Milano Men's Fashion Week SS25

I watched some of the key Spring Summer 2025 shows from Milano Men's Fashion Week - including Prada, Fendi, Gucci, Tod's and JW Anderson - and this is what I thought.

Jun 18, 2024

It’s a ONE-PIECE special edition, readers. My second favourite time of the year (the first being Fall Winter Fashion Week) is here! Read all my thoughts and opinions, good and bad, for the shows I watched below, and I’ll see you here again at the same time next week for the Paris rundown.

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It’s that time of year again! Men’s Fashion Week has returned with the Spring Summer 2025 collections. Milano starts, and Paris follows.

Below are my thoughts and opinions on the Moschino, Dsquared2, MSGM, Fendi, David Koma, Emporio Armani, Neil Barrett, Prada, Tod’s, JW Anderson, Giorgio Armani, Gucci, and Zegna runway collections.

I was most looking forward to seeing Matteo Tamburini’s menswear debut for Tod’s and what Jonathan Anderson, and Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons brought to their runways this season.

The most surprising moments of the week have been David Koma’s menswear debut and Zegna’s new linen fabrication—scroll through to read about them.

Day One, June 14

Adrian Appiolaza’s first collection for Moschino is here, and I found my face frozen in a grimace for most of it. The SS25 collection is inspired by Appiolaza’s personal and physical journeys from leaving corporate life and moving to creative freedom.

Unfortunately, the cool archival Moschino references were lost amongst design motifs made famous by other fashion houses. I found myself picking out Dion Lee’s laser-cut paper fabrications, cardigans that felt like they belonged to Chanel, a love heart on the chest that screams Comme Des Garcon, and silhouettes that felt like they came from early Jacquemus (lol).

I know Moschino’s clientele enjoy dressing ironically, but SS25 is too literal and too much. There are ways of telling stories about a) a country you’ve moved to (Italy) without using their national flag and a splattering of pasta sauce, or b) leaving an office job you felt weighed down in by sending a corporate suit down the runway with every item you found on your desk attached to it.

The final straw for me was seeing wearable Easter eggs. These clothes are not intended for me. Some publications called this collection personal—I think it’s anything but.

Dsquared2’s SS25 show, titled #D2HEAT, started with a “hot” performance as 5 male dancers emerged from cages on stage against Usher’s ‘Good Kisser’. The collection matched the dancers’ energy: sheer fabrics, black leather, harnesses and skin-tight S&M strappings. I’d be much happier if the world of Magic Mike and fashion week didn’t mix, but here we are.

Dean and Dan Caten, the twin brothers behind Dsquared2, told Tiziana Cardini of Vogue Runway that there is “a nod at Tom of Finland, but a delicate, soft Tom.”

While the homage to the gay underground culture of the 1980s is there, I much prefer Ludovic de Saint Sernin’s FW24 collection (which I wrote about here). It similarly reimagined gay culture, specifically of New York in the ‘80s, but referenced Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography chronicling the gay BDSM scene.

Day Two, June 15

Massimo Giorgetti stole my flower-motif-loving heart with MSGM’s SS25 collection. Titled ‘The Sea and I’, Giorgetti was inspired by summers spent in a seaside town in his childhood.

The collection has so much to appreciate: the marine references are chic, the nautical stripe shirts and tees are a layering dream, the paper sailor hats feel personal, and the daisy flower motif is summer euphoria symbolised, both in print and embellishment.

Fendi entered its 100th anniversary this month, and menswear designer Silvia Venturini Fendi created a new house crest for the new collection. “I wanted to design a crest because I think that when you have 100 years of your story, you are part of this club, let’s say, of people who have been changing the rules of Italian fashion and building something into what it is today,” she told Luke Leitch of Vogue Runway.

The new house crest runs throughout the collection alongside Silvia’s club affiliation theme: soccer and rugby shirts, club ties, golfing trousers, varsity knits and college campus attire, all heavily coded in Fendi symbols and signatures.

David Koma’s style is the lovechild of Ludovic de Saint Sernin, Raf Simons, and Raul Lopez. His SS25 collection is his first on the Milan men’s fashion week schedule.

Koma wanted to create clothes that reflected the depth and variety of his huge group of friends and their individual careers, nationalities, and interests. Printed t-shirts, boxer-short shorts, crystal mesh tops, workwear pants, cracked leather jackets, wrapped cardigans, maribou fringing, hoodies, sweatshirts and silk tie tops: there is something for everyone.

