By Gabriela Afanador
Wednesday 13, May 2026
Photo: firstVIEW
Marco De Vincenzo’s final collection for Etro arrived on the Milan Fashion Week runway on February 25th carrying the weight of a closing statement, though it wore that weight lightly and with considerable grace. The collection, titled Loop Forward, was presented against a scenography designed by Italian artistic collective Numero Cromatico, whose installation of seven walk-through tactile portals projected shifting chromatic fields that functioned as physical thresholds between the two identities the collection was built to reconcile: formal discipline and bohemian opulence, structure and surrender, the archive and the present. A live performance by Sardinian singer-songwriter BLUEM, whose music blends ancient oral traditions and Neapolitan melody with contemporary electronic production, provided a soundscape that gave the proceedings a mythic quality entirely appropriate for a house navigating a significant moment in its own history. De Vincenzo was appointed as Etro’s first non-family creative director in 2022 following L Catterton’s majority acquisition of the brand, and his departure, announced in March 2026, followed the complete exit of the founding Etro family and the arrival of a new ownership group led by Faruk Bülbül as Chairman. Loop Forward is therefore both a creative summation and a baseline, a document of what the house became under De Vincenzo’s hand and a foundation for whoever takes it forward next.
The Architecture of the Collection
De Vincenzo described his approach to this collection as less bold than usual, a phrase that in the context of a house built on paisley maximalism and chromatic abundance reads as a deliberate act of restraint rather than a retreat. The opening looks anchored the collection in the masculine textile heritage that Etro’s founding actually came from, the house beginning as a fabric supplier trading in traditional Scottish wools and heritage textiles before it became the color-saturated bohemian empire it is today. Double-breasted officer coats in dense khaki and navy wool with domed brass buttons, military-precise in their construction and deliberately heavy in their presence, established a formal disciplinary register that the remainder of the collection spent its time both honoring and dismantling. As the presentation progressed through Numero Cromatico’s luminous portals, the silhouettes released their rigidity, wool giving way to printed chiffon and fluid silk, structured shoulders dissolving into draped asymmetric hems, and the Etro woman who had walked in wearing a coat that could command a room walked out trailing sequins and feathers and the particular freedom of fabric that moves faster than the body inside it.
The central styling device of the collection, and the element that gave it much of its visual personality, was the leather-and-lace corset worn not as a foundational garment but as an accessory layered over everything from graphic tops to printed maxi skirts. Styled by Julia Sarr-Jamois, who also introduced what the collection called useless belts, purely decorative leather and suede pieces worn loosely over corsets or low on the hip for visual disruption rather than functional purpose, the corset transformed throughout the show depending on what it was placed against. In one of the collection’s most arresting looks, a lace-trimmed bralette sat above a structured brown leather corset with lace-up detailing, the whole upper body framed against a floor-length maxi skirt in deep forest green printed with rich medallion and heraldic crest motifs in crimson and gold that read like something excavated from a medieval tapestry. The proportions were deliberately unconventional, the corset cinching a waist above a skirt of such visual density and historical weight that the overall effect was less fashion editorial and more like a figure from a Flemish painting who had decided to go somewhere interesting. A brown suede tassel bag completed the look with the kind of unhurried ease that only appears when every other decision has already been made correctly.
Fabric, Print, and the Evening Pieces
A second corset look demonstrated how the same architectural device could produce an entirely different result depending on the fabric and print choices surrounding it. A black lace cap-sleeve top, its neckline carrying a printed jeweled collar motif that functioned as trompe-l’oeil jewelry directly on the fabric, was anchored at the waist by a black lace-up corset belt with brass hardware, and beneath it a floor-length skirt in a sweeping teal and black paisley print moved with the fluid, almost aquatic quality that only a very lightweight silk or chiffon base can produce. The teal against black gave the look a cooler and more nocturnal register than the forest green of the preceding corset combination, and a substantial gold necklace worn at the throat bridged the jewelry print on the top with the metallic thread running through the skirt’s paisley in a way that felt carefully resolved rather than coincidental. These two looks together made the clearest argument for what De Vincenzo was doing with the corset throughout the collection, using it not to impose a silhouette but to create a structural anchor around which wildly different print and fabric energies could organize themselves without losing coherence.
Photo: firstVIEW
The textile palette of Loop Forward is one of the most materially varied De Vincenzo assembled during his tenure, and the contrast between its heaviest and lightest elements is where the collection’s character lives most vividly. Shaggy fur coats in deep camel and blonde tones appeared as voluminous statement outerwear layered over multicolored striped garments whose vertical lines were visible at the coat’s edges, the combination of the fur’s primordial tactile abundance and the striped fabric’s precision creating a dialogue between the wild and the tailored that ran through the entire collection. A small tan leather clutch with embossed Etro brass hardware, glimpsed in a detail shot against the fur’s extraordinary texture, demonstrated that the accessories were conceived with the same material intelligence as the clothing, the warm cognac leather and the gold medallion hardware reading as natural extensions of the collection’s color world rather than additions to it.
The evening pieces resolved the collection’s central tension most completely and most spectacularly. A short, deeply plunging sequined piece in black and gold, its surface covered in sweeping baroque and paisley motifs rendered entirely in light-catching paillettes, was finished at the hem and cuffs with an abundant fringe of golden amber ostrich feathers that moved with every step in a way that transformed the garment from something you wore into something that performed alongside you. The silhouette was relaxed and almost caftan-like in its width across the shoulders, which made the drama of the sequins and feathers feel decadent rather than costume-like, as if the opulence were a natural quality of the fabric rather than something applied to it. Paired with blue strappy heeled sandals whose ankle hardware added a sharp architectural note against the feather’s softness, the look was one of those rare runway moments where every element is doing exactly what it should and nothing is fighting anything else for attention.
Photo: firstVIEW
The beauty direction, with hair by Cyndia Harvey and makeup by Lauren Parsons, reinforced the collection’s lived-in intelligence: damp hair worn naturally on the top half as if air-drying mid-afternoon, some models in sharp spiky crops with piece-y flicked bangs, minimal makeup anchored by a soft wash of taupe-brown eyeshadow and unadorned lips that kept the focus entirely on the clothes. It was the right call, because these clothes ask only one thing of the person wearing them, which is to be present enough to let them do what they were made to do.