More Thrills as Milan Fashion Week clocks day two.

Italy has stagnation on the mind – and not just because of the economy. The fashion industry, long dominated by the same names and brands, has been grumbling for seasons about the lack of fresh blood, talent, ideas: the stuff that gets consumers excited about discoveries and sends them into stores to buy.
After all, the youngest designers to have broken through since the start of the millennium are design duo Aquilano Rimondi, who show on Saturday, and they are in their forties.

On day two of the Milanese collections, however, fashion began to take things into its own hands.
There was Vogue’s equivalent of quantitative easing, Who’s On Next and Vogue Talents. This is a “talent show” of numerous young designers from around the world, not left to fight their way through on their own, but discovered by Italian Vogue and presented to retailers and editors alike. The Vogue-anointed designers will be forcefully injected into the fashion world by sponsors such as Value Retail (which will stock the work of 10 participants) and Yoox.com (which will stock one).
And there was Prada, where Miuccia Prada proved once again that you don’t need to be new to have new ideas.