Milan Fashion Week SS27: the tights we saw on the runway

Spring/summer is meant to be the season of bare legs, yet Milan spent it dressing them. Not everywhere, and not as a slogan: but at Jil Sander the collection's colour migrated onto the tights, in grey, lilac and sage; at Elisabetta Franchi a fabric recalling 80-denier hosiery became dresses, skirts and even gloves; and at Gucci the mini-skirt suit came back with black opaques and stilettos. Here is what we saw at Milan Fashion Week spring/summer 2027, why it matters, and how to put it to work in your wardrobe right now.

A week of skirts, sheerness and debuts

The womenswear shows ran from 22 to 28 September 2026, with 61 shows on the calendar according to FashionNetwork. The most anticipated moment was the Moschino debut of Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, the duo behind Sunnei: a show on top of a car park overlooking Milan's new Unipol Arena, with hundreds of ordinary people walking among the models. "We want fashion to be part of real life," the designers said, as reported by Milano Fashion World.

For anyone watching legs, though, the week's most telling development was the return of the skirt. Prada built an entire collection around it, in dozens of variations, and according to The Impression every one of them stopped at a modest knee length. Miuccia Prada said the house had used the skirt "as a framework for different ideas", and described it as "like a T-shirt": a basic, to be worn easily with a sweater or a shirt. When the skirt moves back to the centre of the wardrobe, so does the question of what goes underneath.

Sheerness did the rest. Grazia Italia noted liquid-looking transparent layering at Emporio Armani and veiled drapery at Ferragamo, while at Fendi Maria Grazia Chiuri started from visible lingerie, with Raffaella Carrà as her muse. The mood of the week was peekaboo, which is exactly the climate in which hosiery stops being a practical add-on and becomes a style layer.

Jil Sander: the colour goes down to the legs

The clearest statement came from Jil Sander, at Simone Bellotti's third show for the house. He was already thinking about legs at his debut a year ago: in spring/summer 2026, Harper's Bazaar described a look finished with black tights and skinny, shiny black oxfords. This time he went further, with opaque tights in 17 looks (see our look by look). "Against a palette of grey and muted neutrals," wrote 10 Magazine, "dashes of pinks, purples and yellows – coming in the form of tights, elongated pointed shoes and fold-over bags – broke up the looks."

At Jil Sander colour drops to the legs: lilac tights with black satin shorts and a gold shoe; sage-green tights with a yellow skirt and matching bag. Photo: Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana.

It is not a one-off. In its take on the collection, Coveteur called "the weird-toned tights that add an extra layer to the styling" a recurring callout, and noted that "Bellotti always does a weird little pump", this season with a sweetheart-shaped upper. Grazia Italia was even more direct: the coloured tights, it said, were the stars of the runway, in original shades paired in equally unexpected ways.

The logic becomes clear when you consider the house's legacy. Jil Sander stands for rigour, clean lines and colour used sparingly. Bellotti leaves the severity of the clothes intact and moves the surprise to the place nobody is looking. The tights don't echo the dress; they contradict it. It is minimalism that allows for imperfection, which is, as 10 Magazine put it, less about abandoning the brand's precision than finding new ways to express it.

Lilac tights under the grey suit; pearl-grey tights with the pink mohair mini dress and camel coat. Photo: Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana.

Elisabetta Franchi: when the tights become the dress

At the other end of the spectrum, Elisabetta Franchi didn't style tights so much as transform them. The collection's manifesto, reported MF Fashion, was a special fabric "that recalls 80-denier tights", turned into dresses, skirts, tops and gloves. Il Fatto Quotidiano read it as an inversion of the usual codes of sensuality: hosiery, normally the hidden last layer, becomes the main garment.

At Elisabetta Franchi the tights become the outfit: jaguar print head to toe with a thong sandal; ruched black dressing the legs like a second skin, with long gloves. Photo: Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana.

The palette, according to Wondernet, ran from camel, tobacco and black to nude and pink mixed with Red Velvet. In WWD's review, a shrunken jaguar print appeared across tights, blazers and elbow-length gloves, while Grazia Italia called the tights the absolute protagonist, with a second-skin effect.

The designer summed up the principle in a line that doubles as a user manual. "Transparency is a diabolical weapon," she told MF Fashion, adding that she always advises clients not to overdo it, "to leave room for the imagination rather than reveal everything". An 80-denier weight is not full sheerness, after all: it is a dense veil that covers and suggests at the same time.

Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Diesel: the other clues

The third signal came from Gucci, where Demna presented his first fully formed vision for the house inside a convention centre turned into a giant shop. Among the looks, The Zoe Report singled out "thigh-grazing mini skirt suits paired with opaque black tights and pointed stiletto pumps", a take on the 1980s power suit. They are the most classic tights there are, and that is precisely why they work: when a skirt gets that short, black opaques turn a potentially provocative look into a uniform.

At Dolce & Gabbana, in the "Stravaganza Siciliana" collection built around a granddaughter raiding her grandmother's wardrobe, the description published by Runway Magazine mentions a Chantilly and macramé evening piece paired with patterned knee-high lace hosiery. And at Diesel, Glenn Martens' final collection for the label, denim ran past the ankle into what New York Style Guide called "pantasocks": half jeans, half sock, more provocation than proposal.

At Dolce&Gabbana the worked knee socks: crochet with the cream skirt, diamond-knit over the knee with the short black dress. Photo: Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana.

At Diesel the “pantasocks”: a blue denim-effect leg ending inside a court shoe under the split grey skirt, and under the blue pleated skirt with the yellow bag. Photo: Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana.

How to wear Milan this autumn

None of these ideas needs to wait for spring. If anything, they work better now, in winter weights. A useful compass comes from Fogal: denier is the weight in grams of 9,000 metres of yarn. From 15 to 20 denier you are in sheer territory; 30 to 40 gives semi-opaque, soft coverage with visible colour; 50 to 80 is opaque, smoother and warmer.

• Colour, the Jil Sander way. Pick a semi-opaque or opaque pair (40 to 60 denier) in a dusty or deliberately "wrong" shade: lilac under grey, sage under ivory. Keep everything else neutral, and let the shoe pick up the colour of the legs if you want.
• Second skin, the Franchi way. A nude or camel mid-weight pair under a close-fitting dress in the same tone creates continuity between fabric and skin. If you love animal print, keep it small and dense, and repeat it in one other element, however minimal.
• Opaque, the Gucci way. With a short tailored skirt, go for solid black from 60 denier upwards and a pointed court shoe. It is the easiest formula, and the most grown-up.
• Lace, the Dolce & Gabbana way. A patterned knee-high under a midi skirt, with loafers or Mary Janes. It works when the lace is the only decoration below the waist.

What Milan leaves us with

Tights were not the dominant theme of the week, and it is only fair to say so. But the runways pointed in three clear directions: colour as counterpoint, hosiery as skin and as fabric, opaques as uniform. Three ways of saying the same thing: after seasons of bare legs under long hemlines, the return of the knee-length and shorter skirt puts the leg back at the centre of the silhouette. And wherever a leg is on show, there is a choice to be made. Paris, which opens today, will tell us whether it makes the same one.

The photos

The runway photos in this article come from the official galleries of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (Jil Sander, Elisabetta Franchi, Dolce&Gabbana and Diesel, Spring/Summer 2027); the Gucci photo is an official Getty Images embed. Links to the full galleries are at the bottom of the page.

Photos: Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, official galleries of the Spring/Summer 2027 shows.