Stella McCartney, Alberta Ferretti to show women’s collections at Milan Men’s Fashion Week

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
May 9, 2018

The Milan Men’s Fashion Week in June is opening up to womenswear, by adding two prestigious new names to its programme: Stella McCartney and Alberta Ferretti. British designer Stella McCartney, who is about to take full control of her label, previously 50%-owned by the Kering group, will be making her debut at the Milan Fashion Week, which is set to run from 15th to 18th June.

As the British label told FashionNetwork.com, Stella McCartney will not stage a catwalk show but a special event scheduled in Milan on Monday 18th June, its venue as yet undisclosed. For the occasion, the label will showcase the women’s cruise collection for spring 2019, and the new menswear collection for Spring/Summer 2019.

This innovative presentation format was first adopted by Stella McCartney in November 2017, when the label launched its very first men's collection. The new format’s maiden event was held in London, then in Los Angeles the following season, and next June it will be Milan's turn. Stella McCartney's women’s collection will instead show in Paris as usual.

As for Alberta Ferretti, the Italian label announced in a press release that it will open the men’s fashion week at 6.30 pm on Friday 15th June, staging a double show at the prestigious Sala delle Cariatidi hall in Milan’s Palazzo Reale, the Savoy royal palace in the heart of the city. The show’s first part will feature the 2019 cruise collection, and the second will present the Limited Edition semi-couture collection, a line of evening and cocktail dresses launched in 2011.

The luxury ready-to-wear label owned by Italian fashion group Aeffe showed the two lines together for the first time in January 2017 in Milan, again on the eve of the Men’s Fashion Week. Alberta Ferretti will of course continue to show its main line, and the young line, Philosophy, at the Milan Women’s Fashion Week.

These two events are good news for the Italian Fashion Chamber, as they are likely to inject new energy into a men's fashion week which lost traction in the last couple of years. In recent seasons, the Milan men’s calendar lost several names and was penalised by the new vogue for mixed-gender shows, so it is keen to host more presentations of women’s collections. Among them, there will be those of Diesel Black Gold and Dsquared2, which will introduce their women's ready-to-wear collections too during the men's fashion week.