The gentle elegance of Tod's, the balance of Sportmax, cascade of gold at Roberto Cavalli

Bluntness - doing what one does, being what one is - is of little interest today when it is the mystification of storytelling that rages. Too objective, too objectified, not narrative at all. Yet even mannerisms or clothes as naked objects tell stories - subtle, and for that reason enduring and penetrating.

At Tod's, Matteo Tamburini continues to demonstrate how much strength there is in gentle stylistic gestures when they are confident and forthright. Tod's stands for mastery in the use of leather and a high sense of Italianness, and it is exactly these themes that Tamburini, an undeniable talent, explores, confidently dodging clichés as well as pompous emphases. The sense of a spontaneous and direct elegance is Italian, in which the physicality of the body is always perceived in tralice, and one dresses with innate awareness, while the virtuosity of the stripes reproduced in inlays on shirts and pareo dresses made of leather and crumpled suede, the taste for precious material freed from any sense of heaviness is authentically Tod's.

Finally, it is totally Tamburini's taste for pure forms, of an apparent simplicity but in truth very complex. Inspired by Claude Nori's Italian summer photographs, the collection captures the gentle melancholy of the end of holidays, when the freedom of otium still tinges the carefree negotium, until the wear and tear of modern life takes over again.

Galib Gassanoff, aka Institution, is outspoken about his origins - he grew up in an Azerbaijani community in Georgia - and this translates into a contemporary use of local craftsmanship techniques at risk of oblivion, as well as a reinterpretation of indigenous clothing forms. Surprising, in this young and confident author, is the decisive and highly personal way in which he allows this cultural translation to take place, synthesised in dramatic but dry silhouettes, in a sober and severe palette, so that the dangers of the ethnic in fashion are dodged. This is the fourth collection and the second show for Institution: the silhouette has a hieratic New Look classicism, but it is rough, with a harsh poetry that fascinates.

At Sportmax, the research line of the Max Mara group, the intention is always to propose fashion with a strong experimental content, without losing a sense of concreteness, in short, bringing cutting-edge stylism to the real public. For a few seasons now, we have been subtracting, drying, purifying. The new collection is a dynamic balance of dry, vertical shapes and dynamic twists that make the clothes move in unison with the body, in a way that seduces.