pastel hues and delicate embellishments that adorned the collection’s closing looks. The bow was a motif throughout – one also evoked in Coppola’s work – whether expanded into an enormous twist on a skirt, or as ribbon-like leather bows on the collection’s high-heeled pumps (‘It’s an element able to create the allure of surprise,’ he said). With No. 21 always a quiet highlight of Milan Fashion Week – it feels as if Dell’Acqua’s vision gains more clarity season on season – Coppola provided a fitting counterpart to the designer’s vision of womanhood: both evoke the overtly feminine to subversive effect. Perhaps a collaboration is on the cards. JM

Stay tuned for more from Milan Fashion Week A/W 2025.