From Italian craftsmanship to AI, emerging designers and a more global creative landscape, MICAM Milano is becoming more than a trade fair.
LUSH”s Editorial & Creative Director Ariel Thi takes us inside the September 2026 edition.
MICAM Milano has long been an important meeting point for the international footwear industry ‘ a place where brands, buyers and professionals come together to discover collections, build relationships and look toward the seasons ahead.
But after experiencing the latest edition firsthand, one thing became increasingly clear: MICAM is becoming much more than a footwear trade fair.
Held from 13’15 September 2026 at Fiera Milano Rho, this edition brought together footwear, craftsmanship, technology, trend intelligence, emerging design and international perspectives in a way that felt particularly expansive.
And this time, LUSH was there from the inside.
Our Editorial & Creative Director, Ariel Thi, attended MICAM Milano as accredited press, exploring the collections, fashion shows, emerging designers, trend presentations and conversations shaping the future of footwear.
OPENING OF FASHION LINK MILAN
The cultural heritage of Italian manufacturing: collective expertise transformed into a product
During the ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the opening of the five exhibitions.
OPENING OF FASHION LINK MILAN
The cultural heritage of Italian manufacturing: collective expertise transformed into a product
Moderator: Carlo Cambi
Journalist – Panorama / La Verità in the picture with Giovanna Ceolini – President of Assocalzaturifici with Davide Rampello – University lecturer in Arts and Crafts..
Italian craftsmanship, AI, emerging designers နဲ့ global creative perspectives တွေ ပေါင်းစပ်လာတာကြောင့် MICAM Milano ဟာ ရိုးရိုး footwear trade fair တစ်ခုထက် ပိုမိုကျယ်ပြန့်တဲ့ platform တစ်ခုအဖြစ် ပြောင်းလဲလာနေပါတယ်။
၂၀၂၆ စက်တင်ဘာ ၁၃ ရက်မှ ၁၅ ရက်အထိ Fiera Milano Rho မှာ ကျင်းပခဲ့တဲ့ MICAM Milano ကို LUSH ရဲ့ Editorial & Creative Director Ariel Thi က accredited press အဖြစ် ကိုယ်တိုင်တက်ရောက်ပြီး footwear collections, fashion shows, emerging designers, trend presentations နဲ့ footwear industry ရဲ့ future ကို ဆွေးနွေးတဲ့ activities တွေကို လေ့လာခဲ့ပါတယ်။
From Craftsmanship to Innovation
One of the defining aspects of this year’s MICAM was the connection between heritage and innovation.
Italian footwear craftsmanship remains deeply rooted in the identity of the fair. The opening of Fashion Link Milano highlighted the cultural heritage of Italian manufacturing and the collective expertise behind Italian shoemaking, alongside the candidacy of the Italian art of shoemaking for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage recognition.
At the same time, MICAM is embracing new technologies and approaches to the industry, including artificial intelligence, predictive trend analysis, digital tools and new ways of understanding consumers.
Through MICAM Next and its collaboration with Livetrend, technology and trend forecasting became part of the wider conversation around how the footwear industry prepares for future seasons.
ဒီနှစ် MICAM Milano မှာ ထင်ရှားစွာတွေ့ရတာကတော့ Italian craftsmanship နဲ့ technology ကို သီးခြားအရာတွေအဖြစ် မမြင်တော့ဘဲ အတူတကွ ဖွံ့ဖြိုးလာတာပါ။ ရိုးရာ shoemaking heritage ကို ထိန်းသိမ်းရင်း AI, trend forecasting နဲ့ digital innovation တွေကို footwear industry ရဲ့ future အတွက် ပိုမိုအသုံးချလာတာကို တွေ့မြင်ရပါတယ်။
A New Generation, A Global Perspective
Another defining element of MICAM Milano SS27 is its focus on emerging footwear designers. Through the Emerging Designers project, the fair brings together twelve talents from different creative and cultural backgrounds, reflecting a footwear landscape that is becoming increasingly international.
This year’s selection includes Éeclat ‘ Spain; En Talons ‘ Italy; Joel Wijangco ‘ Philippines; Maliko ‘ Nigeria; Moon2gether ‘ Hong Kong; Nalebe ‘ USA; Paidal ‘ UK; Raphia ‘ Netherlands; Stefano Mugnai ‘ Italy; Te Dreamers Club ‘ Hungary; Tenconi ‘ Italy; and Wud ‘ Italy.
