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

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

Marco Rambaldi is moving upmarket with a very fine collection. He has preserved his inclusive, committed identity with its characteristic fresh, cheerful tone, while enriching his vocabulary with new materials, precious embellishments and greater finishing touches. Like the pearls and stones that sparkle here and there on hand-knitted cardigans, or the Bologna-born designer’s emblematic crochet creations: long dresses and tops made from vintage doilies, decorated this season with Swarovski-covered patches.

The rhinestones, with their floral motifs typical of doilies and old tablecloths, are found on tulle and mauve organza, used to make blouses, tunics and even a bag in the shape of a plastic bag. These transparent, sparkling mini-dresses are superimposed on twirling satin shirt-dresses.

The same motifs of flowers, angels and foliage are laser-printed onto pretty denim pieces (shirts, trench coats, Bermuda shorts, jackets, dresses). “This is the first time we’ve introduced real denim. In previous collections, the pieces were simulated denim. We made sure we used a supplier who was careful about washing and pollution problems,” explains Marco Rambaldi backstage, who is also emphasising leather in this collection, thanks to the support of the Lineapelle trade fair, with white leather waistcoats and bags sewn with crocheted wool threads.

For next summer, the designer, who is distributed through around twenty retailers in Europe and Asia and on his e-shop, has decided to focus on “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 clash. As usual, diversity was showcased by a multicultural cast, including Veronica Yoko, the Italian triathlete who won silver at the Paris Paralympics.

Knitwear took centre stage, the heart of the brand’s business, with long, form-fitting dresses dotted with hearts, jacquard dresses featuring trompe-l’œil bodies or pullovers with amusing slogans such as “le cercle Rambaldi” or “la Foire du blanc,” skirts and corsets with intermittent thick ribbing, but also fine ribbed cardigans with a variety of stitches. Crochet is used not only to make dresses, but also mini bags, socks and even suspenders to layer over denim Bermuda shorts.

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

The clean-edged garments in cotton, silk, taffeta, linen or nylon are moved by this crumpled and sometimes puckered look, like a hymn to imperfection. This feeling is echoed in certain details, such as the mismatched ballet flats worn by the models. The monochrome silhouettes, mainly white with a few incursions of red or black total looks, were enhanced by colourful cups made from braided rope. These intertwined ropes, adorned with bits of fabric, were also used as scrunchies to hold back hair in a ponytail, or as shoulder straps for certain braided bags.

The silhouettes are layered with a wide variety of featherweight fabrics, in blouses, T-shirts, jackets, long or mid-length dresses and baggy trousers, not forgetting the crumpled fabric bags, worn in pairs, stacked one on top of the other, to match each 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 details characterises the work of Ilenia Durazzo, who launched her label in 2022. The young woman, who has a wealth of experience in fashion houses, is not yet on the catwalk, but she has been presenting her collections for five seasons in Milan, where she has just inaugurated a large 300 square metre showroom-workshop space with a showroom and display windows, which she hopes to reserve “for cultural and recreational activities.”

For summer 2025, the designer is continuing her exploration of art, culture, saddlery and horse-riding, her great passion, offering upmarket women’s ready-to-wear with a contemporary couture touch. This season, she drew inspiration from Arte povera (poor art) and nature, with a palette of neutral tones ranging from ivory to lead grey.

The designer favours tailored cuts and a certain rigour, playing on contrasts with lighter materials and details, such as raffia, or unusual ones, like the medals that adorn the fringes of a top, or the long ropes that fall to the ground in a fringed skirt. With the functional and sober Mackintosh waterproof fabric, she has fun making clothes for everyday wear.

Everything is produced in Pesaro, in the Marche region, where she is originally from. She has around twenty top boutiques around the world, and seeks to control her distribution as closely as possible.