ultra sexy at JW Anderson, sporty-chic at Giorgio Armani, Dhruv Kapoor

Milan Fashion Week Men ended in style on Monday, showcasing original looks and high-quality collections. At Giorgio Armani, JW Anderson and Dhruv Kapoor, designers proved that even the new trend for quiet luxury can be cheerfully subverted. Jonathan Anderson had fun in upending the codes of menswear, by showing bare-legged male models wearing sheer tights, while Giorgio Armani and Indian designer Dhruv Kapoor cleverly blended a sportswear register with a formal one.

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A giant eye peering through a spyglass at one end of the runway gazed starkly at the audience and the collection, as if Armani himself was scrutinising them. The clear blue iris shone in the darkness, like a moon reflecting on the runway’s gleaming floor. It was a way of keeping some distance from this chaotic world while observing it. Seasons pass, trends do too, but the Italian couturier’s effortlessly elegant style remains.

Armani picked up the thread for the Fall/Winter 2024-25 by infusing his fashion with a new, even more insouciant attitude, adopting lightweight constructions and looser volumes, as well as broadening the colour palette, introducing countless shades of beige, blue and grey. Everything had a more flowing, cosier feel, the jackets often collarless, ample trousers slipped into booties or gathered at the ankles like joggers. Shirts were out. Instead, the collection teemed with knitwear, silk t-shirts, polos, and even turtleneck sweaters in vibrant turquoise and pink.

Suits and overcoats came in the finest wool fabrics, and in a thousand and one variations, from checks to speckled patterns, herringbone and more. Different items could be combined at will. A light grey jacket in Prince of Wales checks was wonderfully matched with a sailor-stripe sweater. A herringbone jacket looked great over a black velvet ensemble, a striped hoodie and even a two-tone sweater. Armani reinterpreted corduroy suits with a contemporary feel, and even dared to include furry leopard-print tops.

“We did a great deal of work on proportions, in order to give the garments fluidity and softness, much more so than in my early creations. The volumes shift as they follow the wearer’s movements, lending the silhouette an extremely natural poise. Menswear doesn’t need to be subverted. We must do the usual in unusual fashion,” said the designer at the end of the show.

The collection oozed a sense of ease and comfort, and at the end it revealed a highly sporty facet, introducing several items from the Neve (snow) winter sport line. The latter included ample down jackets, skiing suits and trousers in nylon and performance fabrics with moiré-patterned accents, mittens, snow boots, and furry brown jackets seemingly made in aged leather. Plus a helmet, a tiny clutch bag dangling from a string slipped around the neck, and large waterproof fleece bags.
 

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Dhruv Kapoor too drew plenty of inspiration from sportswear influences, but with a more couture feel. The Indian designer has been showing in Milan since June 2022, like Irishman Jonathan Anderson. Over the course of three seasons, Kapoor has managed to make his voice heard, slotting his label reliably on the fashion week‘s last day, between two top Italian names like Giorgio Armani and Zegna.

New Delhi-born Kapoor founded his label in 2013, after moving to Milan where he studied at Istituto Marangoni and worked for Etro. He began by designing extremely colourful, exuberant streetwear, and has now managed to shift upmarket, towards a higher-quality, more sophisticated style, leaving Indian folklore influences firmly behind. His new collection did feature a few statement items richly decorated with embroidery and sequins, notably the lavish jackets, but much more space was devoted to understated tailored looks.

A sportswear register was also evident in many small details. Shirts that extended to become short pleated skirts, a reference to tennis. Sport jackets with oversize, American football-style shoulders. Colourful tops looking like football jerseys, as well as garments blending neoprene and traditional fabrics. Kapoor loves running, and he also introduced a collaboration with Nike, which shipped over to him a selection of t-shirts and tops from its dormant stock, with which he fashioned four special looks which will not be available for sale.

To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Dhruv Kapoor has restyled some archive items, like the superb silver biker jacket made in a lamé fabric mixed with neoprene. “The concept of sport couture is the foundation of this collection. It’s the same key concept the label is heading towards. We’re keen to blend different influences through increasingly upmarket products,” Kapoor told FashionNetwork.com. His label boosted its visibility after the first Milanese show, but it is still struggling to become a hit in Europe. Dhruv Kapoor is currently distributed via some 15 retailers in Asia, the USA and the Middle East, and online on its own e-shop, Hypebeast and Zalando.  

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The mood was different at JW Anderson. Clad in a simple sweater decorated with a bright-red fabric poinsettia attached to the chest, or wearing a knitted dress, many of the models strolling down the runway were trouserless, their legs sheathed in sensual sheer black tights with added socks, mules-moccasins with giant tassels on their feet. Others showed bare-chested, wearing ample culotte-shorts in mauve or lilac wool, trimmed in quilted pink satin like a cushion or curtain, and matched with cardigan-jackets in the same hue worn over naked skin. 

In some cases, they swapped their prim sweaters and light-grey jersey loungewear sets of knitted top and long johns for a more flamboyant shirt with plastron and four sleeves, two of these overlong and trailing down the back. With these intimate looks, the new masculinity imagined by Anderson appeared at first glance much more sensual than the women’s silhouettes also featured on the show, in which the talented designer unveiled his label’s women’s pre-fall 2024 collection, characterised by skintight dresses and red velvet pumps.

Between the poinsettias, which Anderson, also the creative director of Loewe, defined as “toxic,” and the tights, described as feeling “both like a second skin and a constraint,” there was an unsettling mood to the collection. It was pervaded by “a strange atmosphere of domestic perversion,” inspired by some of Stanley Kubrick’s films. Notably his last movie, Eyes Wide Shut, released in 1999, whose interior scenes featured settings decorated by Christiane Kubrick, the director’s painter wife.

“I watched the film again in August, and decided that it would be the collection’s inspiration, something I’ve never done before. I was especially obsessed by the Christiane Kubrick paintings featured in some scenes,” said Anderson. “These colourful figurative paintings, though acting as the backdrop, were an integral part of the psychology of certain scenes, and became an essential element of the collection’s graphic imagery,” said the label in a press release. The images were printed on various knitted dresses.

When leaving home to go out, JW Anderson men equip themselves with protective clothing. They don superb navy-blue overcoats with huge lapels, oversize blazers in striking red velvet, XXL sport tops looking like a carapace, worn over extra-large cargo trousers and cardigans. As though Anderson had used a wide-angle lens to design this part of the collection.

After the show, it felt only natural that Anderson would invite his guests to the Cinemino, Milan’s tiniest movie theatre, for a screening of a short film on Christiane Kubrick directed by her grandson Jack Elliot Hobbs.