Fashion in Milan

The Italian city of Milan is recognised internationally as one of the world's most important fashion capitals, along with Paris, New York and London.

Milan has established some history within the fields of clothing and luxury, textiles and design in general. Throughout the late 19th century, Milan, as the capital of Lombardy, was a major production centre, benefitting from its status as one of the country's salient economic and industrial city. Milanese fashion, despite taking inspiration from the leading Parisian couture of the time, developed its own approach, which was by nature devoted to sobriety, simplicity and the quality of the fabric. Throughout the 19th and 20th century, the city expanded its role as a fashion centre, with a number of rising designers contributing to Milan's image as Italy's fashion capital, stemming from Italy's ruins "that English gentlemen flok to admire ("Gran Tour of Italy", french for big trip)" and to enjoy its opera.^[2]

Milan emerged in the 1960s and 1980s as one of the world's pre-eminent trendsetters by the lots of migrants from southern Italian regions for jobs, maintaining this stint well into the 1990s and 2000s and culminating with its entrenchment as one of the "big four" global fashion capitals. As of today, Milan is especially renowned for its role within the prêt-à-porter category of fashion.

In 2009, the city was declared as the "fashion capital of the world" by the Global Language Monitor that tracks how many times a city is posted in social media using "fashion capital," even surpassing its relative cities.^[3] The next year, Milan dropped out of the top four falling to sixth place,^[4] yet in 2011 it returned to fourth place.^[5] 2012 saw the city suffer its lowest ranking to date, as it slipped to eighth place.