In the past year, many major fashion houses have ushered in new creative directors with exciting results: Recent recruits like Michael Rider (now at the helm of Celine) and Meryll Rogge (who stepped into Marni’s top role last summer) have both started their respective tenures with a bang. Meanwhile, tried-and-true leaders like Acne co-founder Jonny Johansson — the brand’s creative director since 1996 — are finding their own ways to build fresh buzz several decades in. As always, great clothing is the right place to start. Yet to really craft a memorable catwalk, designers also need to set a scene. Maybe someone can cut a great coat — but can they tell a compelling story? 

Increasingly, fashion brands are enlisting collaborators from the design world, like Formafantasma and Bureau Betak, to envision singular spaces that support new ways of experiencing a collection. Of course, a runway set is a delicate balancing act — create something too distracting, and an audience will lose focus on the garments in front of them. With that in mind, perhaps it’s best to explore opportunities to complement the many magnificent outfits on view by engaging our other senses — amplifying the always-crucial runway soundtrack with custom speakers, for instance, or leading models through tactile frames that reward hands-on engagement after a show. Maybe it’s even fine to introduce paintings that offer attendees somewhere else to look entirely — so long as those surrounding artworks still reflect back the ideas behind a collection.

As we gear up for another edition of Milan Design Week — which last year staged numerous theatrical productions of its own — three recent Fall/Winter 2026 runway sets offer exciting ideas about how to present and do justice to creative work. Rather than just serving as an empty spectacle, each backdrop enriched our understanding of the clothing it accompanied.

Here are the stylish runways that helped hone our senses during Milan and Paris Fashion Week:

SIGHT

Marni (by Formafantasma)

While the clothing modelled in a ready-to-wear show is, ostensibly, meant to be worn, there can be an underlying tension when garments skew too avant-garde to be relevant in everyday life. This was not the case with Belgian designer Meryll Rogge’s debut collection for Marni, which focused on grounding the brand with practical yet nevertheless eclectic ensembles. (In that same spirit, guests received invitations to the show on a post-it note.) One look paired a partially sheer floral skirt with a striped green shirt accented by a chunky statement necklace made with hand-painted metal leaves — edgy, but nothing someone couldn’t wear to an office.

In turn, Rogge collaborated with Formafantasma to transform Marni’s Milan headquarters into a wood-panelled room that had the feeling of a dignified 1970s law office. Surrounding the space were a series of mirrored panels hand-painted with “fragments drawn from quotidian life,” like a cigarette lighter, a toothbrush, or a set of keys — reminders that the clothes being shown were meant for real life, in all its frenzied and over-documented glory. As Formafantasma explained in their description of the project, the reflective surfaces were a way to capture “contemporary experience, where lived moments and their representations continuously merge.” In other words, these are clothes you can wear to work — and model on Instagram.

SOUND

Celine (by Matéo Garcia Audio)

Forget, for a second, how Celine creative director Michael Rider’s latest clothing looked. (Although, for the record, it was astoundingly chic, with playful styling that reflected his past role at Polo Ralph Lauren but also spot-on silhouettes, which drew from his experience working at Celine under Phoebe Philo from 2008 to 2017.) Instead, what was especially impressive about the collection was how several of the garments sounded. A chainmail dress clad in hundreds of metallic alphabet charms produced a gentle rustle, while a disco ball-like dress clad in metallic panels moved with an elegant “swish-swish”. (You can hear some of these effects here.)

But that wasn’t the show’s only sonic feat. First, there was the soundtrack — a mix of Prince’s piano-heavy “17 Days” and tracks by The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. Second, there was the audio equipment itself — monolithic wooden loudspeakers designed by Matéo Garcia Audio. Part sculptor, part sound engineer, Garcia fabricates high-fidelity audio that is custom-tuned to its setting. In this case, the setup turned up the volume on a show that was already operating with plenty of rhythm and soul.

TOUCH

Acne (by Bureau Betak)

To mark Acne’s 30th anniversary, the brand’s co-founder and longtime creative director Jonny Johansson delivered a time-traveling womenswear collection that combined different chapters and moments from the brand’s history and beyond — reflecting the way that “past eras resurface in new ways,” according to his show notes. Among the retro styles revisited were a “1996 cut” of jean, pleated skirts, and traditional patterns like a Prince of Wales check, which was reimagined at a supersized scale.

Building off that premise, “memory as architecture” served as the genesis for Bureau Betak’s inventive runway set. (The Paris production company is a favourite of the fashion crowd — this season, it also envisioned sets for YSL and Balmain, among others.) Here, the studio dreamt up a series of door frames that felt like portals transporting models between space and time, each one leading into a new area distinguished with its own colour. Best of all was the textural flair that defined each of these frames. Echoing the medley of materials being walked down the runway, one was composed of stone, another featured ceramic trim that resembled ruffled ribbon, and the best of all featured smashed-up ceramic plate fragments that begged you to run your hands along them. As many good sci-fi stories can attest, it takes a skilled time-traveler to make it back to the future in one piece. Thankfully, Acne managed the feat with style to spare.