From Prada’s radical minimalism to Thom Browne’s garden wedding — and the K-pop, C-drama and Thai talent who turned the Milanese front row into the season’s most powerful stage
Milan in June is not for the faint-hearted. The city bakes. The cobblestones radiate heat back up at you from below. The guests arriving at Fondazione Prada and Palazzo Serbelloni are dressed impeccably and visibly melting, which is somehow both relatable and aspirational at the same time. Milan Fashion Week Men’s SS27 , running from June 19 to 23, 2026 , was by most accounts a leaner, quieter edition than its Parisian counterpart. Seventeen physical shows. Six Italian brands with a runway presence. A calendar cleared of some of its perennial heavyweights , Gucci and Fendi stepped back from the June slot, and Zegna temporarily decamped to Los Angeles.
What remained was something more focused. More intentional. And, in the case of its two or three defining shows, genuinely extraordinary.
PRADA: AN EXERCISE IN CLARITY — AND A MASTERCLASS IN RESTRAINT
Sunday, June 22. The Deposito at Fondazione Prada. The invitation that arrived the day before , a translucent LED light stick with the Prada logo ,had already signalled the mood. Minimalism. Precision. Function elevated to philosophy.
Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons have been co-creative directors for thirteen consecutive seasons, and this collection felt like the moment their two sensibilities fully collapsed into one. The show opened, unusually, with Julia Nobis ( a women’s model ) in head-to-toe indigo denim under a black suit jacket, setting the tone before a single menswear look appeared. It was a declaration: the clothes that follow are not for one gender, one season, one trend cycle. They are for anyone who understands what it means to dress with intention.
The collection was titled Clarity, and the title was not decorative. Prada and Simons described their approach as a rebellion against “exaggeration, against complex material, against useless design.” The runway , built from clear Perspex above a bed of strip lighting, like an enormous photographer’s light box , was designed to strip everything back to its essential form. What followed was one of the strongest Prada menswear showings in recent memory.
Jeans came in leather, wool, and denim , but not in blue. In highlighter yellow, pink and purple. Close-cut silhouettes skimmed the body, revealing flashes of hip. Sweater vests and leather jackets were subtly reproportioned to subversive effect. See-through shirts and trousers joined the skeleton-like seams of translucent fabric. And then the accessories arrived , and everything else stopped mattering.
Climbing chalk bags, reimagined in Prada nylon and attached to the hip with a carabiner. Triple-buckled monk strap shoes with velcro latches and an elongated rectangular toe box. Mini nylon belt bags in red, blue and black. It was, as one reviewer put it, “classy climber-core” , and it was the most immediately discussed detail of the Milanese week. The shoes generated their own dedicated thread on X before the models had even finished walking.
In the front row: the full Enhypen lineup , Jay, Jake, Sunghoon, Sunoo, Jungwon, and Ni-Ki , causing, as reported, “an absolute meltdown outside” among waiting fans. NCT’s Jaehyun, Thai actor Pond Naravit both house ambassadors , alongside C-drama stars Greg Hsu and Yu Chengen, and Japanese actor Kentaro Sakaguchi completed a front row that covered Korea, Japan, Thailand, China and Taiwan simultaneously. Troye Sivan and Louis Partridge represented the Western celebrity contingent. Basketball players Jarred Vanderbilt and Anthony Edwards of the NBA added an unexpected athletic dimension that mirrored the collection’s own flirtation with performance culture.
THOM BROWNE: A GARDEN PARTY AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Monday, June 22. Palazzo Serbelloni. Thom Browne’s Milan debut , the designer’s first runway show in the Italian city , arrived with the kind of theatrical precision that has made him one of the most reliably spectacular showmen in contemporary fashion.
The setting was a garden in full bloom. The mood was a formal summer wedding at the end of civilisation. Models moved through the palazzo’s courtyard in Browne’s signature ultra-structured tailoring, reimagined this season in seersucker , lightweight, textured, perfectly suited to the heat that was pressing down on Milan from every angle.
Wide-brimmed straw hats, embroidered insects climbing across lapels, garden party accessories taken to their logical extreme. And then, at the end, the finale: a bride, covered in white tulle, presiding over the whole impeccable catastrophe as the queen bee of Browne’s immaculate world.
The show confirmed what Browne has known for decades: his formula is essentially unchangeable, and that unchangeability is the point. The seersucker was new. The conviction was absolute.