Koma’s blending of hard lines against softer textures makes this collection feel obscure yet sensual, raw and unique. Although he has had his womenswear line for 15 years, the menswear addition is one to watch—and one I won’t be forgetting about anytime soon.

Emporio Armani surprised me with how informal his clothes were this season. Armani’s signature tailoring has moved to a world fitted more for the country than the city. Mr. Armani has crafted his own design aesthetic and remained authentic to it for his entire career. It’s amazing to see he is still keeping us on our toes.

P.S. I still have nothing new to say about Neil Barrett.

Day Three, June 16

The amount of screenshots I have on my phone from watching the Prada SS25 menswear show should tell you about how much I loved this collection.

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons were inspired by a youthful optimism, a feeling of letting things come together on their own. It forms the idea of making the most of what you already have—as if your wardrobe combines your family history and personal memories with slices of your mum, dad, grandpa, and grandma.

Every garment requires a double take. Nothing is what it seems at first glance. Striped long-sleeve shirts look sweaty and stuck to the model's body but are just prints, and colourful jumpers look like they’re layered over shirts but are single knit pieces.

I loved how everything felt extremely lived in. No matter where each model was going, what they wore told a story. You wondered where they had come from and what they were doing—the flicked collars, crinkled jackets, and windswept shirts left you wanting to know more.

And, once again, Prada colour pairing remains unrivalled: a deep maroon cardigan sits over a faded yellow polo, a neon yellow shirt matched with deep brown pants, hot pink and grey, scarlet red and black, purple and orange. I will always look to Prada’s seasonal collections for styling and colour cues.

I’ve been looking forward to Matteo Tamburini’s first Tod’s menswear show since his womenswear debut last season. He didn’t disappoint.

There’s a delightful shift in silhouettes—pants feel more relaxed, and knits look softer and more fluid. It’s as if everything has been stripped back. Tamburini knows exactly what relaxed dressing can do and has plucked the best parts of traditional menswear and made them appealing for the 2025 man.

The big highlights for me are the monochrome sweaters and matching cardigans, the blue denim, the grey leather shopping bag, the messenger bags, and the way every pair of pants drapes over Tod’s iconic loafers. It’s all the epitome of relaxed elegance.

Subtlety is not a word I would associate with JW Anderson. From watching the SS25 runway, I couldn’t tell you what some of the pieces actually were (like the hooped fabric-swatch skirt?), but I can tell you how they make me feel: strange and lovely.

I loved the trio of exaggerated zip-up hoodies; they look extremely cosy—something I’d like to wear as I write this. The belted-at-the-knee denim shorts and the long coats with silk embellishments that look like deflated balloons also tickle my fancy.

Overall, my true favourite was the kitsch but extremely cute knitted collared jackets of house facades. One house was red, with white windows, a green door, and a red brick facade. Another was brown, with giant block windows and a red door on the jacket’s cuff. The final was a cream house, with cottage windows, brown roofing across the shoulders and a big tree on the left arm.

Day Four, June 17

With Giorgio Armani's SS25 collection, Mr. Armani has created the perfect casual but office-appropriate wardrobe. Collarless jackets and slouchy pants move into open v-neck shirts under relaxed suiting.

You know I love short shorts, so you know I enjoyed Gucci’s SS25 collection. Sabato De Sarno had a surfwear theme throughout—using neoprene, surfing motifs like surfboards and hibiscus flowers in colourful prints, and coral-coloured accessories.

I wouldn’t dare bring those heavenly leather horse-bit boots or loafers to a sandy beach, but the box-cut shirts and shorts would be perfect. This collection was made to be worn in Australia.

Although the colours and prints feel deeply Prada-coded, I continue to enjoy seeing the lighter and minimal side of Gucci.

Alessandro Sartori brings back the rich, tonal warmth of Zegna, but all is not the same. The usual complexity in layering has been stripped back to an elongated and minimal silhouette and botanical prints inspired by Oasi Zegna mark a first for the brand.

One of the most surprising things to come out of the collection is that Sartori has introduced a new type of linen that has been made crease-less through a sanding treatment—an idea that will turn linen haters into linen lovers.