Fendi leads Milan trends with feminine silhouettes for men

MILAN (AP) — Milan menswear designers seem to have decided on the answer, but the question remains: Have the pandemic lockdowns emboldened men to embrace a more feminine silhouette, including skirts, mini-dresses and cape coats?

The Milan Fashion Week of previews for next winter and fall continued for the second day Saturday, with guests enjoying the pandemic norm of social distancing compared to previous cramped shoulder-to-shoulder seating. The calendar was slimmed down after the omicron variant started its surge in Italy last month, but that live shows went ahead at all was a sign of optimism after January 2021’s digital-only Milan Fashion Week.

Eager fans again crowded sidewalks outside runway shows, hoping for a glimpse of Italian rapper Mahmoud at Fendi, or Machine Gun Kelly and fiancée Megan Fox at Dolce&Gabbana.

As a rule, men’s collections on Milan’s runways this season have so far hewed conservative on the color palette, leaving the risk-taking to the silhouette.

Fendi’s collection for next fall and winter was infused with the fashion house’s disciplined tailoring and elegance — with some welcome eccentricities to lighten things up. They included a leather aviator cap with the flair of a Moroccan fez.

The toned-down color palette in gray, black and ivory with flashes of red seemed to suggest that the collection was business as usual, but then Silvia Venturini Fendi threw in some surprising silhouettes, starting with a men’s Bermuda short with the tailoring and flow of a skirt, worn with sheer knee-highs and buckled two-tone pointed Mary Janes. She then proposed wide-leg dress trousers that only from the back showed to be skirted. They were paired with jackets, or knitwear that had a feminine peek-a-boo V on the chest.

Leaning in on the femininity,...