Authentic Made in Italy with Marco Rambaldi, Daniela Gregis and Durazzi

The second day of Milan shows dedicated to women's ready-to-wear for spring/summer 2025 was an opportunity to get up close and personal with three independent Italian fashion houses, ideal ambassadors of Made in Italy. Marco Rambaldi, Daniela Gregis and Ilenia Durazzi walked the catwalk on Wednesday, expressing their different voices, young and old, but all with a common value centred on a creative, high-quality, beautiful and well-made product in terms of materials, finishes and details.

Marco Rambaldi is stepping up a notch with a high-quality collection. It maintains its inclusive and committed identity, with its characteristic fresh and cheerful tone, but enriches its vocabulary with new materials, precious embellishments and more elaborate finishes. Like the pearls and stones that sparkle here and there on the hand-knitted cardigans or the iconic crochet creations of the Bolognese designer: long dresses and tops made with vintage lace, decorated this season with patches covered in Swarovski crystals.

The beading, with its floral motifs typical of antique tablecloths and tablecloths, is found on mauve tulle and organza, which are used to make blouses, tunics and even a handbag shaped like a plastic bag. These transparent and shiny mini dresses are superimposed on ruffled satin shirt dresses.

The same floral, angel and leaf motifs are laser-printed onto beautiful denim pieces (shirts, trench coats, Bermuda shorts, jackets, dresses). “This is the first time we've used real denim. In previous collections, the pieces were imitation denim. We made sure to use a supplier who was careful about washing and contamination issues,” explains Marco Rambaldi behind the scenes, who is also using leather in this collection, thanks to the support of the Lineapelle fair, with white leather vests and bags sewn with crocheted wool threads.

For next summer, the designer, who is distributed through around twenty retailers in Europe and Asia and through his online store, has decided to focus on “the beautiful memories of the past and the important things in life” with a friendly open-air show in a small square in the city centre, where Roman remains and modern buildings intertwine. As usual, the diversity was reflected in a multicultural cast, including Veronica Yoko, the Italian triathlete who won the silver medal at the Paralympic Games in Paris.

Knitwear is the focus of the brand, with long, tight-fitting dresses sprinkled with hearts, jacquard dresses with trompe l'oeil bodices or jumpers with playful slogans such as “le cercle Rambaldi” or “la Foire du blanc”, skirts and corsets with thick intermittent ribbing, but also fine-ribbed cardigans with different stitches. Crochet is not only used to make dresses, but also mini bags, socks and even suspenders to wear over denim shorts.

Daniela Gregis' impalpable and luminous collection has an intense summer flavour, despite the light rain that forced the models to parade under large red umbrellas in the courtyard of Villa Mirabello, a historic red brick building from the Quattrocento. Everything exudes lightness in this wardrobe, made mainly of fresh, wrinkled and crisp fabrics.

The clean-lined garments in cotton, silk, taffeta, linen or nylon were inspired by this wrinkled and sometimes puckered look, like a hymn to imperfection. This feeling is reflected in certain details, such as the mismatched ballet flats worn by the models. Monochromatic silhouettes, predominantly white with some incursions of total looks in red or black, were enhanced by colourful tops made of braided cords. These intertwined cords, adorned with scraps of fabric, were also used as hair ties to hold the hair in a ponytail or as shoulder straps for certain braided bags.

Silhouettes are layered with a wide variety of feather-light fabrics, in blouses, T-shirts, jackets, long or mid-length dresses and wide-leg trousers, not to mention the crumpled fabric bags, which are carried in pairs, stacked on top of each other, to match every outfit. A pioneer of upcycling, Daniela Gregis doesn't throw anything away, creating patchwork dresses from different types of fabric or coloured squares like an abstract canvas, but always with a great sense of harmony.

The same love of materials and detail characterises the work of Ilenia Durazzo, who launched her brand in 2022. The young woman, with extensive experience in fashion houses, has not yet walked the catwalk, but has been presenting her collections for five seasons in Milan, where she has just opened a large 300-square-metre exhibition-workshop space with a showroom and shop windows, which she hopes to reserve “for cultural and recreational activities”.

For Summer 2025, the designer continues her exploration of art, culture, saddlery and horse riding, her great passion, offering high-end women's ready-to-wear with a contemporary couture twist. This season, she was inspired by arte povera (poor art) and nature, with a palette of neutral tones ranging from ivory to lead grey.

The designer opts for fitted cuts and a certain rigour, playing with contrasts with lighter materials and details, such as raffia, or unusual ones, such as the medals that adorn the fringes of a top, or the long cords that fall to the floor on a fringed skirt. With the waterproof Mackintosh fabric, functional and understated, she has fun making clothes for everyday wear.

Everything is produced in Pesaro, in the Marche region, where it originates. It has around twenty top-class boutiques around the world and tries to control its distribution as closely as possible.