MILAN — Leave it to Prada to best sum up one of the key vibes seen at Milan Men’s Fashion Week, where the relationship between indoor and outdoor life was explored in the collections paraded on the runway.

At Prada, the set prepped guests to fully embrace the concept ahead of the show, with office chairs arranged in serpentine rows above a transparent floorboards displaying a verdant landscape underneath. Beauty looks fueled the corporate-versus-nature dialogue, with makeup conceived by Lynsey Alexander reflecting our LED-lit interior lives and hair styles by Guido Palau evoking outdoor activities. 

The former served natural looks prepping the skin with the Prada Augmented Skin The Serum and enhancing it with moisturizer for translucent radiance. The latter worked manes to fit under colorful swimming caps — the key styling gimmick of the show — and hats, occasionally leaving tufts peeking from underneath.

At the beautiful Fendi show, Silvia Venturini Fendi evoked Princess Anne’s classic, outdoorsy style built on masculine clothing archetypes. A fresh-faced cast telegraphed the spirit with its beauty looks, too.

“The inspiration behind the collection was the English royal family, horse and hound, aristocratic. So I wanted to create a flushed look like being outside in the freezing rainy English weather, playing some posh sport,” said makeup artist Daniel Sallstrom. 

He used the Face and Body foundation by MAC Cosmetics to “create a sheer glow, mimicking a dewy look, fresh off the hunting track” and the brand’s Retro Matte Liquid Lipcolor in various red hues as blush to create a ruddy effect. 

To complete the look, hair stylist Gary Gill “used references of King Charles and other people in the aristocracy as well as very groomed men” for his hairdos.

“There’s a low side parting and a brushed-out curl as well as some natural straighter textures,” said Gill about the styles he created for the show using a mousse to dry the hair and a light holding cream as finishing touch.

At Dsquared2, makeup artist Yadim Carranza and hair stylist Sam McKnight were on double duty as the show cast exclusively identical twins. They walked the runway in day and nighttime guises that further explored the relationship between life in nature and an extra-glamourous one on the dance floor.

Guests at the show could see a guy in lumberjack attire enter a small round chamber and come out the other side bedecked in evening looks, in a transformation that beauty-wise translated in a switch from faces smeared with mud and giant trapper hats to perfect complexion and ’70s-inspired coifs.

Adding to the urban plate of the town-and-country balance the Milan shows aimed to strike, perfectly styled disheveled hair was the go-to choice on the MSGM runway, which was staged in the city’s subway station of Porta Venezia.

In sync with the urban location evoking daily commuting and a hectic lifestyle, the hairdos created by Michaël Delmas landed somewhere in between out-of-bed style and after party look, as he gently ruffled curls, pulled some strands out and gelled others back in an apparent haphazard way. The looks celebrated imperfection — or at least, the illusion of it — and proved that juggling in a city can be a wild adventure, too.