As governments battle to legislate gender identity, Milan's designers respond with their own definitions of femininity: volume at Prada, twisted tradition at Diesel, and Armani's half-century of greige gender neutrality
What does femininity mean today? That’s the question fashion’s consummate intellectuals Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons posed in their show notes that accompanied one hell of a riposte-to-Fox-News-beauty-standards of a collection, filled with sack dresses and paperbag skirts that added molto volume at the waist. Hunter Schafer, the trans actress and Prada ambassador, defiantly sat front row flashing a pink top and gray briefs from underneath a long black satin coat. Before departing for the European leg of Fashion Month, Schafer spoke out on TikTok about the shock of having the United States Department of State issue her passport renewal with a male gender marker. And in a season where the Orwellian specter of state-defined “biological truth” is impossible to ignore—not just in America, but here on the Continent too where Germany’s far right AfD party surged to second place in parliamentary elections just over a week ago—the Fall 2025 collections in Milan seemed like they were all responding to the Prada co-creative directors’ Women’s Studies 101-style essay prompt. Images courtesy of Prada.
Prada has long been fashion’s bellwether, helping us make sense of shifts in the wider culture. And while Prada and Simons’ gender critique was the most overt—there was nary a waist-defining A-line midi skirt of the type Mrs. P herself favors—many shows questioned conventionally feminine archetypes. Jil Sander covered cocktail dresses in punky black fringe. Francesco Murano (an LVMH Prize finalist) transfigured them with a symbiosis of draping and the traditional tailoring technique moulage, and MM6 transformed them into what looked like artist Senga Nengundi’s stretched out pantyhose sculptures by adding a sheer mesh compression layer. Images courtesy of Diesel.
Diesel Images courtesy of Gucci.
One of the most delightful and unexpected response papers came from Diesel, lately the Gen Z resource for slashed and trashed denim from the deft hand of Glenn Martens. In a cavernous arena covered in three square kilometers of crowd-sourced graffiti-painted fabric, the virtuoso founder of Y/Project who will also soon succeed John Galliano at Maison Margiela, riffed on that most bourgeois-coded of materials: bouclé tweed. Little Chanel-y jackets were worn with jean skirts so short they might as well be called peplums and matching denim bikini underwear, while bumster jeans were cut so low they required built-in corsetry so as not to expose the entire derriere. Even the brand’s signature bosom-shape Double D bag got the Coco treatment. The vibe was all very eat the oligarchy.
Gucci Images courtsey of Fendi.
Challenging gender norms wasn’t just limited to the catwalk: the OG influencer Bryanboy turned up at Gucci and Fendi wearing dresses and kitten heels that looked like they were chosen to film a “very demure” explainer. Both of those houses are in a period of transition following the sudden departure of their respective ex-creative directors, Sabato De Sarno and Kim Jones, but they went bold rather than playing it safe. The Gucci design team, which skipped men’s fashion week in January, showed its ready to wear and menswear collections together on a giant emerald green interlocking double GG-shaped runway. Accompanied by a live orchestra led by the La La Land composer Justin Hurwitz, the lineup remixed ’90s minimalism and ’10s ultra-maximalism, offering classic Saville Row tailoring motifs for all. Slub tweed patterns came printed on crepe de chine blouses. Even skimpy silhouettes like cut-out lace teddies and lace-trimmed silk slips that ostensibly seemed male-gazey were styled in caustic color combinations—ultraviolet and acid green, say—and elicited an uncanny valley response.
Fendi Images courtesy of Giorgio Armani.
Fendi’s 100th anniversary show designed by Silvia Venturini Fendi, the label’s artistic director of accessories and menswear, featured an all star cast including Alex Consani, Doutzen Kroes, Liya Kebede, Yasmin Le Bon, Penelope Tree and other Fendi friends from the past six decades. Director Luca Guadagnino was seated front row and, at first glance, the soigné looks topped by trompe l’oeil shearling “furs” and little infinity shaped chignons looked like they came straight out of the wardrobe department from his 2009 Milanese society epic I Am Love, for which Venturini Fendi served as producer. But things got twisted fast. Puffed up flounced jackets with rounded sleeves offered an arch take on the aspirational Kardashian hourglass figure, while Chantilly lace blouses and bejewelled cashmere twinsets were worn by both female and male models.
Giorgio Armani
And then there was the grand finale from Italian fashion’s paterfamilias Giorgio Armani who turned 90 earlier this year and who has been designing gender neutral clothes in tasteful shades of greige for nearly half a century. The rest of the fashion world is just now catching on to the genius of his 1970s innovation: traditional suiting with the stuffing knocked out of it is flattering on everyone. For fall he evolved his signature silhouette by adding wrap ties that made them resemble Japanese yukata robes, another gender neutral garment. He also knocked the stuffing out of pants this time around, launching a range of effortlessly chic parachute styles paired with flat boots. The message was well received: femininity can mean many things.
