Visual Voyage Pt.33
A special edition dedicated to the Italian fashion masters
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Welcome to Visual Voyage, I’m so happy you’re here.
Straight from my digital archive, this is a carefully curated collection of visual inspiration for your projects, your everyday life, or simply for the joy of discovering something beautiful.
This week’s Visual Voyage all started from one single picture.
An image where Giorgio Armani, Miuccia Prada, Gianni Versace, and Valentino Garavani are standing side by side, pretending to play instruments. “The Milan Quartet”, photographed by Karl Lagerfeld and styled by André Leon Talley for the September 1996 issue of Vanity Fair.
After the recent passing of Giorgio Armani and Valentino Garavani, this picture made me think about a time in which Milan helped define how modern fashion would look, move, and communicate. And how some of the masters of that art are now gone.
I’ve always believed that fashion moves forward through new designers and new ways of working. It’s a constant evolution, often circular. So much of what we see today has already been imagined, created, and thought about before — returning as a nod, a reference, or a reinterpretation. But the passing of these figures has made me reflect on how deeply today’s fashion still lives within the structure they helped build.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Milan became the place where the masters of Italian fashion were shaping the industry. Armani reinvented tailoring and power dressing. Versace brought fashion closer to pop culture and back into the hands of women. Valentino focused on lasting elegance and craftsmanship, always with a unique sense of beauty. And Prada turned fashion into a space for cultural and intellectual conversation, adding a note of surprise along the way. And with them many more talented names like Krizia, Gianfranco Ferrè, Missoni and so on.
This visual series is driven by nostalgia for the runways, editorials, and portraits of the great men and women of the Milanese fashion landscape of those days.
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Thank you as usual for being here, I love you.
Giulia xx
Thank you, Giulia. What an incredible collection of images! I'm old enough to remember those days, and my first trip to Milan at twenty. What an eye-opener that was. My first night there, I thought all the men were gay because they were all so well-dressed and good-looking! It slowly dawned on me that everyone was just ultra chic. While I was in school for fashion, Italy was the center of the fashion universe, because of the greats you so brilliantly pay tribute to here. It made me realize just how much they shaped my aesthetic. xxx J
I think with the loss of Armani and Valentino, Milan Fashion Week will slowly fade. I don't know since when but New York, London, and now Milan are becoming less and less relevant, so I am wondering what will happen if these big cities don't have any designers to lead the way. Whatever we think, it's those big names that bring buyers to town.