We Are Made in Italy: digital fashion show highlights Italian diversity

Five little known black designers took spotlight on final day of Milan fashion week

The fashion designer Claudia Gisele Ntsama's cocktail dresses are a feat of engineering, their spools of unravelled thread seemingly suspended around the body as if held in a spider's web. Ntsama, one of five little known black Italian designers in the spotlight on the final day of Milan fashion week, supported herself by working as a cleaner while she created the collection, for which she cites the high-concept Japanese designers Junya Watanabe and Yohji Yamamoto as inspiration.

The Haitian-Italian designer Stella Jean, a protege of Giorgio Armani who launched her label a decade ago, describes Ntsama as a great talent of haute couture". Jean, a campaigner for equality and diversity in Italian fashion, believes the challenges Ntsama has faced renders her story all that much more extraordinary and admirable, considering how sophisticated and at what a high level her work is executed".