There was something about walking into the Etro show and seeing a field of wheat sitting beside a concrete runway that made me think, okay, I know where this is going.

Except I didn’t.

And actually, that’s probably the point.

Because Etro has always been a house that wears its references on the outside. Paisley, embroidery, jacquard, colour, travel, a little bit of bohemia, a little bit of romance — all those things we’ve come to associate with the Etro universe. You usually know where you are almost immediately.

This time, though, the collection seemed to hold its breath.

The first looks arrived in camel, sand, ivory and dusty rose. Everything felt sun-bleached. Almost faded. Paisley was there, but quietly — dissolving into sheer chiffon rather than shouting from a jacquard.

And then there were the clothes that didn’t quite belong to that romantic world.

A denim jacket. A metallic nylon anorak. A leather bomber.

Suddenly I’m thinking: Wait. Are we going somewhere?

Yes.

We were.

The whole show gradually started to feel like a day passing over that field. Morning becoming afternoon, afternoon becoming evening. The colours warming up, getting louder, becoming slightly more unruly before eventually sinking into burgundy, wine and rust.

It’s a simple idea, really.

But sometimes simple ideas are the ones that stick.

By the middle of the collection, Etro had properly woken up. Saffron, marigold, ochre and ice blue arrived almost like someone had opened a window and let the sun in. Sequins appeared. Fringe became more than decoration. Beading became almost architectural. The nylon anorak kept returning in different colours, which made it feel less like a styling trick and more like an actual piece of the collection’s vocabulary.

And I kept coming back to that contrast.

The fragile against the functional.

The romantic against the practical.

The thing you inherited against the thing you packed into a suitcase because, well, what if it rains?

Honestly, that’s where Etro felt most interesting to me.

Because the idea of travel has always been somewhere inside this house. But here it wasn’t just expressed through paisley and worldly references. It was actually built into the clothes. A nylon jacket thrown over something delicate. A practical layer over something almost impossibly feminine.

It felt like someone had packed their wardrobe badly before going on holiday.

Which, frankly, is how most of us pack.

And then came the colour.

Oh boy.

The final section moved into deep burgundy, wine, rust and coral, and suddenly all that richness Etro is so comfortable with came rushing back. Jacquard. Brocade. Guipure lace. Ruffles. Paisley again, but now much denser and more confident.

It was almost as if the collection had spent the first two acts deliberately holding itself back so it could finally exhale.

And I liked that.

But I also found myself wondering whether the middle section quite knew what it wanted to be.

There are moments — particularly around the crochet, fringe, body jewellery and aviator sunglasses — when Etro starts drifting into a very familiar festival-bohemian vocabulary. The kind of bohemia that could belong to a lot of brands right now.

And that’s where the collection loses a little of its personality.

Not because those clothes are bad. They aren’t.

It’s just that Etro becomes much more interesting when it is being Etro rather than when it is being generically bohemian.

Then, almost quietly, tailoring appears.

A blazer. Trousers. A paisley bandeau underneath.

And I thought: THIS.

Because suddenly there’s another possibility hiding inside the collection.

Etro doesn’t need to abandon its richness. It doesn’t need to become minimal. God forbid.

But what happens if all that history meets something sharper?

Something slightly more undone. More grown-up. More worldly.

That suit felt like a little glimpse of that future.

And maybe that’s what stayed with me after the show.

Not the paisley — although there was plenty of it.

Not even the wheat field.

It was the idea that Etro might be learning to make us wait for the richness.

Usually, the house gives you everything immediately. This time, it made me walk through the pale morning before arriving at dusk.

And maybe that’s what fashion can do when it slows down a little.

It can make you wait.

It can make you wonder.

It can make a colour feel more emotional simply because you had to spend an hour without it.

I’m not sure Etro has completely solved that idea yet. There are moments where the collection wanders, where the bohemian language becomes a little too familiar, where you can feel the seams between the different ideas.

But I actually quite like that.

Because underneath all the paisley and lace and colour, there is something being worked out here.

Etro isn’t trying to become something else.

It’s trying to figure out what happens when a house with this much history learns to edit itself.

And standing there beside that field, watching the collection move from pale morning to deep evening, I kept thinking about how appropriate the setting was.

Things grow slowly.

Maybe fashion does too.

And maybe Etro is still figuring out what it wants to become when it grows up.