Slow stroll for Milan Fashion Week as menswear shows make a return

This 2019 file photo shows a model presenting a creation for fashion house Fendi – before the pandemic. Photo: AFP

Lights, camera, real live audiences – Milan fashion welcomes back actual people to its shows Friday (June18), a sign the industry is ready to start turning the page on virtual formats adopted during the pandemic.

The numbers are still modest, with only Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Etro inviting an audience to their men's Spring/Summer 2022 collections.

"This is the dress rehearsal of the return to normalcy," Federica Trotta Mureau, editor of Italian fashion magazine Mia Le Journal, said.

The shows represent baby steps but the effect of the live events, instead of the video presentations or short films relied on since early last year when Covid-19 cut short the twice-yearly shows in Italy's business capital, would still be appreciated, Mureau said.

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"The lights that go out and come back on, the music that sounds as soon as the first models come out... it's an emotion that digital cannot give us," she said.

Armani was the first in late May to announce the return of the public, after being the first to shut them out in February 2020.

"I'm scared, like everyone else I think," 86-year-old Giorgio Armani said as the pandemic swept through Italy last year.

Goodbye dull shades