Indyplus fashion: Milan Fashion Week (Menswear autumn/winter 2014)

By Alexander Fury

Prada delivers spectacle of fashion theatrics during autumn/winter 2014 show

The theatre of fashion - specifically, of the fashion show - is very difficult to get right. It's like walking a tightrope, where you risk falling off into sartorial extremity, or allowing catwalk histrionics to overshadow the clothing on show.

Miuccia Prada walks that fine line better than anyone. She's Italian fashion's most consistent performer. Her autumn/winter 2014 show was a paean to performance, models mounting raised podiums atop an already towering catwalk, circling the audience and a live woodwind ensemble. Spotlights and oompah band music (including snippets of Kurt Weil) conspired to a Cabaret mood. More divine decadence and a touch of decay than all-singing, all dancing.

That was reflected in the garb of Mrs Prada's cast of fashion characters, rakish men slinking in lightweight wool suiting, shoulder-tossed scarves, stockingette knits and fur, a smattering of female models turning tricks in taut leathers and chiffon negligees with a hint of Saint Laurent circa 1972, underlining the oft-androgynous air of her menswear offerings. But there was also sportswear with the suiting, quilted utility vests and nylon bags buckled against the models bodies. In a sense, a tailored suit and a track-suit are both forms of costume, as extreme to some as the full-length furs and fox tippets Prada fastened around her male and female models alike. In the theatre, dressing the part is half of the performance itself. Look like a businessman, act like a businessman, and who's to say you're not? Prada was a celebration of the transformative theatre of fashion and the performative power of clothing.

Enough obfuscating cant: ultimately what matters is that this was a virtuoso showing, a cap to a strong second day of the Italian winter menswear shows. Some were unexpected, like the subtle pinstriped suiting in delicious shades of blueberry, grape and lychee ochre in Massimiliano Giornetti's Salvatore Ferragamo collection. Giornetti turned away from last season's trite sports and mired his clothes in pure luxury. They were superb.

As was Tomas Maier's Bottega Veneta collection which opened the day, soft clothes for hard times with hyper-luxurious thermals worn beneath - or sometimes instead of - slimline suiting. The idea was country and city combining, which is shaping up to be something if a seasonal theme, justifying outfits that fuse the formal with the sporting, or perhaps just juxtapose the two. Calvin Klein's Italo Zucchelli coloured sporty bombers and quilted nylon gilets in suiting shades of camel and slate-blue, overcoats cut on swaggering Linebacker lines. The testosterone in the air was pungent, as pungent as Klein's still-best selling stable of scents. Their names - Obsession, Eternity and Escape - were emblazoned across sweatshirts. And really that trio of iconic slogans epitomises what fashion should aim to elicit in, and evoke, to its audience.

Dolce & Gabbana, Ermenegildo Zegna and Jil Sander: Middle Ages make dazzling comeback on the catwalks of Milan

Full-throttle design is why people buy high fashion. If you're laying out a considerable chunk of money for a garment, it has to be imbued with identity and created with integrity. It has to propose something new. That's a challenge to many designers, especially in menswear and particularly in Italy, where a reverence for the country's tailoring heritage can often conceal a lack of fresh ideas.

Stefano Pilati is full of those, Which is why his autumn/winter 2014 collection for Ermenegildo Zegna was so infuriating. Pilati had hare-brained notions about a trio of international metropolises (New York, Shanghai, Milan), the universe and "city vs country".

He pointed his seating away from his catwalk and projected a film ricocheting through said cities across a gargantuan screen as models scurried up and down a catwalk jutting through the centre. They resembled ushers at an Imax fruitlessly attempting to find seats. And no one paid them very much attention. More's the pity, because what Pilati is doing is very clever, twisting traditional tailoring archetypes like the double-breasted suit and camel coat to create something different, challenging but eminently wearable. Ultimately, Pilati's onanistic multimedia excursions should serve as the backdrop to his design, not drown it out entirely.

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana don't do things by halves. This season, their mining of the traditions of Sicily reached new levels of tenuous. Did you know the Normans invaded in 1061? That was a rough justification for Dolce & Gabbana going medieval.

Oddly, this was a satisfying performance, translating Middle Age garb relatively effectively to the modern-day wardrobe. The prevalent silhouette was macho and swaggering, a tabard-length sweater or oversized overcoat thrown over slender jeans. It finds an easy reflection in contemporary streetwear.

Dolce's creations were bedazzled with giant paste jewels or printed with soaring Gothic architecture or plate armour, but still looked good. Even a chain-mail coif can work for the 21st century, as a cable-knit hoodie. It slid into am-dram at times: patchwork suits looked too court jester to have life outside of a Robin Hood remake. But it had enthusiasm, and emotion, behind it. We can forgive excesses in both.

This season, the clothes at Jil Sander were designed by an in-house team – an interim measure until a replacement for the eponymous founder is named. This collection was, in effect, a stop-gap. And felt like it. Hatched with quilting and in a muted palette of purple, green and grey, the collection had unity. What it missed was anything unique.