Milan designers are breathing fresh air into Milan Fashion Week, quite literally.
Many fashion houses are showing their collections outdoors this season, or at least throwing open the windows on their grand palazzi venues, betting on Mother Nature with open-air shows. The late summer-early fall weather has cooperated fully.
Here are some highlights from Milan as previews for next spring and summer's womenswear collections mark their fifth and penultimate day on Sunday:
SHADES OF MELANIA AT DOLCE&GABBANA
There was something for everyone on Dolce&Gabbana's "Queen of Hearts" runway - even an elaborate, colorful applique jacket reminiscent of the $51,000 number that Melania Trump famously wore to a summit in Sicily.
Could the message be that there is a queen - or first lady - in everyone?
While Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana maintained their pact to supply the world with sexy dresses for day and evening, they also gave the collection some decidedly off-beat touches.
The Melania floral jacket, for example, was worn over a vegetable print dress that is unlikely to attract the First Lady's eye for clean lines.
DOLCE&GABBANA GO OFFBEAT
Dolce&Gabbana's Queen of Hearts was a central theme for the season, appearing in its most elaborate version in heavily bejeweled dresses or as brightly sequined tops and leggings.
But prints featuring vegetables, Sicilian deserts or animals of the savannah certainly competed for billing - paired with funky eyewear featuring fringe or tiny jeweled hands or ornamental earrings shaped like eggplants or holiday decorations.
In a more unusual turn for the designers, a wrap dress with an abstract print was paired with yellow tights with oversized blue polka dots - a more eccentric, or perhaps just more youthful, combo than usual Dolce&Gabbana look. It suggests the designers are taking some cues from the Millennials who have packed their front rows in recent season.
A raffia weave top in primary colors definitely fits the duo's Sicily vibe, but a rainbow weave corset over a matching diaphanous evening gown had Harlequin feel that veered toward costume.
MARNI TREASURE HUNT
Marni is undergoing a color and floral revival in Francesco Risso's second womenswear collection at the 23-year-old fashion house.
Risso said the collection represents a treasure hunt of objects collected by a scavenger, who then adopts and incorporates them into her life. There's a vein of nostalgia that runs through the collection, in both the prints and the slightly retro silhouette made contemporary by its proportions.
So in Risso's fashion treasure hunt, a 1950s-style print bathing suit in sturdy yesteryear cotton becomes a top, worn with a seafoam green floral skirt. The hemlines are left unfinished and the proportions slightly oversized.
The florals aren't mere prints but attic-trove brocades that offered texture or dainty, orderly granny flower prints. Other pieces are bejeweled, as if for some off-beat royal court.
The silhouette had a strong daywear vibe and primarily consisted of dresses and skirts, with some boxy boyish pants and bowling shirt combs.
The brand's trademark furs included one inspired by Cruella Deville.
The Marni woman "has this sort of '20s languor, that is sculptural at the same time," Risso said backstage.