Vogue World Milan 2026

Bonjour fashion lovers,

A few days have passed since Vogue World Milan, and it felt right to talk about it here, over a cappuccino with you. To let the spotlight fade a little, see what remained of the spectacle and share a few thoughts.

Especially because, reading the reactions online, I discovered that perhaps I’m not quite the alien I thought I was. Every time I watch Vogue World, I find myself thinking: it really isn’t for me. And, above all, I don’t understand it.

There, I’ve said it. May I carry on drinking my cappuccino, or is someone coming to revoke my fashion lover membership?

I see the enormous production, the celebrities, the clothes and the work it takes to bring it all together. But when the show ends, I’m left with a very simple question: what was it trying to tell me?

Then I read Diet Prada, questioning the very purpose of the event, and feel less alone. Finally, along come the memes of Miuccia Prada and Alessandro Michele watching robots dance in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. And at that point, forgive me, I smile.

Faces about as cheerful as a funeral.

The robots move to Gigi D’Agostino’s L’Amour Toujours, while the two designers remain practically motionless, wearing expressions the internet immediately turned into memes. Some people applaud. Others look as though they are searching deep within themselves for the strength to make it to the end.

Of course, we don’t know what Miuccia Prada and Alessandro Michele were thinking. But in those faces, which became the internet’s portrait of distinctly uninfectious enthusiasm, I recognised all my own bewilderment.

What was the point?

Because that is where I keep getting stuck. With the dancing robots, the endless appearances and the feeling that every moment has to produce something to be shared immediately.

Vogue World Milan set out to celebrate Italian craftsmanship and the value of human creativity in the age of technology. The robots, creative director Juan Costa Paz explained, were intended to represent the transformation we are living through, inspiring both amusement and unease.

I understand the intention. It’s the way it translates into a show that leaves me cold.

Watching a robot dance tells me that a robot can dance. To make me reflect on the future of fashion, creative work and the relationship between machines and people, I would need something more.

Especially when the starting point is craftsmanship. A beautiful word, but one we risk repeating so often that we forget what it contains. People, skills, time, mistakes, solutions. Hands that understand a fabric, shape a silhouette and adjust an almost imperceptible proportion.

I would like a celebration of that world to make me want to know it better. To leave me curious about a technique, an atelier, the journey behind a garment. To shine some of that light on those who usually work far from the spotlight.

Instead, my attention is constantly redirected. A celebrity, a performance, another appearance. I want to linger on something, but we have already moved on to the next moment.

And a few days later, I find myself remembering the robots and the faces of the people watching them.

There is something rather ironic about that: within a vision of our technological future, one of the most widely shared moments was a profoundly human detail. An expression that the audience interpreted, commented on and made its own.

In the post that made me feel less like an alien, Diet Prada arrives at an interesting observation: perhaps Vogue World reveals just how central the attention economy has become to fashion, to the point of overshadowing even the craftsmanship the event seeks to celebrate.

And they add, with a certain honesty, that they watched too.

Of course. We watched, commented and shared. From that perspective, the mechanism works. But as a viewer and someone who loves fashion, I would like to receive something beyond an opportunity to keep the conversation going.

I enjoy a spectacle. I enjoy fashion when it exaggerates, takes risks and surprises us. I don’t expect an explanation beside every dress, and I don’t need everything to feel reassuring. I’m happy to feel disoriented if that disorientation sparks my curiosity or makes me feel something.

With Vogue World, however, I often feel as though I’m watching a party I’m supposed to be thrilled about simply because it exists. A party full of important people, where everything announces how extraordinary it is.

I watch, recognise the merit of certain creations and appreciate individual moments. Then I try to understand what holds them together, and I return to my original question.

Perhaps it simply isn’t my kind of show. I’m perfectly comfortable with that. What I want to defend is the freedom to say so, even when the invitation says Vogue.

Because loving fashion does not oblige us to be enthusiastic about everything it does. We can find it moving one day and self-referential the next. We can acknowledge the work behind an event while still finding the result unconvincing.

That is precisely why it felt like a good subject for our Cappuccino Time: allowing ourselves the time to look beyond the viral moment and ask what it actually left us with.

I’ll keep my cappuccino and my reservations. And I confess that those memes of Miuccia Prada and Alessandro Michele managed to make me smile in a way the robots never did.

Vogue World: are you applauding, or pulling the same face?