While London Fashion Week has just ended, the presentation of the spring-summer 2024 women’s collections at Milan Fashion Week is already the center of attention until next Monday. There are eleven new names out of the sixty-seven parades that are joining the parade calendar. But new names do not mean unknown… Because the event will also mark the return of Tom Ford to the Milanese podiums under the leadership of Peter Hawkings. We will also be able to follow the beginnings of Simone Bellotti as creative director of Bally and the 40 years of Moschino, without forgetting the big houses Fendi, Prada, Versace, Dolce&Gabbana, Bottega Veneta and Giorgio Armani.
Friday will take place the baptism of fire of Sabato De Sarno, who until now supervised the men’s and women’s collections at Valentino and succeeded in January the emblematic Alessandro Michele, who since 2015 had given the label a new lease of life with collections bold and often eclectic.
The beginnings of this Neapolitan designer at the service of the Florentine house, flagship brand of the French luxury group Kering, will be scrutinized with all the more attention as Gucci is in difficulty compared to other big names in the sector, whose sales are increasing much more quickly in a luxury sector which is operating at full speed.
Kering also announced this summer the departure of Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri, who is due to leave his post on Saturday and will be temporarily replaced by Jean-François Palus, deputy CEO of Kering and “right hand man” of the group’s CEO François-Henri Pinault.
Pharrell Williams’ collection for Moncler
Another highlight on Wednesday with Moncler: the Italian king of down jackets will unveil his new collection signed by American singer-musician-turned-fashion Pharrell Williams, who headlined men’s Fashion Week in June in Paris with his first event show for Louis Vuitton.
Also on Wednesday, Diesel will repeat its spectacular show open to the general public, which was a great success last year. An initiative by Glenn Martens, the Belgian stylist of the famous jeans brand of the OTB group, to affirm democratic fashion: the places put online on September 6 on the house’s website were allocated within a few hours upon registration to fans who rushed to be in the front row of the parade.
The Italian fashion sector displays rather optimistic forecasts for 2023: the president of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion (CNMI) Carlo Capasa thus expects “an annual turnover up 4.5% compared to to that of 2022, and therefore higher than 103 billion euros.”
Fashion, which employs more than half a million people on the peninsula, also remains a locomotive for the peninsula’s foreign trade: in 2023, exports of the Made in Italy fashion sector are expected to show growth of 6%, notably fueled by strong demand in the Asian and BRICS markets.
The president of the Italian Agency for the Promotion of Businesses Abroad (ICE), Matteo Zoppas, quoted in a press release from the CNMI, underlines that “compared to general growth in Italian exports of 4.8% during of the first five months of 2023, fashion recorded a +7.4% over the same period and, in particular, women’s fashion increased by 11.4%.