“The world is becoming so conservative,” Miuccia Prada, the legendary fashion designer and famed early-life communist, says backstage after Prada’s Fall/Winter 2025 show. It’s unclear whether she’s referring to politics, menswear trends, or (more likely) a messy concoction of both.
It’s a damp, dreary second day of Milan Men’s Fashion Week. Most groggy-eyed industry small-talk laments how the holidays went by “too quick” and the pain of removing an out-of-office bounceback from one’s email. If we’re heading into a new fashion year, it certainly doesn’t feel like it. “Quiet Luxury,” a pendulum swing from high-fashion’s streetwear era that gained momentum sometime around Succession’s final season, continued through Industry’s revelry and was bolstered via entry points like J Crew and Ralph Lauren becoming acceptable again, still looms in the air. Few sections of the fashion industry have benefitted more from its rise than Italian menswear—Bruno Cucinelli, Armani, Zegna, and Loro Piana have become buzzy brands among Millennial and Gen Z consumers. For FW25, the lingering safety of quiet luxury from both a styling and economic standpoint continued in Milan from showrooms to the runways.
But like any good finance bubble, trends are bound to burst, and no designer wants to be left holding a subprime bag. Instead of the pure, beige, elegant alta sartoria that’s been typical for a couple seasons, Milan morphed into a sort of quiet fuckery—a slightly freaked but still familiar take on classic menswear staples.
You can find quiet fuckery in the way Luca Magliano cuts a classic three-piece a little slouchy and then dyes is burnout pink, with a pair of chunky work shoes to boot. It’s there at Prada, when Simons and Mrs. Prada send out sorta proper tailoring without a shirt and pair it with a sinister faux fur pelt. Giorgio Armani, the supreme master of taste, even freaked it a little with pleated velvet pants in jewel-box colors. It’s not quiet but it’s not maximalist—instead, the Milanese tastemakers are inching their way toward a happy middle.
Prior to Milan, at Florence’s Pitti Uomo trade fair, experimental takes on classic tailoring were also at the forefront. Guest designer Satoshi Kuwata’s Setchu showed off classic double-breasted navy suits with dress shirts tied around the waist and khaki trousers hemmed at the ankle with buttons. Kuwata started his career on Saville Row and has formed Setchu around a mindset of combining East and West tailoring trends.
“Timeless is something which has been accepted by the majority of people,” he explains while unpacking his blend of old and new, East and West. “It can be anything, the taste of Coca-Cola, the shape of Levi’s 501, the iPhone, the Birkin bag, sesame dressing sauce on a salad. The concept of timelessness is like the dressing for our lives; salads without dressing sauce are probably quite boring for the majority of us.”
There’s no shortage of sauce at Prada, where Simons and Prada manage to bring disparate references together in that inherently Prada way. “We do not want to limit ourselves to ideas in the beginning of the season, that’s often what I think designers do.” Raf Simons explained, underscoring the duo’s desire to create around primal ideas. Instead, Prada this season offers tight pants choking the top of a cowboy boot, baby tees and pleated trousers, basketball earrings, and baseball bracelets, all drawn together by a scaffolded runway covered in Art Deco carpet designed by Catherine Martin. Mrs. Prada is aware the world is more conservative, but she won’t hew to its restraints, finding, with Simons, a way to pleasantly freak it. That’s quiet fuckery of the highest order.
At MM6, Maison Margiela’s historically wearable diffusion line, leather, and western wear were on full display. Star-printed suits and shirts were a nod to Miles Davis with a jazzy blue leather ensemble (sans undershirt) breaking up the flow of classic black overcoats. After the show, the models were instructed to mingle and grab drinks at the bar, having to shuffle their way between attendees for a complimentary Peroni—fuck it!
At another show with plenty of booze, even Philipp Plein appeared to be feeling the current pressure from quiet luxury. Speaking within his namesake hotel—an eclectic maze that offers all the trimmings of a Las Vegas resort without needing to take a 13-hour flight from Lombardy—he alludes to a melancholic shift this season.
“We cannot ignore what’s going on,” he tells a barebones pack of reporters before the show.
Set to sleepy Brooklyn hipster favourites The National, the brand showed off heavily Ralph Lauren-inspired suiting and even knitwear with teddy bear prints (with notably more dilated pupils than the Polo inspiration). The juxtaposition of formality and nightlife is jarring, if not a bit half-baked until, oh wait, here comes French Montana to serenade the finale. A compromise that is, in the most literal sense, quiet fuckery.
At Brunello Cucinelli’s FW25 presentation, the merits of fine tailoring and subtle elegance are being sung loud to the point of fuckery, with impeccably dressed men in suits, tall models draped in fur coats, and champagne bottles popping a mile a minute.
The city’s final shows, tailoring heavyweights Giorgio Armani and Zegna showed off opposing takes on vibrant tailoring. Armani leaned heavily toward unstructured coats, simple base layers, and spicy accessories. Zegna to the brand’s roots of classic silhouettes with top-of-line materials (a chorus of sheep noises filled the pre-show stadium of a hilly cattle field, a nod to, you know, wool).
Each brand in Milan seemed to agree on one thing: tailoring is in, and logos are out. But from this common ground, all seemed to be racing toward a different direction, not planting a flag too far from the Italian classics.
“Everybody asks us designers to be revolutionary,” Mrs. Prada declared to the jam-packed circle of reporters squeezing themselves beneath scaffolding back at the Prada show. “But what is happening in the world is not so revolutionary.” Perhaps the step, however small this season, away from quiet luxury is a sign of those needed shifts soon to come.