Milan ready to start first 'extra-large' Fashion Week

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Sep 15, 2017

Milano XL! This is the new moniker of the Milan Fashion Week, now featuring a programme extending over ten days and bringing together in the city, between 16th and 25th September, the best of Made-in-Italy fashion in a bonanza of trade shows, catwalk shows and special events.

Kicking it all off is, quite rightly, the opening of the Milano XL project, with a gala evening on Saturday 16th in the heart of the city, just opposite its iconic Gothic cathedral, the Duomo. The project is a hymn to Italian creativity, embodied in seven giant installations scattered around Milan's signature locations and conceived by film and creative director Davide Rampello, with set design by Margherita Palli.

The party will actually begin on Thursday 14th, with the 9th edition of Vogue Fashion’s Night Out (VFNO), relabelled 'Vogue For Milano', and featuring concerts, films, lectures and the opportunity of late-night shopping in more than one hundred stores. In parallel with these initiatives aimed at the general public, Milan is hoping to attract a large number of industry buyers. On Sunday 17th September, two trade shows will open their doors at the city's exhibition centre of Fiera Milano Rho: footwear show theMicam and international leather goods show Mipel. theMicam notably announced the presence of a host of major labels such as Fendi, Salvatore Ferragamo, Gucci, Prada, Tod’s, Giorgio Armani, Sergio Rossi, Jimmy Choo and Ermenegildo Zegna.

The same labels will then tread the catwalks on Wednesday 20th September, the trade show's last day, overlapping with the opening day of the Milan Fashion Week proper. The last four days of the fashion week, from 22nd to 25th September, are also the dates for another industry event: TheOneMilano, the ready-to-wear show organised by Fiera di Milano at the Fieramilanocity venue in town, an event which, since February 2017, is held in combination with the Mifur show, specialised in leather and furs.

The innovation show White Milano will also be held in parallel, extending for the first time from three to four full days. It will showcase 532 exhibitors and feature two new sections, still located in the via Tortona area in the south of the city: one dedicated to an experimental project bringing together fashion and design, and the other managed by the Camera Italiana Buyer Moda, the Italian fashion buyers association.

The last event is the Pitti Immagine womenswear show, Super, whose 10th edition will run on 23rd-25th September at The Mall venue. It will showcase 140 brands, half of them coming from outside Italy, with a focus on African fashion in collaboration with the Lagos Fashion & Design Week. To cap it all off, industry professionals and fashion aficionados will have a chance to relax - if they have the time for it - with the screenings of the 4th Milan Fashion Film Festival (FFFMilano).