Walk The Talk: The Dazzling Materials Defining Fashion Today

From sand and flax to a disco ball and Murano glass, we can’t stop staring at the catwalks and couture from recent fashion weeks across the globe.

A Vivid Focus On Fashion Week Couture

Although designer Brunello Cucinelli’s sartorial stylings can be seen on TV, in the HBO series Succession, the set for the Milan Fashion Week unveiling of Anamnesis, the label’s Fall/Winter 2025 menswear collection, was meant to evoke a vintage radio station, one where classic silhouettes in cashmere, chevron knits, and garment-treated leathers met saturated colors, redefining quiet luxury.

---

The bright, saturated color of Carolina Herrera’s Resort 25 women’s wear line, a collab between creative director Wes Gordon and Mexican artisans, as well as that of the catwalk, backdropped by the Museo Anahuacalli, derived from the luminous sunsets of Mexico City, where the show was held.

Carolina Herrera Resort 2025, where ready-to-wear pieces, such as this silk gown and dress, were presented at the Museo Anahuacalli in Mexico City.

---

In addition to models donning the tailored Spring/Summer 2025 Zegna menswear collection, sustainable flax fibers not only were the focus of the Milan runway but also compose the brand’s signature linen fabric, Oasi Lino.

---

For its half-century milestone, luxury footwear brand Santoni mounted “Meraviglia–Makers of Beauty for 50 Years,” an immersive exhibition also in Milan honoring the house’s artisanal legacy via portraits by renowned lensman Jack Davison, culminating in a tribute collection that embodies the label’s enduring pursuit of beauty.

---

For Thom Browne’s ornithology-inspired FW25 collection during New York Fashion Week, thousands of origami doves fluttered around the runway, while a recitation of Emily Dickinson’s poem “‘Hope’ is the Thing with Feathers” and a chorus of birdsong pumped through speakers.

---

A cohesive set of pillowlike soft furnishings seemingly strewn on canvas-covered bleachers, punctuated by a giant deconstructed disco ball, all by Austrian artist Lukas Gschwandtner, conjured a mood of “after-hours liberation” for Acne Studio’s SS24 women’s wear collection at Paris Fashion Week.

---

Toasting Dolce & Gabbana’s 40th anniversary this year was “Du Cœur à la Main,” a 12-act tableau vivant exhibited through March at Paris’s Grand Palais where curator Florence Müller outfitted three floors in hundreds of one-off Alta Moda embroidered-silk gowns, original artworks, and handmade accessories, as well as baroque furnishings, gold-leaf paneling, and Murano glass chandeliers.

---

For their SS25 menswear collection, Prada co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons examined perception and reality through deliberately creased and patinaed garments and exaggerated proportions amidst Milan’s Deposito of the Fondazione Prada, a meandering dreamscape by AMO, OMA’s research branch.