Menswear MA students from the University of Westminster took centre stage at Milan Men's Fashion Week 2025, presenting their final collections at a dedicated showroom in the heart of the city's fashion district.
Held between 20–22 June at La Pelota, a renowned creative venue in Milan, the Westminster showroom offered a dynamic platform for graduates to exhibit their work to an international audience of buyers, press and fashion industry professionals. The three-day showcase featured student collections, portfolios, fashion films and research projects, alongside a series of talks with leading designers, journalists and archivists.
The showroom also featured an exhibition by the Westminster Menswear Archive. The exhibition, Cut from a Different Cloth: Tailoring, Tradition and Transition, traced Lee Alexander McQueen's evolving relationship with tailoring, from his formative work in Milan for Romeo Gigli, with pieces loaned by Fondazione Sozzani who collaborated on the show, through his early London-based menswear, to a new generation of Westminster-trained designers responding to that legacy.
Curated by Professor Andrew Groves, Professor of Fashion Design, and Dr Danielle Sprecher, Menswear Curator, the Cut from a Different Cloth exhibition explored how tailoring knowledge crosses borders and generations and showed how designers come of age by working through others, and how garments hold the lines of influence that run between them.
The student work mirrored industry practice as they engaged with live projects, such as the Westminster Menswear Archive, and was grounded in material research, cultural insight and technical rigour. Each graduate brought a distinct approach to what menswear can be, through reinterpreting tailoring, challenging gendered norms, reengineering construction or exploring global heritage.
The new tailored garments were developed through extensive archival research and informed by direct engagement with the current McQueen design team as part of the Menswear MA Live Tailoring Project. These garments did not seek to replicate McQueen's work but rather offer critical reinterpretations of his legacy.
Work by Gyouso Liu on display
The event was made possible with a two-year funding grant from the Quintin Hogg Trust that kicked started the project and sponsorship from 247 Showrooms. Their education is also supported by access to the Westminster Menswear Archive, the largest of its kind in the UK, which includes over 250 years of menswear history.
The Milan showcase built on Westminster's successful appearances at London Fashion Week and Paris Showrooms, reinforcing its reputation as a launchpad for some of the most exciting names in Menswear, including S.S. Daley, Priya Ahluwalia, Robyn Lynch and Paolo Carzana.
Anthony Rawson-Campbell, Course Leader of the Menswear MA course, said: "We were thrilled to present our graduates' final collections at 247 headquarters in La Pelota to industry, press and buyers. This international platform gave our emerging designers the perfect launchpad to showcase British-educated talent on the global stage. Our collaboration with Alexander McQueen has given students a rare opportunity to interrogate tailoring as both tradition and language producing work that stands confidently in conversation with the Archive."
About the exhibition Professor Groves added: "This exhibition reveals the ongoing dialogue between British and Italian tailoring, a conversation that shaped McQueen's early work and continues through the garments created by our students. Whether in the Archive or the studio, this exchange of knowledge, technique and tradition remains central to how we teach and understand menswear today."
The collaborative exhibition directly contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and 12: Responsible Consumption and Production. Since 2019, the University of Westminster has used the SDGs holistically to frame strategic decisions to help students and colleagues fulfil their potential and contribute to a more sustainable, equitable and healthier society.
Find out more about Fashion courses at the University of Westminster.
