There was a carnival on the streets of Milan today: confetti, costumes, streamers. Someone told me it was the Milan equivalent of Halloween. When I asked why it was happening now, he shrugged his shoulders.

There was something of a carnival feel after Jil Sander too, the press leaping to their feet and rushing onto the catwalk to congratulate Raf Simons on his final show for the label. You don't see that everyday. This was an exceptional show - the circumstances guaranteed that. The clothes were a considered conclusion to Simons' work at the house, quiet in their predominantly delicate pastel colours, and stately in their couture-inspired shape. In short, they were no carnival.

The final show of our fourth day at Milan fashion week was Peter Dundas' Autumn/Winter 2012 offering for Emilio Pucci. If any designer was likely to overshadow a carnival, it's him but this was a remarkably restrained offering from Dundas' hands, opening with a trio of slashed black dresses and with a few less embellish-to-the-hilt slit-to-the-crotch numbers than usual. All the more impressive for it, too.

Yesterday, I twice found myself in cavernous rooms looking at Prada frocks with an analytical eye. One time was at Palazzo Reale, for a presentation of the concept behind the Prada/Schiaparelli exhibition Impossible Conversations, due to open at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on 10 May 2012. The other was a re-see of the Autumn/Winter 2012 collection Mrs Prada showed on Thursday, held not at the contemporary art-jumbled showroom on Via Maffei but in the cavernous Prada show space at Via Fogazzaro. Maybe they want to get all the wear they can out of that gargantuan carpet?

It was interesting seeing the two back to back, because you couldn't help but draw similarities between them. The purple and orange palette of Thursday's collection was reflected in a Prada skirt from Autumn/Winter 1999. Miuccia herself was wearing a geometric-print duster coat which could gave been new, or equally could have hailed from the 1996 'Ugly Chic' collection. 'Ugly Chic' is incidentally one of the concepts to be explored in the Met's survey, which will examine the aesthetic conversations between Schiap and Miuch pieces, looking at the way both designers used concepts such as surrealism, decoration and indeed ugliness to question the fashion conventions of their time.

She may be another female Italian designer, but Donatella Versace has nothing to add to the ugly chic conversation. The Versace woman doesn't want to look ugly. She wants to look sexy. Donatella delivered that in spades last night, in a glittering re-imagining of the Middle Ages via mid-century Las Vegas. Everyone else saw Hollywood star Roony Mara in those blunt-cut fringes - maybe including Donatella herself. I saw Joan of Arc, albeit Joan of Arc at the disco. The technique behind the laser-cut leather mesh and chain-mail evening gowns were inspiring. The vision was old-fashioned (figure-of-eight voluptuousness sketched across the body through short and long dresses and flared coats worn over skin) but the tools with which it was rendered felt modern. It added up to a powerful if slightly unwearable whole.

Today, after an excellent Bottega Veneta show by Tomas Maier, the must-see is Raf Simons' final collection for Jil Sander.

I try to avoid speaking in the first person when reviewing the catwalk shows for SHOWstudio. Something Suzy Menkes said to me during her In Fashion interview stuck in my brain like a wayward piece of shrapnel: 'I don't write about things that I like myself...  that's always been my biggest beef'. Indeed, it's not about what 'I' like - it's about fashion, and what's right for now. 

At the same time, fashion will always be subjective. It's difficult to divorce yourself from... well, yourself. Try as they might, so many British journalists won't like Fendi's marvellous Autumn/Winter collection because of an almost inbred English aversion to fur. British magazines and newspapers refuse to feature it, so much so that the only place in the world Prada offered the faux version of their Spring/Summer 2011 humbug-striped fox stoles for editorial use was - you guessed it - the UK. Yesterday morning, when a springbok jacket turned on Fendi catwalk to reveal a truly beastly bustle-like protrusion of fur above the model's buttocks, I saw a number of British editors visibly blanch. I thought it was fantastic. But that's also subjective (and I was raised on the Eclect Dissect hijinks of Simon Costin and Alexander McQueen, after all).

Equally, while I divorced myself from Gucci enough to appreciate Frida Giannini's glam-Goth direction for winter, it failed raise my pulse-rate. I'm sure lots of people will buy into that velvet-wrapped dark dream she's hawking, but I won't be one of them.

That's sort of the issue with Milan. After London - where you have to dry-clean the blood, sweat and tears out of the clothes designers have lovingly crafted - there's too much product here and not enough soul. I remember an old story of Tom Ford editing his Gucci show collection by pulling garments he didn't like off their hangers and letting them slither to the floor. Next! A slightly younger Ford tale was of the Yves Saint Laurent seamstress who quit after Ford cut her dress from his first Yves Saint Laurent show. She'd been hand-embroidering it for four weeks straight. That's a fair bit of emotion stitched into a garment. They really don't make 'em like that anymore, and never did in Milan. That's why Ford didn't get her problem when he sent that gown slithering to the ground. His latest collection, presented in London by the Lord Ford himself, contained a sweater of stretch tulle with individually applied crocodile scales, retailing at £18,000. Wonder if he'd toss that onto the ground?

The (subjective) highlight of Milan thusfar was an excellent Prada show last night, clean in shape with rich jewelled textures. There wasn't too much going on beneath the bedazzled surface, but you did want to wear this stuff, stat. The revived Prada geometrics from the Autumn/Winter 1996 collection were fun for fashion trainspotters like me. There was an original pair in bri-nylon on eBay that sold out an hour after the show. How's that for an instant market thumbs-up? Much more effective than a Facebook like.

Today, in a break from catwalking, I'm attending a press conference on the Prada/Schiaparelli exhibition to open at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art thus summer. Then a re-see of last night's Prada collection and a presentation of the latest Sergio Rossi collection from Francesco Russo, before the Versace show.

This London fashion week, perhaps more than any other, I seem to be considering the demands of commerce when writing about the shows. That's neither a good nor bad thing, generally. It's simply a fact of fashion. This season it feels like a fact that's forefront in designers' minds, sometimes deadening their creative impact but other times pushing them to ingenious new heights. I'm thinking of Louise Gray when I write that, whose show yesterday was a personal best. Then again she's always been ingenious: the big difference this time was that you could actually wear it. Christopher de Vos and Peter Pilotto's offering this morning may have been hardcore digi-print at its most eye-popping, but you could easily have imagined you were watching our twenty-first century equivalent of Tom Wolfe's social x-rays sashay their way to a penthouse cocktail do or the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute Ball. Richard Nicoll (above) is the one I'm still thinking about, because rather than blandly accepting the idea of fashion as product first and foremost, his presentation seemed to question the illogical conclusion if our insatiable appetite for fashion. And, at the same time, offered desirable, wearable and (whisper it) saleable clothes. Christopher Kane is next.

Whirling myself like a dervish from show to show, I rarely get chance to plonk my carcass down and tap out an ode to a show that I unashamedly and unabashedly adore. More's the pity when you're confronted with fantastical phantasmagoria like Sister by Sibling - pom-poms, multicoloured goat fur, lashings of leopard and sequin-studded face-masks to boot. Just the thing to rob a terribly fashionable bank in - but you're bound to get caught. It warrants a second glance at the NEWGEN stands over the next few days. Incidentally, Katie Grand - LOVE magazine Editor in Chief and one of the most influential ladies in fashion - was the styling hand behind this blinder. She's up for Giles on Monday too, before legging it to Paris for Loewe and Louie Vouie. Busy G.