Dear Gossips,

Anna Wintour was coming off a loss heading into Vogue World 2026: Milano which took place last night. Three weeks ago John Galliano stepped down from being the featured designer at the Costume Institute and Met Gala next year. Anna had been championing the exhibit for years and was clearly not expecting the ensuing backlash to be so intense that it would force a reversal and leave the Costume Institute and the accompanying Met Gala without a theme.

Vogue World 2026 is the fifth anniversary of the event, after New York, London, Paris, and Hollywood last year. This has been a major priority for Anna, reportedly one of the reasons she stepped down from editorial duties at American Vogue, so that she could focus on growing the Vogue World brand. What is the Vogue World brand? Vogue World is a fashion show. All kinds of celebrities show up, to highlight the fashion that is unique to each city, that’s how I would describe it, but I’m not sure that’s what ends up as the main takeaway beyond the fashion community.

With the Met Gala, for example, the awareness of the event has grown beyond the fashion community – in part because we all understand that it’s basically a fashion show with a costume party spirit. In other words, the personalities of the people wearing the clothes are part of it. Because it comes through in the interpretation of the theme in the pieces worn on the famous bodies who then perform the story as they go up the steps.

Vogue World does involve celebrities – but the way the fashion is presented reads more like a runway show and not the spectacle that the Met Gala delivers. And that may be why Vogue World: Milano isn’t hitting the way Anna and her team might be hoping. Sure, it’s all over the fashion algorithm, but you can’t tell me that it’s permeated into the general algorithm the way the Met Gala always does.

This, then, continues to be Anna’s challenge if she is to succeed at elevating Vogue World to the status she’s imagined for it. And using robots is probably not the way to do it? There is an argument to be made for the inclusion of robots at some event somewhere, LOL, but I can’t see the rationale when Vogue itself described Vogue World: Milano as follows:

“…the globe-trotting fashion celebration paid tribute to craftsmanship and the human touch…”

Paying tribute to craftsmanship and the human touch… and then sending robots out near the end of the show?! Alessandro Michele’s face when he saw those robots is sending me…

It’s the most bizarre narrative, if in fact they actually were trying to tell a story, and that’s what they claim – Vogue even released the programme for the show in five acts, opening with the “artisanal revolution” and concluding with “the imagination revolution”. Is it promising, then, to begin the story like this, with Gigi Hadid bursting with life and curiosity as she floats and skips down the runway…

…to this finale, with the robots trying to hype up the crowd?

How is this supposed to elicit optimism and enthusiasm for the fashion artform going forward – not just because of the robots but also because THE ROBOTS AREN’T EVEN WEARING CLOTHES!?

If this show functioned as an essay, with the thesis being that the story was a tribute to the “human touch”, the kicker (robots) just betrayed the point. And therefore the only possible grade to give it would be a fail, no matter how beautifully the paragraphs in between were written.

Here is Gigi in Milan after the show.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Gigi Hadid in Milan after the Vogue World: Milano event, September 22, 2026

Photo credits: @Nacer_photo_/Backgrid, Pierre Teyssot/ Alessandro Bremec/ipa-agency.net/Shutterstock

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