Milan is used to Fashion Week disruptions—the road closures, the screaming fans, the existential crisis of deciding whether last season’s Prada is still ironic enough—but today’s Dolce & Gabbana spectacle took it up a notch. Construction had shut down the tramlines outside their headquarters, so Domenico and Stefano, never ones to let a little civic inconvenience stand in the way of a moment, built their own raised stage in the street. Models did their runway strut inside the venue, then stepped out into the city like demigods descending from Olympus, met with thousands of fans shrieking in adoration and a handful of locals who’d just wanted to buy their groceries in peace. It was a full-blown club night on Viale Piave, except it was 3:30 in the afternoon and the bass was vibrating all the way into the next tax bracket.

The theme? “Cool Girls.” The kind of effortless off-duty dressing that models do so well—vintage tees, barely-there lace camisoles, baggy cargos slung so low they defy physics, biker boots that say “don’t even think about it,” and the requisite oversized designer coat that turns a borderline public indecency charge into a fashion statement. “We’ve totally changed the mood,” Gabbana said backstage. “We were thinking about Vittoria Ceretti, Irina Shayk, Mona [Tougaard]—how hey actually dress when they’re not working. It’s very spontaneous.”

Spontaneous, sure. But also deeply calculated. Entire brands have been built around the model-off-duty aesthetic, though for Dolce & Gabbana—who’ve been doubling down lately on their darkly seductive Sicilian widow gowns and their eye-wateringly expensive Alta Moda couture—this was a shift. For those who remember (or have spent enough time doomscrolling archive fashion pages), this was a full-throttle callback to D&G, their wildly popular 2000s-era diffusion line that they unceremoniously put to rest over a decade ago. “A lot of people still ask us about D&G,” Gabbana admitted. “This is that mood from the 2000s—but a little more high.”

By “high,” he meant the lavish shearling, treated to mimic the decadence of fur, lining army coats, denim jackets, and leather bombers—or, for the more exhibitionist set, taking over entire pieces, like a fringed white poncho with the gravitational pull of a pop star’s airport look. Fur—real or faux—has dominated Milan this season, and Dolce & Gabbana clearly RSVP’d yes to the revival. The other undeniable throwback? Crystals. Cargo pants and slouchy denim, sparkling with embellishment, practically pre-packaged for a red-carpet moment where someone inevitably says, “I just threw this on.”

Like their paparazzi-themed menswear show in January, today’s presentation was split into day and night. Three-quarters of the way through, the lights dipped, the models swapped combat boots for stilettos, and suddenly it was party season. The cool-girl uniform shifted to short, boxy slip dresses drowning in crystals, catching the light like paparazzi flashbulbs, shimmering with the kind of expensive carelessness that only really works when the price tag is five figures. And just to make sure the scene felt properly decadent, the soundtrack was deejayed by Victoria de Angelis of Måneskin, who debuted a new, unnamed club banger with the already-infamous lyric: “Can you see my tits through my T-shirt?” Scandalized? The cool girls would roll their eyes.