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By Kharla | Fashion Director, IRREVERENT Magazine
MILAN — The thing about Milan in May is that the light does something to your cheekbones. Mine specifically. I noticed it the moment I stepped off the train at Centrale, rosé already open in my tote bag because I am a professional and professionals hydrate, and also because the TSA in Italy has given up, and a man — older, silver-haired, probably a count — actually stopped mid-stride to stare. This happens to me. It has always happened to me. It happened when I was modeling here in the late nineties (or possibly early oughts, the years blur the way only the truly glamorous years do), and it is happening now, at 29, which is either proof that Italian men have taste or proof that the light at Centrale is legally classified as a cosmetic procedure.
I was in Milan for Blazy's Resort show, and now for a small house show showcasing upcoming independent men's fashion, Spring/Summer 27. It was held on May 15 at a venue I will describe as “industrial chic meets abandoned Parmesan warehouse” because that is exactly what it was — there was still cheese. Independent men's house show? I know. But I was already here.
The press invite had been — let's say, loosely worded. But I have been walking past velvet ropes since before some of these designers were born, and the young man at the door with the clipboard was no match for my energy, my coat (vintage Balenciaga, or something very like it), or my conviction. I told him I was Kharla. He asked which publication. I said all of them, which is essentially true, and also technically a threat, and swept inside.
The show itself was genuinely interesting, if you appreciate the kind of menswear that says “I read theory but I also bench press.” There were oversized linen suiting pieces — a gorgeous pale sage set that I am almost certain was Bottega — actually, the program said it was a designer named Luca Di Toma, which I don’t recognize, but I do think he's that lovely boy who used to assist at Gucci and had the absolutely magnificent forearms. I am not above admitting when a man's arms have altered my perception of his entire career trajectory. The knitwear was exceptional. Someone was clearly referencing Margiela's early deconstructionism, though I overheard another journalist calling it “Post-Prada minimalism,” which is incorrect, and I told her so, at length, in Italian, badly, which is how I made my first enemy of the evening.
My second enemy was the photographer.
He was young, aggressively tattooed, holding a lens the size of a small child, which I assume he carries in lieu of a personality, and he was crouched — crouched, like an animal, or like a man who has never once paid for his own drinks — directly in my sightline to capture what I can only assume was a “street style moment” involving a woman in head-to-toe beige. I asked him, politely, to move. He said — and I am quoting verbatim — “I was here first.” I looked at him for a long moment. He had not been here first. I had been here first. I had been here first in 1997.
I want to be very clear: no one has been anywhere before me. Not in Milan. Not in fashion. I explained this. He said something about his Instagram following. I said something about my fifteen years on the Milan circuit that I will not repeat in a family-adjacent publication, but suffice it to say it involved a cardinal, a Vespa, and a level of scandal that required three separate publicists. He moved. The woman in beige looked rattled. I got my sightline back and finished my prosecco with the dignity of someone who has been doing this since before Instagram was a concept.
The show ended on a note that was genuinely moving — a closing look in raw white linen that floated down the runway like a man who has recently cried in a convertible and feels better for it, which is the most specific emotional state menswear has ever attempted to sell me. I understand this now. Milan does something to men. It opens them up. I have seen it firsthand, and not just from the runway.
Marco, for instance.
I met Marco — or re-met him, depending on how you count our first meeting, which he denies happened but cannot disprove — at a negroni bar in Brera approximately forty minutes after the show. He was sitting alone, which he does because he is brooding and also because his ex-wife has taken most of his friends in whatever it is Italians do instead of divorce proceedings. He is tall. He wears his sweaters the way men in sweaters should: with regret, and also with the quiet knowledge that they looked better on his father. We have a history that is not entirely his fault, though the part that is his fault is genuinely breathtaking in its audacity.
He said I looked exactly the same as when he’d last seen me.
I said I know.
We did not speak for another twenty minutes, but it was a companionable silence, the kind that only exists between two people who have both done terrible things in Tuscany, the kind you can only have with someone who has seen you at 29 across multiple years and understood that some ages are simply permanent, like Rome, or damage.
After Marco went wherever Marco goes (he mentioned a “thing,” he always has a “thing,” and the thing is never a therapist), I found the vintage market. It was tucked behind a side street near the canal, populated by dealers who know what they have and tourists who don’t. I found a leather jacket — perfect weight, perfect patina, buttery in a way that only genuine Italian craftsmanship or extremely committed synthetic aging achieves, or possibly actual butter, I did not lick it but I considered it. The inside label had been removed, which the dealer said was “common with older pieces.”
It is vintage Prada. I am certain of this. The cut speaks to a very specific mid-nineties Prada sensibility that Miuccia herself has described in interviews — which I have read, extensively, because I am thorough. That someone has mentioned the jacket appears to be a standard-issue Zara silhouette is frankly offensive and also, if true, the single greatest financial mistake of my life, and also not something I have verified and therefore cannot confirm. The label was removed. That is all I will say. The label was removed, and now it is mine, and it is Prada, and I wore it back to my hotel with a final prosecco from a corner café and the particular confidence of a woman who has spent the day exactly as a Fashion Director should: in motion, in control, impeccably sourced, and possibly wearing Zara, but we do not speak of this.
