Fendi will again skip Milan Fashion Week Men's

Fashion, these days, is full of strange mysteries. The appointment of Jonathan Anderson at Dior, for instance, without a specific title and made halfway, without the departure of Maria Grazia Chiuri—which many expected and is now said to come after the brand’s Roman show. Or take the case of Fendi: all bookmakers predicted Silvia Venturini Fendi would leave in favor of a new creative director who was supposed to take over the brand—rumors said it would be Pierpaolo Piccioli, but we still have no confirmation. Yet, that didn’t happen—in fact, the brand announced yesterday afternoon that, after the excellent centennial show seen at last Milan Fashion Week Women’s, it will follow up with a new co-ed show once again under the direction of Silvia Venturini Fendi. Let’s be clear: Silvia Venturini Fendi is a brilliant menswear designer, a genius in accessories, and even the womenswear from last season was very well received. All the more so with the presence of her daughter, Delfina Delettrez Fendi, representing the fourth consecutive generation involved in the brand, business has remained in the family. Nonetheless, one can’t help but wonder if there have been delays or changes of course regarding a creative shift that, according to critics and the public alike, might simply never happen. Either way, one thing remains certain: after Zegna, the June Milan Fashion Week Men’s has lost another big name this season—which leads us to believe this edition will be somewhat deflated when it comes to major Italian brands.

In fact, doing a quick count, the major brand shows expected in June will be Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, and the double shows of Giorgio Armani and Emporio Armani, along with indie classics of the schedule like MSGM and Sunnei. Since there is no official calendar, we can only know that two prominent guests at the party will not be attending—this doesn't mean the party will be boring, but it will certainly be smaller. It's no secret that since last January, several brands have chosen to consolidate their shows into a more agile (and relatively economical) co-ed format, swelling the ranks of Milan Fashion Week Women’s. It now seems that a process of “siphoning” is underway, with major global brands merging into the more massive and media-relevant women's fashion week edition, gradually draining the men’s calendar—which, if it loses significance, might start to resemble London Fashion Week Men’s, reduced to the point of no longer being relevant or economically sustainable for local brands and transformed into a simple showroom presented collectively during Paris Fashion Week.

Which could be interpreted as a gradual adjustment of fashion to the new market sales volumes, and thus as the kind of slowdown and downsizing the industry needed, or as a new phase of the slow unraveling affecting the traditional fashion week system. If New York and London are in relative decline as major fashion capitals, today even Paris and Milan fashion weeks are competing with “local” editions such as Shanghai and Copenhagen, while increasingly simple presentations can attract more organic attention from fashion communities than the bigger but more “stale” brands, or even become true unofficial fashion shows. Another phenomenon we are seeing in Milan (especially in men’s fashion) is an influx of foreign brands, often unheard of before, that—backed by wealthy investors—stage rather respectable shows that add little or nothing to the collective depth of Milan’s design scene—not due to the quality of design, often good, but because these brands exist and operate elsewhere and use Milan more as a temporary stage than a true home. And in fact, perhaps, the best thing about a men’s fashion week without big names is that the schedule can still give space to exciting new voices in Milanese design like Federico Cina, Magliano, or Mordecai.