At the start of Milan Fashion Week, Gucci unveiled a lookbook instead of a traditional runway show. Photographed by Catherine Opie, it featured 37 distinct characters dressed in looks inspired by the Gucci archive. Among La Famiglia, as the group was called, was “Milanesa,” who wore a knee-length fur coat with a gold chain belt and carried a crocodile-print bag, and “Sciura” (pronounced shoo-rah), which is local dialect for a Milanese woman now generally considered to have bold and bourgeois taste.
Archetypes of Milanese women have inspired countless runway collections and imitators, and they have been used to market fashion brands in the past. But who are they, really? Do “Sciura” still exist? What does it mean to dress like a “Milanesa” today?
“In the 1980s, you used to be able to recognize a Milanese woman for her uniform,” said Carla Sozzani, the founder of the Milanese concept store 10 Corso Como. The look was “classic,” perhaps including a camel-colored cashmere coat, a twin set and pearls.
When J.J. Martin, the founder of the La Double J label, moved to Milan from New York 24 years ago, the uniform for women consisted of, she said, “a really crisp, men’s button-down shirt tucked into a Prada full skirt, incredible sunglasses that were handmade, a beautiful handbag from Valextra, or something like that — no logo — with kitten heels.”
“On a bicycle. No helmet.”
Most can agree on the various sartorial elements of the “Milanesa” starter pack, but there is nuance to their style philosophy. “Milanese style is about refinement without effort, knowing what not to wear as much as what to wear,” said the gallerist Nina Yashar, whose family moved to Milan from Iran in 1963. “It’s rooted in quality, discretion and also personal narrative, and it’s definitely not shouted.”
Sciure (plural), however, are a specific subset of the Milanese women, who may be more advanced in age and perhaps more snobbish about style. They wear white pants in the winter, fur from September through May, and “pearls and polished pumps to the grocery store, probably with a driver waiting outside,” Ms. Yashar said. Their hair is “impeccably coifed,” she added, and they maybe have an equally well-groomed bassotto, or dachshund, by their side.
“It’s a very small city,” Ms. Sozzani said. “People care about what other people think.”
An entire Instagram account, @sciuragram, which has more than 400,000 followers, is dedicated to sharing photos of so-called sciure in the wild. For better or worse, it was a go-to reference during last year’s “mob wife aesthetic” craze. The irony being that a “real” sciura would never engage with a social media-born trend.
“For me, sciura is an attitude,” said Alessia Algani, the founder of Shop the Story, a vintage store in Milan that sources pieces from stylish Milanese women with plenty of Prada, Romeo Gigli and Alberta Ferretti in their closets. “It’s buying things for yourself and not being overwhelmed by them. Your clothes don’t wear you.”
As a vintage buyer, Ms. Algani sees firsthand how well Milanese women, including sciure, take care of their clothes and accessories. “They treasure their cobbler, seamstress, laundry, etc.,” she said.
Jenny Walton, an American artist and influencer who relocated to Milan in 2021, finds this approach to dressing inspirational. “I think in general, people are looking for something more long-lasting, especially in the face of all of these quick trends that people feel they need to grab onto and buy in one click,” she said. “The sciura is the antithesis of that because she’s built up her perfectly curated wardrobe over an entire lifetime. And you cannot fool her. You cannot tell her to wear lime green because she won’t.”
While the term “sciura” is a compliment or a term of endearment for some, others may find it diminutive and passé. Nicoletta Santoro, a fashion stylist and creative director who was born and raised in Milan, where she currently resides, considers the term indicative of narrow-mindedness, of being stuck in one’s ways. By comparison, “la signora Milanese” is “elevating, because she is culturally open.”
Ms. Santoro’s grandmother, Costanza Dell’Orto Zineroni Casati, showed her what it meant to dress like a real signora Milanese. “She cared about sobriety, elegance and refinement,” she said. “She was very much into perfection in tailoring, quality fabrics and muted colors. And she was a client of Biki.”
Ms. Santoro credits Elvira Leonardi Bouyeure, known professionally and socially as Biki (or “Bicchi”), with dictating Milanese style for women in and around the 1950s. Best known for dressing Maria Callas and other performers at La Scala, she had a storefront on Via Monte Napoleone and was often photographed wearing pearls or a silk scarf with earrings and a headpiece.
But it was Miuccia Prada who “stretched” the Biki look, Ms. Santoro said. “Miuccia is a Milanese who has been able to open up and embrace the Milanese look, including all the different psychological experiences that women are challenged with,” she said. “There is always something slightly disturbing in her collections.”
Pia Zanardi is a young designer based in Milan who is working to expand the boundaries of what Milanese style means with her label, Yali. “I believe in the codes of Italian tailoring, but I always want to push it a little more with something a bit messy,” she said. “I think there needs to be a twist. If not, it becomes something we already know.”
Ms. Zanardi wore a natural pearl necklace with a loosefitting bright pink sweater, jeans and athletic sneakers to walk around Milan. “Look, sometimes I wake up, and I feel like a sciura, sometimes I want to be a video gamer,” she said with a shrug. The modern “Milanesa” contains multitudes. And, like Pia, who was born in Parma, she may not even be from Milan.
With Giorgio Armani gone and a historical number of shake-ups this season at some of Italy’s most established houses, including Gucci, Jil Sander, Bottega Veneta and Versace, Milan style is in flux, allowing for longstanding archetypes to be reimagined with fresh eyes.
“Milan style has absolutely evolved,” said Michelle Ngonmo, the founder of the Afro Fashion Association, who has lived in Milan for more than a decade. “Of course, it is still anchored in tradition, but it is more open now to an international or multicultural vision, and you can feel that in the collection of Demna.”
When Ms. Ngonmo first saw the La Famiglia lookbook, her reaction was a “mixture of excitement and respect,” she said. She found it “bold and theatrical” but also “deeply rooted in Gucci heritage, which is also rooted in Milan and Italian heritage.”
“It is a statement,” she concluded. “Milan style cannot be static.”
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