A play of opposites, an eco-minded approach to fashion and the post-streetwear movement are among the many defining elements of among the talents joining the Milan Fashion Week calendar for the primary time.

Here, WWD rounds up five names to examine out.

Andersson Bell

It’s no easy task to stem the curiosity of Dohun Kim — because the Korean designer’s past has repeatedly proven.

“I attended a complete of 4 undergraduate universities. Once I was 20 years old, I studied urban development as my major, after which transferred to a different school to pursue fashion design. Afterwards, I switched majors again and learned acting and directing. Then, I transferred schools over again and majored in fashion business,” said Kim. “I learned that I’m the style of one that takes motion and changes paths immediately if I find something boring.”

Ditto for a one-year internship at a fashion brand in Korea, which was followed by Kim’s realization that it’s all the time best to march to the beat of 1’s own drum, a call that culminated within the launch of the Andersson Bell label in 2014. “I believed that doing the designs I desired to do inside my very own label can be faster and more appropriate,” Kim said in regards to the decision. 

A decade later, the brand is gearing as much as stage its first runway show as a part of Milan Fashion Week, scheduled for Sunday at 4 p.m. CET and slated to present to a broader audience its “unconventional beauty,” because the designer described it.

To make sure, the brand’s aesthetic combines opposites for unexpected results, because the name itself suggests. A mix of Korean and Scandinavian cultures, Kim’s fashion mixes the urban street-style eclecticism of the previous with the minimalism of the latter.

While collections often feature playful designs in vivid patterns, patchwork and colorblocking, Kim teased that the spring 2024 lineup will focus on denim and military as core themes. “I drew inspiration from my childhood memories of trying to find denim and military vintage clothing,” said the designer. “Moreover, I desired to present garments that may be worn in on a regular basis life by everyone.”

Key items will include printed denim jeans and military-inspired garments, similar to a nylon jacket designed as a mixture of a bomber jacket and a blazer, making a layered look. “It’s a high-tech jacket that may be worn reversibly. The within includes a mesh camouflage print, giving it a cool urban vibe that may be worn in the town,” said Kim. 

The event of accessories was among the many foremost challenges, in line with the designer, who addressed the launch of the Vaso bag conceived by imagining a girl carrying a flower vase. 

Further enhancing the play in contrasts, Kim decided to showcase the gathering at the town’s historic Società del Giardino location — a social club since 1783 and typically inaccessible to most people.

Yet the Milan scene is not any secret to the designer because the company had been conducting showroom business in the town for the past three years. “Paris has an abundance of designer brands concentrated there, while we imagine Milan Fashion Week has a more suitable timing to showcase [the brand’s] DNA effectively,” noted Kim.

Andersson Bell has greater than 30 stockists in Italy alone, including 10 Corso Como, Modes, Antonioli and One Block Down in Milan, in addition to LuisaViaRoma and Sugar in Florence and Arezzo, respectively. Other retailers carrying the brand include Printemps in Paris; Browns and End in London; Galeries Lafayette in Beijing and Shanghai, and Harvey Nichols in Hong Kong, along with online platforms similar to Ssense, to call a number of. Pieces from the brand are priced between 50 euros and 930 euros.

Asked in regards to the ultimate goal of the label, Kim said “to represent Korea” and to “aspire Andersson Bell’s vintage archive clothing to carry even greater value as sought-after vintage pieces, commanding higher prices than their original retail prices, in the following decade or so.”

Marcello Pipitone

Despite winning the 2023 Camera Moda Fashion Trust grant, a 40,000-euro money prize, Marcello Pipitone hasn’t lost his humble approach to the industry he has long dreamed of working in.

Born and raised in Bonola, within the suburbs of Milan, in a creative family, Pipitone first understood fashion might be the massive gig of his life while in highschool.

“I all the time desired to enterprise on a solo project, and I desired to be creatively free. An apparel brand seemed the perfect option; from textile research to modeling, communication, it’s all-encompassing and free,” he said. “Clothing will exist endlessly, even in 2300,” he said candidly with the pragmatism forged, he said, by living within the suburbs.

