Fashion Review: In Milan, Taking a Turn in the Spotlight

MILAN — Let’s get it out of the way from the start: Gucci was gone. Decamped to Paris (one-time only) for a show on Monday; no longer the hype-driven, baby-dragon-toting curtain raiser for Milan Fashion Week. Oh, woe is us?

Not really.

When the star act is out of town, it gives others a chance to step into the ring. Consider the Austrian-born, Milan-based designer Arthur Arbesser, who often takes his inspiration from art and artists. This season, he looked to ceramics — and the Italian sculptor Fausto Melotti — to create swirling, eye-popping prints upon structured shapes in mismatching textures, and skirts and tunics emblazoned with Mr. Melotti’s signature little horse sculptures, belting them with rope. There was also the designer’s first foray into sequins, which gave dresses a liquid metallic glaze.

The aim, Mr. Arbesser said, was to show beauty not only in a finished article, but also in the various imperfect and unfinished states of its creation. It was a lot to take in, but somehow it worked.

Over at Jil Sander, meanwhile, a seemingly polar opposite approach to what makes essential women’s wear pieces was on display, courtesy of Luke and Lucie Meier, now in their third season at the brand’s creative helm. The show venue itself could have overloaded the senses: It was a derelict panettone factory, with lilacs and fig trees sprouting through cracked tiled floors and broken glass ceilings.

But when it came to the clothes themselves, the show was a paean to the stark white minimalism for which Jil Sander is well known. Using ideas of uniform as a benchmark, there were boxy, collared sleeveless shifts layered over practical pants, or square-silhouette shirts with oversized cuffs and inside-out construction, teamed with knife-pleated short skirts. The purist approach of the husband and wife duo highlighted the skilled and painstaking work that goes into luxury clothes which often appear to be simple, but in reality are anything but.

Another take on effortless elegance and easy wearability (if you are lucky enough to be able to afford it) also could be found in the delicious suiting pieces offered by Brunello Cucinelli, in sun-baked tones like spicy tobacco and burnt cherry, and layered with sumptuous macramé knits, silks and glittering metallic sliders. The affable billionaire, who offers guests the best antipasti in town while they admire his latest wares, made that money by knowing his customers well and giving them exactly what they want.

This season the same couldn’t be said, however, for another legend in Italian fashion: Alberta Ferretti. Every model of the moment walked in her show on Wednesday evening, from Kendall Jenner to Kaia Gerber, and the sisters Bella and Gigi Hadid, sporting candy-colored chinos and stonewashed denim jackets, cropped T-shirts and eyelet-trimmed cotton rompers, looked as if they were auditioning for a remake of the 1990s cult TV show “Sweet Valley High.”

A pivot toward appealing to a more youthful market also was on display in the later evening wear portion of the show: exquisitely made but barely-there knitted black shift dresses that left little to the imagination.

Fashion makes a big deal of never looking back. But reading the room, there was a clear sense of longing for Ms. Ferretti’s romantic and womanly gowns of yesteryear, a niche in which she outshines almost all others.

Not that there is always something wrong with a change in perspective — or in presentation — to embrace the new. Moncler continued to eschew a catwalk show format in favor of its Genius project, in which a group of designers reinterpret the outerwear brand into their own sub-collections. For this season, titled “The Next Chapter,” the collections were showcased in immersive, state-of-the-art video displays, the better to bring the garments to life.

So Simone Rocha had her feminine but edgy puffa dresses, finished with embroidered flowers, at work on girls cultivating a garden; Craig Green, inspired this season by kitesurfing, lashed his monastic-style robes in primary hues onto moving wooden frames, blasting the viewer with waves of sculptural tension; and Noir Kei Ninomiya constructed and reconstructed his all-black pieces in 3-D over and over again, to bold effect. To see the clothes in a totally different state gave them a different perspective. A chance to see things already seen, once over in a new light.

Without the dominant shadow so often cast by Gucci on the first day of this third leg of the spring women’s wear shows, the same might also be said this season of the opening day of Milan.