Inside Vogue World Milano: Five Questions from One Extraordinary Night

The fifth edition of Vogue World took place on 22 September in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, on the opening day of Milan Fashion Week. N.7 Studio founder Patty Wong was among the guests.

I felt genuinely honoured to be invited to Vogue World: Milano. From the moment the invitation arrived, I understood that this would be very different from a typical Milan Fashion Week event.

1. How strict was the security?

The first surprise came before I even entered.

The guest instructions were extraordinarily detailed. I spent almost thirty minutes reading through all of it: the call time, the entrance procedures, the access rules, what guests were expected to do, and even what we were asked to pay attention to on social media, including hashtags and location tags.

Even arriving by car had its own protocol. The car access pass had to be printed in colour and displayed in the window, and if several guests were travelling together, every pass had to be printed and displayed.

My call time was 6:30 to 6:45 p.m., and nobody could enter after 7:30 p.m. I arrived a little early, came in from the Piazza del Duomo side and walked for about two minutes to another designated entrance, where between thirty and fifty staff were coordinating arrivals.

Identification and names were checked carefully. The whole process was extremely controlled, and yet, once inside, everything ran remarkably smoothly.

2. How exclusive was it?

The exclusivity became clearer when I spoke with friends in very senior management positions at major Italian fashion houses.

They told me they had not been able to get an invitation. More surprisingly, they did not know which PR company was handling the guest list, or whom to contact.

Looking into it myself, I realised that this was very different from the usual Milan fashion week PR structure. Vogue World was organised at a far more central, international level, around Vogue and Anna Wintour's team.

The scale went well beyond the guest list. Live streaming, production, event organisation and executive production crews were brought in from the United States to work alongside local teams, security and police.

Access was equally strict. Security personnel, content creators and guests' personal staff were not allowed into the guest area.

So much of central Milan had been transformed for one evening, and access remained limited to a very small group.

3. What happened before the show?

Before taking our seats, we were invited to Prada's new exhibition space in the Galleria for a private preview.

The Prada team welcomed us warmly. The service was thoughtful and beautifully organised, with guides explaining the exhibition in both English and Italian.

We saw the new exhibition, Prada's history and its relationship with art and culture, and visited the cinema and the library. It felt like entering an entirely new cultural space in the centre of Milan, just before it opened to the public.

From there we continued to Marchesi 1824, where we were welcomed with beautiful dolci, cocktails and impeccable service.

It was an elegant and very Milanese beginning to an extraordinary evening.

4. What was the most exciting part?

Having worked in fashion for several years, I have attended and organised countless events. So although I was there as an invited guest, I found myself watching the evening from a professional point of view, as someone who works in PR and show production.

The logistics fascinated me: the team structure, the timing, the access control, the guest management, the production flow and all the detail happening behind the spectacle.

Seeing Anna Wintour, Alessandro Michele and Demna, alongside Naomi Campbell, Maisie Williams, Hollywood actors and Roberto Bolle, étoile of Teatro alla Scala, was of course exciting.

But it was the unexpected moments that stayed with me. A small dog performing alongside a model. A male model walking while smoking. And the Unitree humanoid robot, a piece of Chinese robotics that drew a crowd after the show, with guests gathering around it to take pictures, interact with it and see how it would respond. It was genuinely fun.

Four choirs of children and teenagers were positioned at the four corners of the Galleria. I shared some content from the show on social media, and a friend asked me whether I had any video of the choir. I then discovered that his daughter was one of the young singers. An enormous international production suddenly became something very personal.

Another surprise was seeing so many old friends. Nobody had discussed beforehand who was attending, because nobody knew who had received an invitation. Then, all at once, familiar faces were everywhere.

I was very happy to run into Anna Dello Russo again, and, as always, we admired each other's outfits. I also saw Milovan Farronato, along with many other familiar faces from Milan and the international fashion community.

That is one of the things I love about fashion weeks. You can go months without seeing someone, and then meet again in the middle of an extraordinary event.

During the evening I also ran into Tommaso Sacchi, Milan's Councillor for Culture. I invited him to QIFEI's upcoming runway show. He asked me to send him the date and time, and said he would let me know whether he could attend.

Almost immediately afterwards, we were both heading towards the private Prada after party, where many of the evening's guests would meet again.

5. What stays with you after an event like this?

After the show, I had a spontaneous conversation with Anna Wintour's assistant.

I asked her, quite casually, whether she would be going to Paris. She told me she would not. She was Anna's assistant for Milan only, and there was another assistant in Paris.

She also told me that preparations for Vogue World had started about a year earlier. After experiencing the evening, I could understand why.

What stays with me is not only the spectacle, but everything behind it: the people, the systems, the timing, the precision and the sheer amount of coordination required to make an event of this scale feel effortless.

That is the real value of an evening like this. Every major event becomes part of my professional knowledge, another reference, another lesson, another detail filed away.

And I carry those experiences forward. They bring more understanding, creativity, care and precision to the work I create for my clients.

Even when you are invited as a guest, there is always something new to learn.

Words: Patty Wong
Editing: Jonah Liu