Boss, Brioni and Antonio Marras

A rainy Wednesday morning at Milan Fashion Week and a busy schedule with two venerable brands – Boss, Brioni – and a theatrical showman – Antonio Marras – presenting notable collections.

Fold it like the boss

After several years in which Boss seemed to disappear from the style radar, Germany's largest fashion brand suddenly seems relevant again.

Amid the screams of excitement of hundreds of fans, new Boss ambassador David Beckham and tennis star Taylor Fritz entered the show. The choice of the English footballer was a smart decision by Boss CEO Daniel Grinder to give the core European brand a greater global impact. Beckham, dapper in a smart business suit and curly hair, took his front row seat inside the Palazzo Senato.

Like the brand, the historic palace had been given a makeover: a mirrored central walkway in a courtyard was redecorated with hundreds of furry plants. The cast then marched briskly around the outdoor gallery on a grass walkway.

All of this is backed by an excellent remix of the Bronski Beat classic. Village boy Courtesy of sound architect and star DJ Michel Gaubert.

Created entirely in a single colour, with no prints, the collection focused on refinement, balance and contemporaneity. The cast was deliberately mature, with some models even sporting grey hair.

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For women: linen-blend suits with masculine jackets paired with wide-leg trousers; excellent double-breasted blazers and fitted buttonless coats. Pairing lightweight nylon doublets and shirts with smart suits or pairing ribbed knit dresses with loose trench coats. All are looks for busy career women, not for working from home. For evening: billowing silk cocktail dresses in nylon or a very elegant cocktail-and-robe combination that would flatter most women.

For the boys, in a mixed show, elegant linen suits, stylish tops with splash prints and elegant coats.

The palette was putty, petrol, ecru and stone tones – almost Armani-like, and not a bad thing.

Also, in a very funny inside joke, the cast included a quartet of modern and popular international editors, the Four Horsemen of the Catwalk were George Cortina, Alix Badia, Ben Cobb and Luke Day.

A highly acclaimed collection and show, which ended with around twenty designers collectively coming out from backstage to run through the green garden to great applause.

Antonio Marras

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You can't bring down a good man, especially if he's Sardinian, like Antonio Marras, who returned to the Milan catwalks with a rockabilly show, inspired by the actress Anna Maria Pierangeli.

Pierangeli, a great tragic beauty of the 1950s, was the mistress of Kirk Douglas and the partner of Jimmy Dean, whom her family forbade her from seeing because he was not Catholic. Friends say she had nightmares about Dean's death in a 1955 car crash for the rest of her life.

Pierangeli died at age 39 of an overdose in Los Angeles in 1971, but Marras remembers her in all her glory, imagining her dancing in a glitzy bar to Little Til and the Gangbusters quartet playing dance classics like I'm all shocked.

Antonio, one of fashion's great artists, had a troupe of dancers perform a jitterbug display on a tinsel backdrop to kick off the show, before the cast strode out like movie stars, leaving a Hollywood soundstage on their way to dinner.

Models and actresses wore bustier dresses in divine patchworks of floral prints, tartan and herringbone with broken patterns. Although their big idea was an obsession with raffia, which was seen in huge pagoda hats; shamanic cocktails and a truly extravagant goddess dress in lime green with a two-metre train. South Pacific chic.

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In another mixed collection, men often wore similar fabrics and prints, sometimes in Antonio's signature dark floral prints, with touches of black. Men on dates in Southern California or the Mediterranean wore silk pajamas or smart cotton blazers with floral prints.

The girls walked in stylish retro heels that often matched the look, the boys in a shiny new shoe – a patent leather brothel creeper with chic punk straps on the toe.

The collection marked the first show in four years for Marras, a much-loved figure in Italian fashion. And it seemed fitting that a fellow Sardinian should inspire him to return to the catwalk.

Not in vain, Paul Newman, who started against Pierangeli in the boxing classic, Someone up there loves me – she is called “the most beautiful Italian actress of the century”. Today, this unique personality has given life to a charming show and a touching fashion moment.

A kinder and gentler Brioni

Turning a womenswear business into a distinguished menswear tailoring shop is never an easy project, but one brand that is successfully achieving it is Brioni.

On Wednesday, a 21-piece capsule collection for women was presented live, unlike previous seasons when only male models were shown. Visitors could also discover Brioni's new showroom in a particularly distinguished Liberty-style carved stone building on Via Senato.

The garments whispered richness and spoke delicately of elegance. Nothing revolutionary, just pure class, where designer Norbert Stumpfl manages to incorporate the brand's bespoke tailoring DNA into a kinder, gentler Brioni.

Ankle-length silks and T-shirts, finished with pockets, worn with fitted trousers. The perfect double-breasted blazer, finished with matching fabric buttons, crafted in founder Gaetano Savini’s favourite colour, orange-red.

For evening, smartly cut cigarette trousers with satin lapels, cut at the waist and paired with matching skinny jeans. Paired with ivory silk and cashmere double-breasted suits with a barely-there herringbone pattern, or a classic denim jacket, but made from black silk seersucker with a windowpane check finish.

A carefully chosen range of styles that explains why Brioni, although the smallest of Kering's six fashion houses, is also currently the fastest growing.

It is often said that Brioni's 1952 show in Florence was the first menswear fashion show and sparked the peacock revolution. Now, girls can be a bit selfish too.