There are four major fashion week locations: New York, Paris, Milan and London. Each year these hotly anticipated shows are expected to have creations walking down the runway in fresh, innovative looks, satisfying our ever-changing tastes.
The Milan Fashion Week took place from Sept. 18-23 and was a hot spot for some of fashion’s most iconic moments — who can forget Versace’s 1991 AW runway show with Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington?!
This year, there were iconic appearances and silents protests, along with some other memorable events that occurred. We take a look at the highlights of Milan Fashion Week.
Moschino
Designers indulged their artistic inspirations as the relationships between art, lifestyle, craft and fashion merged once again. Jeremy Scott of Moschino revealed a collection largely inspired by Picasso, and reflected this through large, bold brushstrokes and artistic references — Bella Hadid sported a harlequin-checked Pierrot clown number. He also heralds the game show, “The Price is Right,” sending models down the runway with motifs of bold concepts and detailed, exaggerated garments, making this collection of his very hard to forget.
Versace
To many, it was Donatella Versace who stole the show. Versace brought it back to the 2000’s and heavily referenced the famous “jungle dress” Jennifer Lopez wore during the Grammy 2000 awards — riffing off palm prints and heavy greens. At the time, so many people searched for images of the now-iconic ensemble that Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, inspired the creation of Google Image Search.
In a stunning moment to close the show, the designer’s voice called out “OK Google, now show me the real jungle dress” over the sound system and on cue, J.Lo herself walked the runway with a remake of the famous dress — a move that broke the Internet.
Gucci
On Sunday, luxury brand Gucci presented its latest collection in a stark, brightly lit room filled with plastic waiting room chairs and metal shutters covering the doors. Models were transported down the “runway” — a moving conveyor belt-wearing looks creative director Alessandro Michele said were inspired by straitjackets.
Gucci’s latest collection is one to talk about, and not because of an awe-inspiring show.
A moment that stood out was when one model initiated an unplanned protest. Model Ayesha Tan-Jones, aka YaYa Bones, who walked in one of the straitjacket-inspired ensembles, wrote the words “mental health is not fashion” on her palms before walking, holding up her hands to the cameras as she made her way around the runway space.
Interestingly, Gucci said later in an Instagram post that, “These clothes were a statement for the fashion show and will not be sold.” The high-fashion house explained that Michele designed the clothes “to represent how through fashion, power is exercised over life, to eliminate self-expression.”
