Milan
Fashion Week AW26

Milan Fashion Week traces its institutional roots to 11 June 1958, when the Camera Sindacale della Moda Italiana was set up as a semi-annual clothing trade showcase. Its founding members were drawn from the leading couture houses and ateliers of the day — figures including Roberto Capucci, Emilio Schuberth, Maria Antonelli, Germana Marucelli and Jole Veneziani — who organised to promote and professionalise the Italian fashion sector as a unified industry rather than a collection of independent houses.

The original Camera Sindacale evolved into the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI), the non-profit trade body that coordinates, disciplines and promotes Italian fashion today. CNMI sets the official show calendar, manages accreditation, and represents Italian fashion houses collectively in trade and policy matters — functioning as Milan’s counterpart to Paris’s FHCM or New York’s CFDA.

Fashion power in Italy was not always centred on Milan — Florence’s Sala Bianca shows had been the country’s main showcase for foreign buyers through the 1950s and 60s. That began to shift through the 1970s, as a new generation of ready-to-wear designers chose Milan over Florence or Rome, drawn by the city’s industrial and textile infrastructure. Giorgio Armani founded his eponymous house there in 1975; Gianni Versace followed in 1978. Their decisions, and those of peers who followed, moved the centre of gravity of Italian fashion decisively to Milan by the end of the decade.

Milan’s official Fall/Winter 2026 calendar, organised by CNMI, ran 24 February–2 March 2026, with 25–27 February anchored by the city’s heritage houses — Prada, Gucci, Fendi, Ferragamo and Bottega Veneta among them, the same houses whose 1970s-era arrival in Milan originally established its status as a fashion capital.