Setchu nets tailoring and dresses in craft-led Milan experiment

At Setchu’s Milan headquarters on Via Privata Rezia 2, Satoshi Kuwata turned a 17-look spring 2027 showing into an argument for craft that can still read as product. Titled In the Net, the presentation landed on the official Milan Men’s Fashion Week calendar at 4:00 p.m. and used leather-cord netting, Japanese knotting and Savile Row structure to make experimentation feel oddly disciplined.

Why Setchu’s netting felt like a signature, not a stunt

The strongest collections do not merely introduce a texture; they build a visual language that can travel from runway to wardrobe. Setchu’s latest outing did exactly that by layering leather nets over tailoring, slip dresses and fluid skirts, then tightening the whole idea with precise construction rather than excess decoration. The result was less about shock and more about control, which is why the netting read as a brand code in the making.

Kuwata’s method mattered as much as the look. The handmade leather nets were tied with the Japanese square-knot technique, a detail that gave the pieces their taut, knotted surface and kept the effect from drifting into costume. Even when the clothes were soft in line, the netting supplied a disciplined geometry, the kind that changes the way a blazer falls or a dress catches light as the wearer moves.

From tailoring to slip dresses: the collection’s tension points

Setchu has always worked best when opposites are held in balance, and this season pushed that instinct further. Kuwata layered the nets over tailoring first, which instantly sharpened the familiar suit into something more tactile and less literal. Then he extended the treatment to slip dresses and fluid skirts, giving the collection a second mood: lighter, more liquid, but still caught in the same crafted lattice.

That tension is the point. A net over tailoring can look precious if it is too ornamental, but Setchu kept the mood grounded by letting the construction show through. The dresses and skirts gained an almost protective shell, while the tailoring became more expressive without losing its shape, a useful trick for a label trying to distinguish itself in a crowded menswear field without abandoning wearability.

Kuwata also backed away from round forms for a very specific reason. Backstage, he said he dislikes round shapes because they read as mass production, and he used handmade processes to exorcise that association. One of the clearest examples was a series of metallic circles held together by strips of jersey, a response that turned an industrial-looking motif into something visibly handworked.

The fishing trip, the river reference and the designer’s wider world

The collection’s emotional current ran beyond technique. FashionNetwork tied the clothes to Kuwata’s trip to Gabon, in Africa, a region known for river fishing, and that detail fits neatly with the designer’s long habit of pulling ideas from movement, landscape and craft. Kuwata is an avid fisherman, and fishing has often fed his work, so the netting did not feel like a random runway flourish but like another translation of a persistent personal obsession.

That is what gave the collection its coherence. Press and critics framed the show as a convergence of Kuwata’s passions: Japanese cultural references, Italian textile expertise, Savile Row know-how and fishing. Instead of scattering those references across the runway, he braided them together into one surface language, so the collection felt specific without becoming thematic in a heavy-handed way.

What Setchu has been building toward

Setchu’s name comes from the Japanese concept of wayo setchu, meaning a compromise or blending between Japanese and Western culture. That idea has always sat at the center of the brand, and it makes this season’s craft experimentation feel like an extension of an existing philosophy rather than a sudden left turn. Kuwata has built his label on translation, not contradiction, and the netting showed how well that approach can scale.

The brand’s earlier references help explain why this season landed so naturally. Setchu has previously used travel, origami-like folding and kimono construction as design touchstones, all of them techniques that depend on precision and adaptability rather than spectacle alone. This new netting belongs to that same lineage, because it is visibly handmade but still structured enough to make sense in a wardrobe.

The designer’s credentials also carry weight here. Kuwata won the LVMH Prize in 2023, and that recognition now looks less like a breakout trophy than an early marker of a clear point of view. Setchu is no longer merely the label of a gifted designer with good ideas about craft; it is a house with a recognisable grammar.

Why the collection matters in the menswear conversation

Pitti Immagine has described Setchu as a brand built around versatility, timelessness, craftsmanship, functionality and travel, and this show gave that description sharper edges. The leather nets did not cancel those values out; they stressed them. You could imagine the pieces as part of a wardrobe, yet they still carried the nervous energy of a maker testing how far handwork can be pushed before it stops looking practical.

That is the real achievement of In the Net. Kuwata did not treat craft as an excuse for opacity, and he did not dilute it into something blandly commercial either. He made the clothes strange enough to remember and clear enough to want, which is exactly where an emerging label begins to separate itself from the field.