Elisabetta Franchi SS27: Glamour Learns to Stretch

The setting carried a certain symbolism. The approximately 2,000-square-metre Milan headquarters opened in late 2024 as showroom, management hub and institutional space, and SS27 became the first runway staged inside it. Industrial architecture, pale surfaces, and structural clarity surrounded a designer famous for glamour, corsetry, exposed skin, and clothes designed to make an entrance.

Elisabetta Franchi called the season an exercise in subtraction. The familiar sensuality remained intact, yet the vocabulary around it started shifting.

Elisabetta Franchi Starts With 90 Denier and Builds Outward

One of the collection’s most personal ideas comes from something remarkably ordinary: Elisabetta Franchi’s own affection for 90-denier tights.

SS27 takes that second-skin material and expands it far beyond hosiery. Stretch fabric climbs over the torso, wraps the legs, becomes dresses, fitted tops, skirts, and bodysuit-like layers. The body becomes the first construction line.

That closeness gives the collection an immediate physical tension.

Nude fabric almost merges with skin. Black versions create a harder graphic surface. Corsetry sits over those thin layers, allowing lacing and boning to look architectural against the body. Jackets then expand outward through pronounced shoulders, creating a silhouette that moves from almost naked proximity into controlled volume.

This approach gives Elisabetta Franchi a useful new foundation.

Sensuality comes through pressure, transparency, and proportion. A bare shoulder can carry a look. A waistband can shape the hip. A sheer leg can become the visual counterweight to a strong blazer. The collection begins close enough to feel intimate, then gradually dresses itself.

Sportswear Walks Straight Into the Wardrobe

Cycling shorts are among the season’s clearest signals of change. They appear beneath roomy tailoring, corseted tops, and structured leather pieces, introducing the visual language of movement into a house historically associated with cocktail hours and evening entrances.

Racer necklines sharpen the upper body. Bombers and active references loosen the formality around familiar Elisabetta Franchi silhouettes. Menswear-inspired jackets create width across the shoulders while the lower body stays narrow, exposed, or wrapped in second-skin fabric.

Resort 2027 had already started this shift through cool wool, parkas, denim, Capri pants, corsetry, and flatter footwear. SS27 gives that experimentation a runway-scale statement.

One look places a structured leather bustier with gold zips over cycling shorts. Another lets an oversized jacket dominate sheer legs. Tuxedo tailoring enters beside lingerie-weight pieces.

The collisions make sense for a company expanding the number of situations its clothes can inhabit.

The Color Quietens So the Surfaces Can Speak

Franchi keeps the palette concentrated. Black provides the strongest graphic base. Camel, beige, pale pink, and nude shades sit close to skin and leather. Then a rich red cuts through the runway with deliberate intensity.

Oversized sequins move like liquid scales across evening pieces. Lace brings delicacy around the torso. Embroidery catches light in controlled flashes. Leather keeps corsetry and tailoring firm. PVC and glossy treatments introduce a synthetic shine beside softer hosiery.

Micro-jaguar print becomes the wildest interruption. The print appears across fitted pieces and sets, bringing an overtly animalistic note into a collection built around discipline and skin. Eel-effect surfaces continue that interest in texture, creating another slick, slightly predatory finish.

Several of the cleanest looks carry SS27 particularly well.

A white racer-neck dress strips the body into a long athletic line. Its high neckline gives the upper silhouette discipline while the simplicity of the shape lets posture become part of the design.

A red ruched top and skirt combination uses cut-outs with similar precision. Color, skin, and gathering create enough tension to hold the look.

Then comes a ruby sequin slip dress beneath a black tuxedo jacket, one of the collection’s sharpest combinations. The dress supplies liquid evening shine; the jacket places a controlled frame around it.

Second-skin hosiery looks carry another kind of confidence. Their appeal comes from proximity, the almost uncanny effect of fabric sitting so close to the body that garment and skin start sharing the same visual plane.

The collection gains authority in these moments because Elisabetta Franchi lets one gesture carry the full weight of the look.

Elisabetta Franchi Is Expanding the Woman and the Business at Once

That widening creative language arrives at an interesting point for the company.

The business has grown past roughly €170 million in annual revenue, with healthy profitability and an international network extending across Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and other key markets. Clothing still accounts for the overwhelming majority of turnover, while accessories have become a clear area of future ambition.

Elisabetta Franchi has also returned to direct control of the company as president after a period of external executive involvement.

A company seeking growth across categories and markets benefits from a woman who can exist beyond evening glamour. The collection carries a few moments where the vision reaches the eye before the finishing fully seals it.

A nude bodysuit look extending into exposed-toe hosiery creates a striking continuous line from torso to foot, yet the styling leaves the final few centimetres feeling slightly unresolved.

A beige beaded column dress has a compelling surface and elegant verticality, while its finish asks for an extra degree of precision. An animal-print skirt set with corset construction and a pronounced peg-top hip has one of the runway’s clearest ideas, though the combination of print, hip volume, and styling stops just short of the perfectionist polish associated with Elisabetta Franchi at her strongest.

Their slight roughness simply reveals the difficulty of expanding a tightly controlled identity. New proportions require time. New styling codes need repetition. A wider wardrobe needs its own hierarchy.

Elisabetta Franchi is moving from a house built around one instantly identifiable equestrian woman toward a brand capable of dressing several versions of her. SS27 captures the moment when expansion is already visible, and refinement is still catching up.

For a designer whose business grew through absolute confidence in a very specific image of femininity, that slight uncertainty may be exactly what makes this season worth watching.