Milan Fashion Week FW 2025/2026: Style takes over the City again

Milan's spring fashion season transforms the city into a global style hub. Beyond the official runway shows, the event ripples through historic neighborhoods, with presentations and exhibitions filling unexpected venues from restored industrial spaces to classic palazzos. Our blog team will be covering selected shows and events throughout the season, offering readers an inside look at the moments that define Milan's fashion landscape. We'll bring you direct insights from the shows, presentations, and creative installations that make this city a perpetual source of style innovation.

The convergence with Milan's design week creates a unique cross-pollination between fashion and furniture design. Pop-up installations appear in artistic quarters, while showrooms showcase the intersection of wearable art and functional design.

Evening brings its own rhythm to the fashion scene. Street style photographers capture emerging trends in historic districts, while industry conversations flow at local aperitivo spots. This season's presentations emphasize innovation, from sustainable materials to digital experiences, while honoring Milan's legendary craftsmanship. (Image: Ian Art Photo)

Milan Celebrates the Revolutionary Vision of Photography Legend Oliviero Toscani

The magnificent halls of Milan's Palazzo Reale came alive on Sunday as the city paid tribute to Oliviero Toscani, the visionary Italian photographer who transformed advertising into a powerful medium for social commentary.

The special one-day exhibition, "Viva Oliviero!", drew art enthusiasts, photographers, and cultural figures who gathered to honor a master storyteller whose images have challenged perspectives and ignited global conversations.

Throughout the seven-hour exhibition, visitors wandered through carefully curated galleries showcasing Toscani's most impactful work, including his revolutionary campaigns for Benetton that broke traditional advertising boundaries. These iconic images, which tackled themes from racial equality to human rights, demonstrated how Toscani elevated commercial photography into a form of social activism that resonated far beyond billboards and magazine pages.

The exhibition designers transformed the palace's historic rooms into immersive spaces where Toscani's photographs engaged in silent dialogue with the venue's centuries-old architecture. His groundbreaking body of work sparked discussions among visitors about how his techniques influenced everything from photojournalism to contemporary social commentary.

Toscani's impact on visual culture extends far beyond traditional photography. His work opened new possibilities for addressing social issues through images, inspiring a generation of photographers and artists to pursue truth over comfort. The exhibition highlighted how his distinctive approach changed the landscape of both artistic and commercial photography.

Milan's tribute to Toscani served as both a celebration and a reminder of photography's power to shape social consciousness.

As visitors departed Palazzo Reale, the exhibition had successfully showcased how his images continue to challenge viewers to confront uncomfortable realities and question their assumptions about art, advertising, and social responsibility.

The Shape of Light: Groundbreaking Study Visualizes Single Photon

The shape of a single photon (Credits: Benjamin Yuen)

Scientists at the University of Birmingham have achieved a breakthrough in quantum physics by developing a new theory that reveals the precise shape of a single photon for the first time. The research, published in Physical Review Letters and led by Dr. Benjamin Yuen and Professor Angela Demetriadou, provides unprecedented insight into how light particles interact with matter at the quantum level.

The study addresses a long-standing challenge in quantum physics: modeling the infinite possibilities of light-matter interactions. The research team innovatively grouped these possibilities into distinct sets, creating a computational model that describes both the immediate interactions between photons and emitters, and how the energy propagates into the surrounding space.

A significant achievement of this work was the creation of the first-ever visualization of a single photon, which emerged as a byproduct of their theoretical calculations. This visualization was made possible by transforming what was previously considered an unsolvable problem into a computable model.

The implications of this research extend far beyond theoretical physics. The ability to precisely define photon-matter interactions opens new possibilities in various practical applications, including secure communications, pathogen detection, and molecular-level chemical reaction control. Professor Demetriadou emphasized that environmental factors, such as geometry and optical properties, significantly influence photon behavior, including their shape, color, and probability of existence.

Dr. Yuen highlighted two key contributions of their work: enhanced understanding of light-matter energy exchange and better comprehension of light radiation patterns in both near and far fields. Information previously dismissed as noise can now be interpreted and utilized meaningfully. This deeper understanding lays the groundwork for engineering advanced light-matter interactions, with potential applications in improving sensors, photovoltaic cells, and quantum computing systems.

The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 8,000 international students from over 150 countries.