Milan Fashion Week fall/winter 2019: Fendi, Prada and Moschino deliver mixed feelings on the runway

TWO MOST SURPRISING MOMENTS
1. Karl Lagerfeld passed on two days prior to the Fendi show, the last one he designed with Silvia Venturini Fendi. The mood at Fendi was understandably somber; model Gigi Hadid teared as she walked the runway at Via Solari. The clothes however, were as joyful as ever, symbolic of Karl's never-look-back joie de vivre.
2. When Jeremy Scott puts a curtain over his show set, you know the man has something crazy up his sleeves. Living up to expectations as the people's designer, he presented a replica of The Price Is Right set, runway models as game show models wearing clothes printed in — what else? — fake money. Talk about giving consumers what they want.

FOUR TRENDIEST ACCESSORIES
1. Transformation finds Fendi's fall/winter 2019 Baguette bag, by way of an embossed pillow patent; vegetal leather, topstitched; and a utility harness with multiple straps. Subscribe. 
2. Dresses with pockets may still be novelty to some brands (we'll never get it) but for Prada, it's been-there-done-to-death. Pockets on army boots is what's next. Lip balms, pain killers and credit cards welcome.
3. At first glance, to have Prada's Wednesday Addams don a wreath of flowers evokes innocence. Only when you consider that garland of daisy would have to be dead to be around her neck, then the theme (we're calling it 'fairy tales gone awry') is back on track again.
4. How we know Moschino's Jeremy Scott understands us: he models a bag after a slot machine. After all, every time a party girl opens her purse, isn't she gambling with luck? Doesn't she feel like she's pulling on the lever of uncertainty? Whether it's a fat note or a tuna sandwich she'll fish out, all bets are off.

SEVEN FAVOURITE LOOKS
1. Fendi's fall/winter 2019 collection featured latticework on the plenty, none prettier than the intricacy that is look #23, piped in satin and threading above a Karl-esque white shirt complete with a statement collar. 
2. Squint your eyes to spot Karl Lagerfeld's 'Karligraphy' FF monogram designed in 1981 peppered across the collection. Nothing is spared, from the cabochon buttons to the intarsia fur, and the nude turtleneck bodysuit Gigi Hadid wore in the final look #42, as a base for the diaphanous silk canary winner.
3. What is real? What is a figment of our imagination? Mrs Prada prompts us to ask ourselves at the fall/winter 2019 show, where she unified happy and tragic fairy tales; it has to be the first time Snow White and Frankenstein imagery (and music) come together for a coalition. She implores us to question in similar tangent, her clothes. Look #8's trompe l'oeil — of simultaneously blooming and wilting flowers — is one such instance. 
4. At Tom Ford's most recent collection, a backlash against traditional translations of 'sexy'. At Prada, a celebration of a woman's sensuality. Look #19 (and look #17, the more up-and-up of the two) attempts to lift boobs back into fashion's pedestal. A success story is due.
5. Narrowing down to our favourite few looks at Prada proves harder a task than we imagined this season. Triumphs aplenty — the divine cinched coat at the beginning, the graphic screw-speared roses, the shoulder-trapping sashes left us hungry for more. In the end, it was the lace capes that were talk of the town, with more conversations sure to follow.
6. The heavily-embellished drag dresses are cute in theory, though lacklustre in execution — pun intended. And we're disappointed, because if there's a place for a crystal-encrusted tracksuit bearing commercial soap bottle/tooth paste illustration, it would be at Moschino. Look #22, an exercise in restraint by Scott's standards, is most sartorial of the lot.
7. For look #48, Moschino puts the old school Troll Doll front and centre, cocooned by a robe depicting The Price Is Right icons such as 'Big Bucks!', 'Sports Car', and '1,000 one spin'. The joke is worth a lot more. So good.