RALPH LAUREN: DREAM RACERS AND THE ITALIAN RIVIERA
Friday, June 19. Palazzo Ralph Lauren. The American designer’s return to Milan , his second consecutive season in the Italian city after a 20-year absence , was an expansive, eclectic love letter to the golden era of 1920s Italian boat racing. The collection bridged both the Polo Ralph Lauren and Purple Label lines in a single show, charting a sartorial journey from collegiate ease to Riviera luxury.
“When I began designing menswear, my inspiration came from the ease and traditions of collegiate style,” Lauren wrote to attendees. “These collections are inspired by that spirit. It was about character and camaraderie.”
The clothes reflected exactly that: navy hues, Nantucket reds, tailored linens, sportswear-inspired outerwear that looked equally at home on the deck of a racing boat or at a dinner with a sea view.
The front row was a study in Asian star power precisely calibrated to match the collection’s mood of quiet, coastal elegance. Korean actor Kim Woo Bin , whose understated, almost cinematic screen presence translates effortlessly to the fashion world , brought exactly that register to Lauren’s world. Thai actress Meen Nichakoon, Singaporean singer JJ Lin, Japanese actor Shota Matsuda and the legendary Tadanobu Asano completed a front row that felt less like brand strategy and more like a genuine gathering of people who understood exactly what Lauren was trying to say.
DOLCE & GABBANA: SICILY IN THE AGE OF CHANGE
Saturday, June 20. The Metropol. Dolce & Gabbana arrived at this season’s Milan Fashion Week at a complicated moment. Stefano Gabbana had stepped down as chairman earlier in the year, and the house was navigating one of the more significant transitions in its history. What appeared on the runway, however, was a confident, sun-drenched return to first principles.
Sicily. The Mediterranean. The particular texture of a summer afternoon on the island that has always been the house’s spiritual homeland. Lightweight cotton shirts. Tailored linen jackets. Prints of lemons, postcards and nautical motifs on jeans adorned with jewellery details. Tight-fitting swimwear that recalled the Theo James Light Blue campaign era and then evolved into something sharper, more evening-appropriate. It was the Dolce & Gabbana man on vacation , and a reminder that, whatever transitions the house is navigating internally, its creative identity remains as legible as it has ever been.
In the front row, TXT’s Choi Soobin made his Milan Fashion Week debut , arriving in an unbuttoned white dress shirt, black jacquard blazer and a statement flower brooch, to a reception from waiting fans that would have made any film star envious. It was Soobin’s first fashion week appearance as a solo front row guest, and the crowd’s response confirmed that his transition from K-pop idol to luxury fashion presence was not aspirational but already complete.
GIORGIO ARMANI: THE MEDITERRANEAN MARKET
Tuesday, June 23. For the first time, Armani broke with years of tradition and moved the show outside , to the historic courtyard of Palazzo Orsini, the private residence of the late Giorgio Armani himself, covered in rattan mats and Moroccan-style seating. The collection, titled Mediterranean Market, was the most personal and emotionally loaded Armani presentation in recent seasons.
Under the new artistic direction of Leo Dell’Orco and Silvana Armani, the house presented its SS27 men’s collection alongside a selection of the Women’s Cruise 2027 line , a decision that reinforced the idea that the Armani wardrobe, at its most essential, has no gender. Louche tailoring. Safari-style jackets and gilets. Open-weave knits in earthy desert tones and blues that evoked sea and sky. After several days of collections that explored radicalism and experimentation, the lightness of Armani’s suits arrived as a genuine breath of fresh air. The jacket, Armani once again reminded the industry, is the most versatile garment in a man’s wardrobe , not because of what it signals, but because of how it allows the wearer to signal themselves.
WHAT MILAN UNDERSTOOD
In a season where Paris generated most of the spectacle and the headlines, Milan did something subtler and perhaps more lasting. It reminded the industry that the most powerful creative gesture is often the one that removes rather than adds. Prada’s Clarity. Armani’s Mediterranean warmth. Thom Browne’s impeccable garden. Ralph Lauren’s coastal Americana translated through Italian craftsmanship.
And in the front rows, a generation of Asian talents, Korean, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese , continued their quiet, methodical, unstoppable annexation of luxury fashion’s most coveted seats. Not as decoration. Not as strategy. As the audience that luxury fashion, if it is honest with itself, now dresses for first.
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