Fresh starts at Gucci, Fendi and Marni set the tone at Milan Fashion Week

MILAN (AP) — It was a season of fresh starts and superstars across Milan Fashion Week. New creative directors shared their visions for Fendi, Gucci and Marni, while Madonna, Kate Moss and, most unexpectedly, Mark Zuckerberg lit up the runways and front rows.

Trends for the next cold-weather season from six days of runway previews that ended Sunday include suits to accompany women on back-to-work mandates and brutalist outerwear as an investment in uncertain times, with hints of feathers, (eco) fur and animal prints to lighten up the mood.

Zuckerberg caused a minor furor when he was ushered into the Prada runway show with presidential-style security. He sat next to Prada heir Lorenzo Bertelli, but the long-rumored pairing of Prada with Meta’s smart glasses was not revealed.

There was much buzz around new directions at multiple fashion houses: Gucci under Demna, Fendi under Maria Grazia Chiuri, Marni under Meryll Rogge, and Giorgio Armani under Silvana Armani, following the iconic Milanese designer’s death last September. Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta and Simone Bellotti at Jil Sander had sophomore outings, often trickier than debuts.

A glance at five womenswear trends and buzzwords for next season:

Layering at Prada

With just 15 models, instead of the usual 60 or more, Prada offered a master-class in layering, with models removing garments with each backstage pass.

Trenches, knit jackets and leather bombers gave way to long-cuffed men’s shirts, archival house coats and dresses that frayed into underlayers like sartorial archaeology, before arriving at cotton bloomers, sheer, embroidered slip dresses and bralettes.

Miuccia Prada, who designed the collection with Raf Simons, said in notes that the collection was meant to represent “layers of lives, of feeling.’’ She added backstage that it brought “minimalism and opulence together.”

Prada’s self-described obsession with history was underpinned by a showroom decorated with artifacts spanning centuries: 16th-century tapestries, 18th-century Venetian mirrors and paintings from the 1900s.

Suitable suiting

Back-to-work mandates are penetrating the runway, sometimes in unexpected places.

At Fendi, fur was worn over practical suiting and quarter-button collared shirts, best exemplified by front-row guest Uma Thurman.

At Jill Sander, Bellotti played with tiny, off-skew lapels contrasting with excess fabric that created volume in the back, Alice-in-Wonderland suiting that modernized the brand’s minimalist aesthetic and tested the idea of whether the superfluous can be essential. Skirts had side slits that closed at the hems, while the silhouette of dresses traced a curve — detail without decoration.

Suits were in short supply at Gucci, where Demna veered dramatically from the brand’s failed attempt at quiet luxury with clingy daywear and plunging crystal-encrusted evening gowns.

Fur, feathers and animal prints

Fendi’s designer Chiuri embraced the brand’s heritage as a furrier and leather goods maker, but with a twist: the furs were mostly upcycled, in a silent rebuff of the very noisy anti-fur demonstrators outside.

Chiuri had worked for a decade alongside the five Fendi sisters before creative director stints at Valentino and Dior.

Animal prints were glimpsed on many runways, including an eco-fur with the suggestion of a cow print at Dolce & Gabbana.

Prada featured laced-up boots fantastically covered with feathers, an antique touch that complemented beaded satin booties and pumps.

The coat game and chunky knitwear

Louise Trotter said she aimed to lighten up her second Bottega Veneta outing. She embraced Milan as her inspiration, opening with a series of architectural overcoats in sturdy blue and grays that were meant to exemplify Milan’s Brutalist architecture, before an explosion of energy and color in outerwear constructed from fiberglass that shimmied kinetically with every step.

Ferragamo’s mariner twist of the season resulted in overcoats with button panels that could be twisted into new architectures. They perfectly complemented laced silken dresses underneath.

Rogge’s coed debut for Marni was youth-driven, a 1990s version of the 1970s, and her love of knitwear came through in chunky sweater jackets and retro-patterned pullovers. A luxurious short-haired fur coat with a cotton lining exemplified the brand’s high-low materials mix. Straight midi-skirts were covered with plastic sequins or mother of pearl discs that rattled like chimes.

Softness in tailoring

Tod’s demonstrated how to turn leather into the softest tailoring with a seamless declination from foulard dresses to the same silhouette constructed from leather.

Silvana Armani embraced her uncle’s soft-shouldered jackets, including quilted Japanese-style jackets and colorful shearling coats. The biggest statement were the slate gray overcoats that grazed the runway with elegance.

“Working with fluidity and simplicity came naturally to me because that’s how I am,’’ she said after the show.

Footnotes

While the muted color palettes and focus on basics suggest a conservative response to global turbulence, overt references to war was rare. One exception was Moschino, where designer Adrian Appiolaza included a pair of references including the graphic character Mafalda on a garment screaming: “Basta,” Italian for “Enough.”