The fashion week unfolds between creative visions, the rising cost of luxury, and a crisis of relevance
Dedicated to one of its founding figures, Giorgio Armani, Milano Fashion Week SS26 opened in a climate of stark contrasts: aesthetics and creative visions on one side, mounting industry anxieties on the other. This tension was formalised on 24 September. The Camera Moda gathered Italy’s top fashion executives at Casa Cipriani to defend the future of Made in Italy. Figures including Luigi Maramotti (Max Mara), Renzo Rosso (OTB), Remo Ruffini (Moncler), Alfonso Dolce (Dolce & Gabbana), Gildo Zegna, and Lorenzo Bertelli (Prada) joined Carlo Capasa, the institution’s president, to advocate for safeguarding the national value chain through creativity, sustainability, and stricter regulation.
While the debuts at Gucci, Jil Sander, Bottega Veneta, and Versace generated excitement, this edition also encapsulates the heritage of Italian fashion alongside its most pressing challenges.
The atmosphere is vibrant, with buyers searching for direction and designers striving to deliver it. Yet beneath the surface, unease is palpable. Deep economic instability, no clear plan B for Trump tariffs, sit alongside the persistent shadow of labour exploitation, with high-profile investigations still haunting several luxury houses.
“We have an immense know-how that goes back a long way and we want to defend what our predecessors built,” Gildo Zegna stressed, pointing to the need for production control in volatile markets. Renzo Rosso, meanwhile, reiterated OTB’s pillars of “creativity, sustainability, and technology.” He warned that without creativity, “a product is nothing more than an object.”
But there is also tension in the narrative. Industry leaders call for optimism, even warning that “negativity impacts store traffic,” as Rosso put it. At the same time, Lorenzo Bertelli identified inequality as the greatest threat to the sector. Luigi Maramotti’s observed that “the consumer is confused” in a world where Europe’s sustainability efforts are undermined by divergent standards elsewhere.
The contradictions cut deep. Carlo Capasa defended the industry against accusations of widespread illegality. He cited Istat figures that suggest around 2–3% of production involves irregular labour. Still, he acknowledged the need of a new legislation to regulate and protect the supply chain. That is “the basis for saving the industry.”
And yet, a striking admission lingers. A while back, Miuccia Prada said:
“Fashion is for when you do not have problems. The moment someone has a health problem or there is a war, fashion is certainly not relevant.”
That perspective clashes with the industry’s insistence on optimism as a survival strategy. In a world marked by war in Ukraine and genocide in Gaza, fashion’s plea to “stay positive” risks sounding disconnected. And with this background, whether NY, London, Milano, or Paris, we are all on the same boat.
The shows go on, between aesthetics and anxieties. But the fundamental question remains: what is fashion’s responsibility in the face of a crisis of relevance, inequality, and value acknowledged by its own leaders?