Etro Lets the Sun Fade Its Paisley

With its in-house design team taking the reins after Marco De Vincenzo's departure, Etro's Spring 2027 collection finds a lighter way to wear the house's famously exuberant identity

Etro has never been a fashion house particularly interested in leaving things alone. Its paisleys multiply, its colours collide, its fabrics accumulate, and its particular vision of bohemian dressing has long operated on the principle that another print, another texture or another layer might make everything more interesting. For Spring 2027, however, the Italian house entertained an unfamiliar possibility. What happens when you allow some of that visual richness to fade?

The answer arrived in Milan on 23 September with Halo, the first complete womenswear collection developed by Etro's in-house design team following Marco De Vincenzo's departure in March. De Vincenzo had joined the house in 2022 as its first creative director from outside the founding family, bringing a more experimental sensibility to its established vocabulary. His exit left Etro with a question facing many heritage brands: how to preserve a recognisable identity without becoming trapped by it. The studio's response was to work with the house's signatures, loosening their familiar arrangements and allowing them to behave differently.

The collection was conceived around the changing light of a summer day. Its opening looks appeared in powdery nude tones, suggesting skin warmed by early morning sunlight, before yellows and oranges intensified the atmosphere. Blues and greens followed, eventually giving way to burgundy, brown and black as the imagined day moved towards evening. The progression provided a coherent framework for a collection concerned with movement, atmosphere and the effects of light upon familiar surfaces.

Most importantly, Etro's paisley had been given permission to lose its sharp edges. Prints appeared blurred, enlarged, fragmented or faded almost beyond recognition, as though their colours had spent an entire summer exposed to the sun. Elsewhere, the motif reappeared as patches on denim, retaining its decorative character while becoming part of a more casual vocabulary. For a house whose visual identity is so closely tied to pattern, the decision to make that pattern less immediately assertive was significant.

The silhouettes followed the same logic. Vaporous dresses skimmed the body, with transparent layers revealing and concealing what lay beneath. Shorter front hemlines extended into long, fluttering trains, introducing movement without relying upon elaborate construction for its effect. Fringes trembled as the models walked, adding another dimension to clothes that appeared designed to respond to the slightest movement of air.

These pieces captured the collection's most persuasive idea. Etro's familiar romanticism felt more contemporary when its decorative language was allowed to become less concentrated. The transparency, shifting hemlines and faded surfaces gave the clothes an appealing informality, suggesting a wardrobe that could accommodate the pleasures of dressing beautifully without requiring every outfit to become an elaborate composition.

The collection became more interesting when the designers interrupted that fluidity. An almost weightless windbreaker appeared over a precious dress, while suede blousons and denim jackets introduced more substantial textures. Lean trousers and sharply cut jackets provided moments of structure, their precise lines contrasting with the surrounding softness. These interventions mattered because they prevented the collection from becoming an uninterrupted procession of diaphanous summer dresses.

There is a practical intelligence in those combinations. A transparent dress becomes considerably more versatile when worn beneath a functional outer layer, while the introduction of denim allows Etro's elaborate prints to participate in a less ceremonial wardrobe. The contrast also gives the wearer more opportunities to intervene through styling, something the house's richly patterned collections have not always made easy.

Accessories maintained the relaxed atmosphere. Ballerina flats and gladiator sandals kept the silhouettes grounded, while cone-heeled shoes with slender, leaf-edged straps introduced a more decorative note. Soft bohemian bags collapsed around the hand or body, avoiding the rigid shapes that might have interrupted the clothes' movement. The overall effect was deliberately unforced, with accessories supporting the collection's fluid character rather than competing for attention.

Yet there is a distinction between making a house's identity lighter and giving it a compelling new direction. Halo was attractive, coherent and recognisably Etro, but its most persuasive moments came from the styling decisions that complicated its romanticism. The windbreaker over the delicate dress, the sharply tailored jacket among the floating fabrics and the denim carrying fragments of paisley offered more possibilities than the familiar image of a woman moving through summer in beautiful printed chiffon.

That distinction matters particularly now. The fashion industry's renewed interest in expressive dressing has created an opportunity for houses with strong decorative identities, but it has also made the familiar vocabulary of bohemian luxury increasingly crowded. Etro possesses a genuine advantage in its textile heritage, accumulated visual language and ability to combine colour and pattern with considerable sophistication. Its challenge is to make those qualities feel specific to the contemporary wardrobe rather than merely evocative of an established aesthetic.

The absence of a named creative director adds another dimension to the collection. Fashion has become accustomed to treating each appointment as an opportunity for dramatic reinvention, with new designers expected to establish their authority through instantly identifiable gestures. Etro's in-house team has taken a less confrontational approach, suggesting that the house's own vocabulary contains sufficient material for continued experimentation.

There is merit in that position, particularly for a brand whose identity was established long before the current culture of designer celebrity. Founded in 1968 by Gerolamo Etro, the company developed its reputation through textiles and a fascination with pattern, colour and international decorative traditions. Paisley became central to its identity, eventually appearing across fashion, accessories and interiors. The Spring 2027 collection demonstrates how that heritage can remain visible even when its most recognisable motif is partially dissolved.

Whether the approach can sustain several seasons is another matter. Softening a familiar identity offers a convincing first chapter, but subsequent collections will need to develop the idea beyond variations in print intensity and fabric weight. The strongest moments of Halo suggest that a more interesting future may lie in the relationship between Etro's decorative heritage and the sharper, more functional pieces that appeared alongside it.

For now, the collection succeeds in making Etro's particular brand of bohemian dressing feel easier to approach. Its dresses retain their romance, its patterns remain recognisable, and its colours still possess the richness associated with the house. Yet the addition of practical outerwear, controlled tailoring and less insistent prints introduces a welcome sense of possibility.

The most appealing thing about Halo is the confidence required to let a familiar signature become less visible. Etro has spent decades building a world around the expressive power of pattern, and that world remains central to its identity. Spring 2027 suggests that there may be just as much character in allowing the colours to fade, the fabrics to move and the paisley to become something glimpsed rather than immediately announced.