Am I Losing It, or Is Milan Fashion Week Less Boring Than Usual? 

Milan Fashion Week is kind of the disapproving grandmother of Fashion Month, a throwback realm in an otherwise obsessively future-oriented industry in which the Italian legacy brands flounce about in a puddle of elderly egos and beautiful tailoring.

However! While Pucci and Emporio Armani were a snooze and Jeremy Scott’s Moschino felt, as my colleague Julianne put it, “like a punch in the face,” some of the big guys really brought it this season. There aren’t any mermaids or skateboards (R.I.P. London), but thus far, Milan is doing an unusually good job of holding my interest.

FENDI

As much as I truly despised the fur explosion Fendi put forth last season, I have to give it up for Karl—the hues and textures of this spring collection are kind of delicious, and Lagerfeld gave the garments a pared-back intensity fit for a wearer WWD dubbed the “au courant power woman.”

But the accessories are really the star. Accessories I would actually like to own. THESE PLATFORMS ARE THE SHIT!

GUCCI

Gucci’s new creative director, Alessandro Michele, generated a lot of excitement this week with his Spring 2016 collection. The relatively unknown designer—a real anomaly for Milan—infused his clothes with an intellectualized version of extravagant femininity, featuring adventurous color combinations and fluttery, buttery fabrics (go to 6:16 in the above video for my favorite dress).

This look is especially fantastic, given that the model has been made to resemble a very tall, thin jellyfish:

The details were great, too, from ancient superstitious emblems (snakes, evil eyes) to the very 2015 oversized glasses some of the models were sporting.

Also, the program notes are a deeply hilarious study in poor translation:

“These hints gather on the collection’s clothes to form eclectic palimpsests rich with heterogeneous references. The clothes are transformed into psycho-geographic maps capable of recording the urban unconscious: maps that embroider the world within a discourse of affectionate intimacy.”

Absolutely!

PRADA

Prada merges minimalism and maximalism with this collection in a series of strong, vaguely apocalyptic looks.

But by far, the gold lipstick was the best part:

A hearty hats off, I guess, to the fashion behemoths.

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Lede image via Getty; Fendi images via Getty; Gucci images via Associated Press and Getty; Prada images via Associated Press.