Milan: A Place for Innovations and Trendsetting Styles
By: Mari Davis
Photo below: Miuccia Prada during the 2004 CFDA Fashion Awards
Photo by Tina Paul

DALLAS, Jun 13, 2004/ FW/ --- Last Monday night, during the 2004 CFDA Fashion Awards, Miuccia Prada accepted her International Designer Award wearing a diamond and marcasite headband drew admiring looks and glances from both onlookers and attendees of the event.

By just being herself, Miuccia Prada probably started a trend with hair accessories. The quintessential Italian designer, she embodies the strength of Milan as a fashion trendsetter and innovator.

Because most Italian designers are like Miuccia Prada – style is inborn, and they just cannot help themselves but come out with beautiful fashion creations.

The Milan Womenswear show, schedule on September 25 – October 3, 2004, promises to be 9 straight days of exciting fashion. Historically holding more than 100 runway shows plus about the same number of presentations, 10 out of 12 names in the calendar are usually “must see.”

From the stellar names of Giorgio Armani, Versace, Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Byblos, there are emerging designers like Neil Barrett (who is currently dressing Brad Pitt), Antonio Marras, Dirk Bikkembergs and Lawrence Steele who are generating so much heat in the fashion world, that it is very easy to forget that they are still part of the fresh crop of designers in Milan.

Be it a established fashion house, or just starting, the designers hold the attention of the fashion press during fashion week.