Since formally establishing the brand in 2020, he has incorporated his upbringing and private story into the gathering, which is crammed with streetwear and sportswear inflections and celebrates Milan’s suburbia.

“Suburbs may be harsh on young kids; you mostly need to look over your shoulders, protect yourself,” he said, mentioning how his brand logo references the M sign at subway stops in the town in addition to an ancient Greek helmet.

“I need to present back the ‘power of colours’ to kids which might be missing them here,” he said, noting how the neighborhoods are scattered with concrete condos lacking personality. “They’d quite avoid wearing flashy colours and logos within the ‘hood and sport peacock-y looks downtown… it’s about this contrast between suburbia and the town center, the minimal concrete buildings here and storied palazzo on, say, Via Palestro,” he said.

Soon after COVID-19 emerged and a number of months after graduating from Milan’s fashion and design school IED, Pipitone began posting upcycled, made-to-measure pants he had been crafting for personal clients on his Instagram account.

Word of mouth and social posts helped him gain visibility and landed him a spot amongst finalists on the 2021 edition of the “Who Is On Next?” talent search and a recycling-geared collaboration with the Fondazione Pistoletto.

Then local celebrities began to endorse him, including singers Tananai, Ghali and Marracash, wearing soccer jerseys he would upcycle and reinvent.

The spring 2024 collection that can be showcased on the Fondazione Sozzani Tazzoli on Saturday as a part of Milan Fashion Week will further pay homage to metropolises, Milan particularly.

“It all the time stems from a celebration of my ‘hood and Milan but the actual goal is to have the option to talk to all metropolitan cities on the planet,” he said.

Heavy on graphics — some realized in collaboration with creative director Gaetano Di Dio — and sportswear inflections and silhouettes, Pipitone described the spring lineup as an “industrial scale representation of my vision.”

On the presentation Pipitone is inviting artist friends to display their artworks including Giacomo Feltrinelli, Jacopo Caldirola, and digital artist Simone Campagna. He can also be hoping to have the option to unveil a photographic reportage-style book he put together strolling around the town.

Leveraging the Fashion Trust’s grant, Pipitone goals to establish an e-commerce platform to kick off his business beyond made-to-measure. His fashion retails between 250 euros for T-shirts and 1,000 euros for girls’s dresses, with upcyled pants selling at 300 to 600 euros.

Maison Laponte

A relative newcomer to the Milan scene, Maison Laponte launched in late 2019 because the brainchild of business and life partners Benedetta Bertolini and Gianandrea Sergi, but sharpened its focus over the pandemic years, which, despite being tough on independent, nascent brands, also enabled them to be very creative.

Combining their expertise rooted in numerous backgrounds — he a tailor and patternmaker, she an arty type that got here to appreciate her creativity could higher serve fashion than the art world — Sergi and Bertolini let their flair for contemporary, and oftentimes rugged, romanticism run freely.

“We began this project with crazy ideas,” Bertolini said. “There was no marketing, no strategy, it was only about fabrics and our ability to make things. We carried on with no real brand structure,” she added.

A powerful deal with textile research has set the muse for the brand’s development. “That’s of course one thing we don’t need to compromise on,” she said.

There’s all the time a unusual touch embedded in Maison Laponte’s creations, which works hand-in-hand with a natural inclination for a genderless approach that never feels calculated.

“On the subject of patternmaking and sizing, we craft our clothing in order that it might easily adapt to each genders. Benedetta and I share numerous garments; our fashion doesn’t differ from who we’re, our wardrobes are shared and so is our brand’s ethos,” Sergi explained.

The spring collection is crammed with unisex pieces, regardless of that they’re traditionally related to the male or female wardrobe. Cue wrap skirts, that Sergi said telegraph a “punk perspective on menswear… men appear like men anyway, and ladies appear like romantic types with a flair,” he said.

In step with their layering approach that has been a boon to the brand for the past three seasons, driving a comparatively strong distribution footprint, the spring lineup embeds that idea in the best way garments are constructed quite than via styling tricks.

Patchwork dresses, petticoat-bearing frocks, blazers with mismatched sleeves done in an oversized polka dot pattern, in addition to a bell-sleeved shirt with ruffles and numerous transparencies and see-through layers exuding subtle sensuality are the important thing codes in Maison Laponte’s offering.

