MILAN — Leaving behind New Year’s celebrations, the fashion pack is gearing up to hit the show circuit across Florence, Milan and Paris for the fall 2025 menswear season.
The fashion marathon — which starts next week, on Jan. 14, at the men’s trade fair Pitti Uomo, and wraps up on Jan. 26 in Paris — has shaped up as a slightly more relaxed affair, a signal of the rocky environment fashion and luxury are navigating.
The Pitti Uomo trade fair, running until Jan. 17, will feature MM6 Maison Margiela and Setchu as guest designers, one brand less than in recent editions. It will also showcase 790 exhibiting companies, in line with recent editions but below pre-pandemic levels.
Street style at Pitti Uomo 105 in Florence.
Kuba Dabrowski/WWD
At Milan Fashion Week, running Jan. 17 to 21, some marquee names — from Fendi and Gucci to Dsquared2 and K-Way — will be missing from the schedule, as they moved shows to February to mark milestones or for strategic purposes.
JW Anderson is also absent from the Milan calendar, where it traditionally unveils its men’s lineup in tandem with the women’s pre-collections. Its founder and creative director Jonathan Anderson has been at the center of speculation as of late. The move on his namesake brand, coupled with Loewe’s decision to showcase the fall 2025 men’s and women’s collections with a coed format in March during Paris Fashion Week, has fueled speculation around the designer’s next move. Sources told WWD that his contract as creative director of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned Loewe is coming to an end in early 2025, potentially shaping up a new career path for the brand’s creative director, with talk of him perhaps taking the reins at Dior.
Overall, the Milan showcase will feature 16 physical shows, four digital ones and 38 presentations.
The city lost most of the London squad that decamped here last year, including Martine Rose and David Koma, but will welcome British newcomers Qasimi and Saul Nash. Dunhill is the only U.K.-based brand confirming its return to the Milan schedule after moving from London last season.
To be sure, the decision of many British designer brands to decamp to Milan in recent years is largely due to the absence of a proper London Fashion Week Men’s. The last menswear showcase in the British capital was held in June 2022, followed by a smaller, one-off event in June 2024. This has helped Milan Fashion Week cement its reputation as a stage for new, international talents in recent years.
Against the quieter schedule, established names such as Prada, Giorgio Armani and Zegna are sure to be stealing the spotlight, but a few up-and-comers are poised to spice things up in Milan.
These include Pronounce, which decamped from London a few seasons ago and is returning to the runway on Jan. 18, after opting for a presentation last September, and Pierre-Louis Mascia, who will make a runway debut on the Milan schedule after testing the format at Pitti Uomo last June.
Street style at Milan Fashion Week, fall 2024
noorunisa/WWD
Moving on to Paris Fashion Week, which runs Jan. 21 to 26, the pace will be less relaxed, with 68 brands, spanning 38 shows and 30 presentations, showing their fall 2025 menswear collections. The men’s week will be followed by Couture Fashion Week with 28 houses hosting shows and presentations from Jan. 27 to 30.
Among the highlights of the men’s calendar are the arrival of New York’s Willy Chavarria and the return of Jacquemus to the official schedule with a coed show, after showing off-calendar and in destinations such as Capri, Versailles and the South of France since 2021.
Paris Fashion Week Men’s is also the stage of choice for other on-schedule runway debuts, including London-based S.S. Daley, the 2022 winner of the LVMH Prize for Young Designers, and 10-year-old label 3.Paradis, which won the Special Prize at the 2024 ANDAM Fashion Awards.
On the presentation side, the city will see the arrival of London-based label Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, which previously hosted runway displays in Milan and London; the Paris-based upcycling label Les Fleurs Studio by Spanish stylist Maria Bernad, and South Korean label Post Archive Faction, launched in 2018 by designer Dongjoon Lim.
Egonlab and Paul Smith are returning to the Paris schedule, the latter of which sat out June’s edition in favor of a turn at Pitti Uomo. The week is to be capped off by Peter Copping’s debut as Lanvin’s artistic director with a coed show.
