Milan’s Fall/Winter 2026 runways were filled with even more newness than usual. There’s Demna’s first Gucci with a lot of throwback Tom Ford-era references you’ll notice, down to Kate Moss closing the show in a nostalgic sparkling thong in the back, and makeup artist Sam Visser’s smokey-eye-nude-lip combo in the front. Then there was Maria Grazia Chiuri’s debut show at Fendi with a “Less I, More Us” message of togetherness, where hair artist Guido Palau sent models down the runway in low ponytails that seemed a tribute to the house’s former head Karl Lagerfeld. A similarly chill pony (this time, tied by hair artist Tom Wright) walked the first Marni collection by Meryll Rogge, the Belgian designer who debuted her vision for the house’s muse as “strong and self-directed: someone with a career, a family, friends, and a genuine engagement with art and culture,” Rogge told Vogue’s Tiziana Cardini backstage of a “wearability factor” she wanted to reflect.
Then there were celebratory looks at Simone Bellotti’s second Jil Sander show. He described his collection to Nicole Phelps on Vogue’s Run-Through podcast as “the olive in a martini, this extra thing that makes the cocktail perfect.” Above the neck, that was translated by makeup artist Lucia Pica into read-my-lips red mouths, while Glenn Martens’s afterparty-coded Diesel catwalk toasted body glitter and neon painted eyes courtesy of makeup artist Inge Grognard. A controlled sense of messiness was welcomed this week: Louis Trotter’s second Bottega Veneta show at the brand’s headquarters in the Palazzo SanFedele, Palau sent models out in beanies that celebrated the beauty of a good-bad-hair day. “Milan is this sort of very Brutalist city,” Trotter told journalists backstage of its “sensuality that’s a little hidden.”
Here, Vogue spotlights the beauty trends worth a double-take:
A Good Bad Hair Day
There is no such thing as a bad hair day on the Milan runways. It started at Etro, where hair artist Cyndia Harvey carried designer Marco de Vincenzo’s “a little mad” theme of abandon and explosion into perfectly greased and tousled tangles. Hair artist Franco Curletto made even the messiest topknot on Marco Rambaldi’s runway look cool, much like Palau’s glorified hat hair for Bottega Veneta. At Moschino, hair director and Kevin Murphy pro ambassador Eugene Souleiman crafted “kind of tongue-in-cheek” looks. “It’s about contradiction, sharp structure meeting soft, unraveling movement,” Souleiman explained. “Polished, but slightly undone.” For “curly hair, we made it wild, big—almost a little witchy,” he said, while for a “rock-and-roll cut, we made it more tousled. Shorter cuts felt more masculine and shiny.” Using Kevin Murphy Staying Alive mist for his signature wisps, overall attitude is “elegant, emotional, and just a little bit undone.”
High Smoke Point
Sooty gazes were piercing across runways, from makeup artist Lucia Pieroni’s sketchy black lines at Prada and subtle smoked eyes at Ferrari to the darkly romantic Blumarine wings that makeup artist Patrick Glatthaar smudged out and Yadim’s softly structured shadow at Boss. And yes, there’s a reason you recognize Kate Moss’s naughties-era smoky eyes and nude lips Visser delivered for Demna’s Gucci debut in the Palazzo Delle Scintille. “I realized how important Gucci is in the Italian culture, that it’s kind of part of the whole Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Donatello. So we built a museum for the show,” Demna told Phelps of referencing past collections. “For my generation, his Gucci really introduced sex appeal into fashion,” said Demna of Tom Ford’s era of the house, where Moss first walked the runway in Pat McGrath’s original vision of sex-positive makeup.
Art Party Girl
As mentioned, Milan is known for its art, and the runways fittingly reflected muses traipsing directly from an art party (or basement rave) to the catwalk. Sometimes she was a total surrealist: To capture the theme of fairies and snails at Antonio Marras, MAC key artist Ricky Morandin brought the latter straight to models’ browbones. “I handcrafted two small horn-like elements featuring a chrome rose and a wire that recalls the spiral of a shell, positioned on the forehead to evoke the snail’s antennae,” Morandin explained. Abstract paint splashes were applied directly to the face again at Diesel, where makeup artist Inge Grognard used electric shades of MAC Chromalines to capture Glenn Martens’s hyperchromatic vision (which Martens called “a vomit of color” when speaking pre-show to Vogue’s Luke Leitch about reimagining the morning after a perfect party night). “You obviously don’t have time to look at yourself in the mirror,” said Martens. “But when you’re on the street, you look as hot as fuck because you own it. You’ve had a really good night, and everything is fantastic, so you just shine from the inside.”
Chill Low Pony
At long last, the low ponytail is being celebrated. We saw hints of its extreme ease in the pulled-back looks that walked NYFW, and soon Palau cemented the style on more than one Milan runway. At Prada, his chill ponytails were tied with scarves from the collection or left with bare elastics, and he delivered a similar look for Grazia Chiuri’s Fendi debut with just as many fuzzy flyaways. At Marni, hair artist Tom Wright pulled back texture that seemed to float—not fall—down models’ backs, and it spoke to Rogge’s vision for her first collection for the house. “I’ve been a Marni fan since I was a teenager; it has truly shaped my vision of fashion,” she said backstage of the aforementioned “wearability factor” she wanted to celebrate from the house’s codes.
Read My Lips
The femme fatale glamour that swept the New York presentations took a red-eye to Italy and got walking. After all, we love a statement lip that makes an actual statement. At Roberto Cavalli, Fausto Puglisi referenced the chaotic state of the world: “I’m happy, but I’m also sad,” he told Phelps. “I’m sure you read the same articles.” Makeup artist Yadim carried dark gothic lips onto the Cavalli runway, which read as a visual tribute to the dark cloud hovering over the world. At Jil Sander, Belloti’s martini mood tried to perk things up, and makeup artist Lucia Pica translated it into neon red lips, much brighter than those that walked for Dolce & Gabbana (the brand’s own liquid lip in a brick-y shade called Audacity). “I imagine how she wants to feel when she gets dressed,” Ermanno Scervino told Vogue’s Giulia di Giamberadino backstage of his show, where some models walked with oxblood-painted mouths. It opened, di Giamberadino pointed out, with the voice of Mina in “Sacumdì Sacumdà:” “One day the devil meets me in the street and says, ‘Come along, no one will see. I have everything you need.’”
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