The underlying inspiration was nineteenth century, U.S.-based photographer Alice Austin, who broke away from the constraints of her Victorian-ruled upbringing and forged an independent life that went against acceptable female behavior and social rules. The gathering is to be unveiled on Sunday on the brand’s headquarters inside a car parking zone in central Milan that happens to have a verdant garden. The pair linked up with Germi, a Milan-based bookshop and cultural center, that’s throwing a 5 p.m. tea party along with the brand.

Veering away from prints, their most up-to-date business success, the pair is focusing more on silhouettes and fabrics, aiming to expand their core clientele and further enhance quality and craft.

Currently distributed through around 25 stockists in Italy, France, Greece and Spain, in addition to South Korea, the brand’s collections retail from 350 euros for shirts to 1,000 euros for suits and 1,300 for dresses.

Gams Note

“My foremost inspiration comes from the extensive research and deconstruction of men’s uniforms, especially [those from] scouting or outdoor wear,” said Alessandro Marchetto, founding father of Italian label Gams Note.

A graduate in fashion design from Istituto Marangoni in Milan, Marchetto launched his brand in 2021, after stints as menswear designer at labels similar to Brooksfield and Annakiki. Presenting his first collection last 12 months, Marchetto intended to supply easy-to-wear, practical total looks crafted from deadstock recovered from high-end European fabric manufacturers.

In sync with this eco-minded approach, he focuses on designing essential silhouettes, often cut in boxy or cropped shapes that may suit multiple occasions, be easily combined and layered, and ultimately stand the test of time.

The fast readability that marks his work will even define the spring 2024 collection, which can be unveiled via a video presentation on Tuesday. Marchetto favored the digital format for his Milan Fashion Week debut as he considered it more immediate in raising awareness across the brand. 

The designer’s clean ethos can be expressed via sleeveless shirts with polo-like buttoning, paired with cargo pants in relaxed silhouettes or short shorts for a stronger contrast in proportions. The sense of lightness and overall ease can be amplified by a palette of pastel hues that can moreover reiterate Marchetto’s attention to sustainability. 

To wit, the designer said he has explored alternative solutions when it comes to dyeing and printing techniques. “A few of my favorite pieces are the shirts and shorts dyed in Japan with natural and sustainable dyes like mint or cabbage,” he said. 

Overall, the brand’s concise collections retail at prices starting from 60 euros for logo-ed foulards, 240 euros for the signature poplin shirt featuring a hidden embroidery under a buttoned pocket, as much as 360 euros for cropped anoraks and overshirts in cotton and silk.

Maragno

Comfort, ease and spontaneity are three elements fashion stylist Giulio Maragno is seeking to infuse in his Maragno genderless brand, which is able to unveil its first spring collection on Tuesday. 

At his Milan Fashion Week debut, Maragno will present a lineup dubbed “Shadow,” which quite the opposite guarantees to be all a couple of neutral palette of earthy tones. Cozy and enveloping shapes and light-weight and natural textures will define the range.

The oversized silhouettes, which wink to the ‘80s here and there, can be crafted from fabrications similar to cotton, linen, hemp, wool and silk, recovered from the manufacturing plants of outstanding Italian brands in an upcycling exercise. 

The breezy vibe can be magnified by the clothes’ construction with the introduction of long laces, which is able to add movement to the essential pieces in addition to help define their volumes. 

“Having designed just two fall collections thus far, I discovered difficult and at the identical time interesting to think in regards to the volumes I wanted for summer,” said Maragno, whose brand’s ultimate goal is to highlight “beauty through easy things.”

Graduated each as an promoting graphic designer with a specialization in fashion photography, and as a dressing up designer and theater set designer on the Academy of Superb Arts in Venice, Maragno has worked as a fashion stylist for nearly 20 years. He has contributed to the event of promoting campaigns and look books, curated e-commerce looks and collaborated with brands starting from Max Mara to OVS. 

His newly born brainchild brand hinges on focused collections priced between 100 euros and 700 euros for accessories and starting from 250 euros as much as 3,000 euros for ready-to-wear, with cashmere outerwear essentially the most pricey pieces.