Milan, Spring/Summer 27: the men are soft, the suiting is sage, and the photographers should learn their place.
I'll be back in June for Fashion Week Global's independent Spring/Summer 2027. Marco knows. Marco denies knowing, but Marco knows. But next I'm in Toronto.
Kisses, -K
Kharla is the Fashion Director of IRREVERENT Magazine. She has survived Milan Fashion Week in every decade of her life, including the ones she refuses to acknowledge, and maintains that she is twenty‑nine. IRREVERENT cannot verify Marco’s version of events, the photographer’s whereabouts, or whether the jacket is Prada, Zara, or a moral failing.
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The Bottega Bag That Knew Too Much
By Kharla (with a KH, ladies) | Fashion Director, IRREVERENT Magazine
⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5
Four out of five. The missing star is Tomás's fault.
Matthieu Blazy sent his Resort 2026 collection down the runway in Milan with the quiet confidence of a man who has never once Googled himself and is therefore at peace. The silhouettes were restrained — purposefully, artfully restrained, the way a person is restrained who knows exactly how much money they are about to charge you. Fluid trousers in oatmeal and burnt sienna. Knit dresses that appeared simple until you got close enough to see that each one contained approximately three years of someone's life. The new neutrals this season are doing something I can only describe as emotionally grey, which is to say they are the color of an airport lounge in a country where you don't speak the language and you've just checked your last Diptyque candle as baggage and it almost certainly did not survive.
The leather goods — always the point, let's not pretend otherwise — arrived in the now-legendary intrecciato weave: the overlapping strips of buttery calfskin that have made Bottega Veneta simultaneously the most restrained and the most devastating brand in the Western world. The Resort 2026 Andiamo in *cotto*, a deep terracotta that is basically the color of Tuscany if Tuscany went to therapy, is a masterwork of proportion. Structured at the spine, forgiving at the body. A bag that holds its shape under pressure.
I know something about this. Specifically, I know something about this because I was in Cap Ferrat in March with a man named Tomás, who was an art dealer in the way that certain men are art dealers, which is to say he had expensive taste, excellent cheekbones, and a flexible relationship with provenance. He had a house on a cliff. He had two boats, one of which he claimed was "for the crew," and I have been around enough boats to know that this particular crew consisted entirely of bottles of Whispering Angel and a bluetooth speaker. We spent four days there. I wore linen. I looked extraordinary. On the third evening I knocked an entire glass of rosé directly into my Bottega Andiamo — the 2024, bordeaux colorway — and I watched the wine simply disappear into the weave, leaving no trace, like a secret kept beautifully.
I thought: this bag is better at handling things than I am.
The Tomás situation resolved itself the way these things do, which is to say it didn't, and some weeks later I found myself at a dinner in Paris seated next to the Belgian — I won't name her, she knows who she is, she's been banned from two Chanel ateliers for what I can only describe as "creative differences with factual reality" — who had heard something, or claimed she had, and spent forty-five minutes asking about "that art person in the south of France" while systematically dismantling a soufflé. I was wearing borrowed Saint Laurent. There is a small cigarette burn on the left cuff now that was either the Belgian's doing or mine; I refuse to determine which.
The Saint Laurent has not been returned. This is its own situation.
But back to the bag, because here is where the actual fashion criticism lives, crouching like a nervous intern between the personal disclosures: the hardware this season deserves a specific mention. Blazy has reduced it nearly to nothing — the clasp is a small, almost tactile knob in oxidized silver, the kind of detail you only notice when someone is looking closely. It is the opposite of logomania. It says: I know what I have. I don't need to tell you. In an era when half the runway looks like a sponsored post and the other half looks like a sponsored post trying to look like it isn't a sponsored post, this restraint reads as a genuine act of courage. The Resort 2026 collection is not trying to go viral. It is trying to go to dinner, drink your wine, outlast your marriages, and still look incredible on the shelf in forty years. Fashion criticism begins and ends there. The Belgian would disagree. The Belgian once called a Proenza Schouler bag "accessible," and I have not spoken to her directly since.
I wore a different Bottega — the Intrecciato Cassette, slate, 2025 — to the only good dinner I had in Paris that month, which was also the night I realized I was never going to hear from Tomás about the painting we'd discussed, the small slash-canvas he'd said was practically mine, which was apparently his way of saying it was practically anyone's who asked first. I set the bag on the table the way you set something down when you need to look at an object and feel certain. It is structured but forgiving. It holds its shape. It has never once looked at me the way Tomás looked at the painting.
The Resort 2026 collection is a war crime of wanting things you cannot afford and a genius act of making you feel briefly that you can. I mean this as a compliment. Four stars out of five. The missing star is Tomás's fault.
Buy the bag. Don't buy the man.
Kisses, K.
Kharla is the Fashion Director of IRREVERENT Magazine. She has attended fashion weeks on five continents, been asked to leave runway shows on three of them, and maintains that she is twenty-nine. IRREVERENT Magazine neither confirms nor denies the existence of Tomás, the Belgian, or the painting.