AC Milan and Inter Milan Took Part in Vogue World During Milan Fashion Week.

Roger Hampel

Image based on the following sources: AC Milan, Inter Milan, Canva

“There are a handful of cities in the world that have football teams with their own international brand.” That was how Duncan Niederauer, then President of Venezia FC, described the relationship between football clubs and their home cities in a 2024 interview with Football Business Journal.

Paris and Barcelona were obvious examples. In Italy, he pointed to Rome, Florence, Venice — and Milan.

AC Milan and Inter Milan walking the Vogue World runway during Milan Fashion Week offered a particularly literal illustration of that relationship.

Players and representatives from both clubs appeared at Vogue World: Milano on September 22 at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, wearing their clubs’ current match shirts alongside figures from fashion, entertainment, culture and sport.

This was not a new sponsorship deal, nor did either club launch a fashion collection with Vogue. It was something simpler: two football brands leveraging one of their city’s most internationally recognisable industries as a platform for visibility.

Six Club Representatives, Two Milan Football Brands Milan

AC Milan was represented by Ruben Loftus-Cheek from the men’s first team, Lorenzo Ossola, captain of Milan Futuro, and Ashley Hu from the women’s team.

The three representatives appeared in different AC Milan match kits, giving the club representation across its men’s, development and women’s football operations.

Inter’s delegation followed a similar structure.

Men’s first-team players Hakan Çalhanoğlu and Benjamin Pavard were joined by Angelica Montaperto, with the trio appearing in Inter’s 2026/27 match shirts.

Inter President and CEO Giuseppe Marotta also attended, alongside Katherine Ralph, a member of the club’s Board of Directors representing controlling shareholder Oaktree.

For both clubs, the football shirt itself was the fashion product on display. There was no need to redesign it for the occasion or separate the activation from the clubs’ sporting identity.

Milan Is Part of the Proposition

The more interesting business point is not simply that footballers appeared at a fashion show.

It is where they did it.

Milan Fashion Week is an established global platform for the city. AC Milan and Inter are similarly among its most internationally visible institutions. Vogue World brought those two ecosystems into the same physical space.

That gives Milan’s clubs something not every football organisation can replicate.

A club can build an international brand through sporting success, players, content, sponsorship and international expansion. But only a relatively small number can combine that with a home city whose name already carries substantial global meaning of its own.

This was the point Niederauer made in his 2024 conversation with Football Business Journal. For Milan’s football clubs, fashion is one of the clearest examples of that advantage.

Football Shirts Move Into a Different Context

The activation also illustrates how the football shirt increasingly operates beyond the stadium.

For AC Milan and Inter, Vogue World placed match kits in front of an audience and media environment different from those surrounding Serie A or the Champions League.

Yet neither club had to move particularly far from its core product.

The players still wore football shirts. The club identities remained immediately recognisable. What changed was the context in which those assets were presented.

That distinction matters.

Football clubs have spent years developing lifestyle collections, fashion collaborations and cultural campaigns in an attempt to reach audiences outside traditional sport. Vogue World provided AC Milan and Inter with access to that environment while allowing their existing matchwear to remain at the centre of the activation.

Two Clubs, One City Platform

There is an obvious rivalry between AC Milan and Inter, but internationally they also benefit from the same geographic brand.

Both can represent Milan alongside football.

That does not mean the city automatically creates an international football brand. Sporting performance and commercial execution remain fundamental. But it provides an additional asset that cannot simply be manufactured by a marketing department.

Vogue World was a useful demonstration of how that asset can work.

Six representatives from the two clubs walked through one of Milan’s best-known landmarks during one of the city's most internationally visible weeks, wearing football shirts rather than conventional runway collections.

For one evening, Milan’s football brands became part of Milan’s fashion platform - and the city connected the two.