Their presence adds a broader creative perspective to MICAM, bringing together different approaches to design, craftsmanship, materials, identity and contemporary footwear culture.
ဒီနှစ် MICAM Milano ရဲ့ ထူးခြားချက်တစ်ခုကတော့ နိုင်ငံအသီးသီးက emerging footwear designers တွေကို တစ်နေရာတည်းမှာ တွေ့မြင်နိုင်ခြင်းပါ။ Spain, Italy, Philippines, Nigeria, Hong Kong, USA, UK, Netherlands နဲ့ Hungary က designers တွေ ပါဝင်လာတာကြောင့် footwear design ရဲ့ future ဟာ ပိုမို global ဖြစ်လာတာကို မြင်တွေ့နိုင်ပါတယ်။
MICAM as an Experience, Not Simply an Exhibition
Walking through MICAM today is no longer simply about looking at rows of footwear collections. The exhibitors themselves are part of the experience ‘ from established Italian maisons and specialist footwear brands to emerging labels and international companies.
What stands out is the level of commitment behind being present at MICAM. For many brands, exhibiting is not simply about displaying a collection; it is an opportunity to communicate brand identity, craftsmanship, positioning and long-term commitment to the footwear industry.
This was particularly visible in the presentation of established Italian names, including brands such as Artioli, where craftsmanship, heritage and luxury are communicated through every detail of the product and presentation.
At the same time, the fair offered a genuinely international view of footwear, with exhibitors and designers from Italy, Germany and across Europe and other global markets, creating a meeting point between established manufacturing traditions and new international perspectives.
Alongside the collections, trend forecasts, AI discussions, fashion shows, emerging designer presentations and industry conversations expanded the experience beyond the exhibition floor.
MICAM ကို လျှောက်ကြည့်တဲ့အခါ footwear collections တွေကို ကြည့်ရှုရုံနဲ့ မပြီးတော့ပါဘူး။ Exhibitors တွေရဲ့ presentation, craftsmanship, brand identity နဲ့ သူတို့ရဲ့ industry အပေါ် commitment ကိုပါ မြင်တွေ့နိုင်ပါတယ်။ Italian heritage brands တွေကနေ European နဲ့ global brands တွေအထိ ပါဝင်လာတာကြောင့် MICAM ဟာ footwear industry တစ်ခုလုံးရဲ့ diverse creative နဲ့ commercial landscape ကို တစ်နေရာတည်းမှာ မြင်နိုင်တဲ့ platform တစ်ခုဖြစ်လာပါတယ်။
What Comes Next?
Perhaps the most significant takeaway from MICAM Milano SS27 is that the future of footwear will not be defined by a single trend.
It will be shaped by the meeting of heritage and innovation, craftsmanship and technology, established brands and emerging designers, local expertise and global creativity.
MICAM is still a trade fair. But the September 2026 edition showed how it is becoming something broader ‘
OPENING OF FASHION LINK MILAN
The cultural heritage of Italian manufacturing: collective expertise transformed into a product
During the ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the opening of the five exhibitions.
Milan, Italy. MICAM 102. Emerging Designers.
a place to observe the footwear industry evolving in real time.
For LUSH, being there from the inside offered an opportunity not simply to report what happened, but to look at the larger picture: where is footwear going next?
From Milan, the direction appears increasingly global and technological, while remaining deeply connected to the craftsmanship that continues to define the industry.
MICAM Milano SS27 is not only showing us the footwear of tomorrow. It is showing us how the industry is preparing to create it.
MICAM Milano SS27 က footwear industry ရဲ့ future ဟာ craftsmanship တစ်ခုတည်းနဲ့ မဟုတ်တော့ဘဲ technology, innovation, emerging designers နဲ့ global creative perspectives တွေ ပေါင်းစပ်ပြီး ဖန်တီးလာမယ့် future ဖြစ်တယ်ဆိုတာကို ပြသခဲ့ပါတယ်။
By Ariel Thi
Editorial & Creative Director, LUSH
