The Gallery: wOMen MiLAn FashIoN wEEk S/S 2023

Words Gianmarco Gronchi

Just seven very fast and frenetic days, but the Milan Fashion Week has given us so much food for thought, as it always does. Despite a hectic, suffocating schedule – look what happened at the end of Missoni fashion show! – the Italian fashion scene seems to return to its genuine and nonchalant glamour. For the next Summer season, most fashion designers have a clear vision. Finally, the body is what collections are about, claiming back the right to perform fashion, to give it life, to reach a new peak of signification. As far as we can see, the metaverse speculative bubble has already burst out. Fashion is back at its analogic, seductive form. And this journey to rediscover the innermost meanings of dressing implies a new appreciation of physicality, which should be the main referent for any fashion creation. Milan puts on the stage sensual violence, which would be an antidote to many myths of the modern age. Despite a quête toward democratic and inclusive luxury, what we have seen on the Milanese catwalks confirms that fashion is refractory to arbitrarily imposed dogmatisms. At a glance, it is a triumph of sexiness. Body inclusivity, genderless trend, and all the other false promises of rhetoric as facile as it is deceptive have been flushed away this season. That leaves fashion, with its unhinged and anachronistic leanings toward luxury and dreamy bodies. Tyrannical, elitist, unnecessary: and that’s perfectly fine, as it should be.