Milan Fashion Week
Tod’s Spring Summer 2027, Milan Fashion Week

Montblanc

In 1926, Montblanc ventured into the world of leather goods for a practical reason: pens had left the desk and needed protection on the road.

A century later, the Maison marked the anniversary at Milan Men’s Fashion Week, transforming its Salone dei Tessuti showroom into a showcase for its Spring Summer 2027 leather collections, complete with an oversized reimagining of the Writing Traveller briefcase and a leather-clad Tree of Writing (paper branches, leather animals, the occasional envelope).

Since the appointment of their current Creative Director, Marco Tomasetta, Montblanc has made the pen, from its symbolism to the elements of its own creation, a hero detail in subsequent leather goods collections. The nib of the fountain pen, for example, has become the motif for the point where the handles attach to the body of the bag.

The spring summer collection builds outward from the Writing Traveler, presented this season in corteccia sfumato and grain leathers alongside a bolder version in extreme leather with a reworked interior.

Its design codes have been softened into the new Soft Traveler line, rendered in suede and grain leathers, while the Atlas line follows a similar logic with crossbodies and messengers in supple Extreme soft leather.

The Art of the Desk collection continues with document holders, portable coffrets and writing boxes that unfold to reveal a writer’s tools. A reminder that this is a house that still considers the pen its centre of gravity.

TOD’s

In 1984, photographer Luigi Ghirri published Viaggio in Italia, a project that documented the country through petrol stations, faded shopfronts and empty beaches rather than domes and colonnades. It was Italy observed in liminal states, in a crepuscular light that made it hard to pinpoint time, much like how we lose track of hours and days while on holiday.

Four decades later, Matteo Tamburini has used this series and the feelings evoked as the compass for Tod’s SS27 collection, succinctly dubbed The Italian Wardrobe and shown at Villa Necchi Campiglio during one of Milan Fashion Week’s more punishing heat waves.

Milan Fashion Week

The Ghirri reference sets the collection’s scene.

Tod’s has never been a house opts for fuss, preferring the luxury of an adagio pace to things and Tamburini’s third year has settled into a study of how Italians actually dress and live: tailoring that is exact without being stiff, volumes that follow the body rather than argue with it, and a palette pulled from the landscape itself – beige, cocoa, ochre, stone grey, with rust and terracotta doing the occasional interrupting.

The technical anchor is Pashmy, a leather engineered to the softness and weight of pashmina. It appears across the collection’s core pieces: the Brera Bomber, the Castello Jacket (a blazer rebuilt with patch pockets), and the Solferino Shirt, cut so light it barely registers as leather at all. Each carries the signature of the craftsman who made it.

Milan Fashion week

Footwear delivers the news. The Red Dot sneaker with elastic lacing, extra-light sole and the titular marker at the heel joins the hand-stitched Gommino, now accompanied by a leather accessory borrowing the interlocking closure of the Greca belt. The same hardware turns up on an ultra-light loafer in leather with a silky hand.

Brunello Cuccinelli

I remember two things about the men of Milan. First, they know how to pose. They know how to stand to accentuate their clothing and make sure that you can see how good they look. And secondly, they know how good they look.

It’s that ease of masculinity, this senso di virilità, absolutely oozed through the latest collection from Brunello Cucinelli. 

Titled Thought is Free (Shakespeare, borrowed liberally), Cucinelli’s spring summer 2027 collection was a display of sartorial Italianess. A dozen garment-dyed cable-knit cardigans, crew necks and half-zips hung from varnished bamboo – blues through sage green into apricot, orange and raspberry – each treated with resin to pull contrast between the pale raised surface of the knit and the darker recessed zones beneath. Knitwear with a shadow built into it.

Tailoring held its structure throughout, Cucinelli’s characteristic broad lapels intact, but the fabrics kept things from tipping into formality: washed white linen here, seven-ounce indigo denim there. 

A navy dinner jacket came with white pleated trousers instead of the conventional tuxedo pant.

Safari and field jackets in pale grey washed cotton and dark brown suede were worn with shirts and ties, sometimes under a cable knit, with shorts or tailored trousers below depending on the register required. Leather blousons and biker-inflected jackets in pale brown carried visible surface abrasion across the panels.

The same deliberate logic as the knit treatment, a gap is manufactured between how something looks and how it actually feels.

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