Milan designers looked to the sea and the forest for inspiration for warm weather looks being previewed during Milan Fashion Week.

After a drenching opening day, the sun came out for the second day of womenswear previews for next spring and summer on Thursday, lightening moods and allowing the fashion crowd again to show off its style prowess on the streets of Milan, after a day spent dashing from cabs and cars to umbrellas.

Some highlights from Thursday's shows:

FENDI

Maid Marian wouldn't have needed Robin Hood to defend her in these threads and skins.

Karl Lagerfeld's new looks for Fendi projected both feminine strength with braided leather mimicking bodice armor and romanticism, with the flowing chiffony skirts and smocked fronts. She is a soft warrior, who only brings out her menacing side when warranted, striding through the forest in woven leather panties and a leather top with braided neckline, or more stealthily in a silken bubble mini-dress with blousy sleeves and a smocked bodice.

Silvia Venturini Fendi said the looks belonged in a "concrete forest," pointing to the angular sculpted trees decorating the showroom walls.

Image: lace wedding dress

"It is childish in a way. Also the craftsmanship. The flowers, the smocking, and the braiding, the micro-stitching," Fendi said.

The colors were that of the forest, with olive greens approaching browns, while opposing shades of reds or blues were mixed together. Models wore a strong stripe of eye shadow at the brow, a pretty war paint. Shoes were mostly sculpted high heels in leather, at times multi-colored, and also satin.

Fendi being Fendi, there were also summer furs, good for the forest, but "good also in the air conditioning," quipped Fendi.

PRADA

Miuccia Prada relaunches the suit for next season, a wardrobe convention to which she doesn't often return. So it only made sense that she deconstructed it.

Or in the words of her design director: "She got obsessed with it," said Fabio Zambernardi.

Once again, she played with the masculine and feminine, using traditional male tweeds and plaids. So, a loose boxy jacked was paired with a straight skirt of mix-matched patterns with an off-skew hemline.

It wasn't enough, it seems, to design a suit. But she also wanted to play with the absence of elements. So she went on to make the skirt out of transparent organza, a sort of The Emperor Has No Clothes moment.

"The sheer was almost like the memory of dresses. They were almost not finished. So there was only the top and not the bottom," Zamberenardi said backstage.

As the progression continued, the looks evolved to have a tweed skirt beneath a sheer sheath, before finally finishing with full suits in patent leather stripes and then in tweed adorned with bejeweled flower appliques the season's only motif.

Prada countered the seriousness of her suit study by sometimes adding big swaths of sequins and finishing the looks with big orb earrings, from the paper-light to the fuzzy to mini disco balls, and lacey neckwear that had a nearly tribal impact.

Shoes ranged from sling backs to high heeled sandals with triple ankle straps and shiny golden or silver boots.

The final touch: golden lipstick.

Also read: http://www.sheinbridaldress.co.uk/vintage-wedding-dresses