Jo Winterbottom, Milan: British fashion designers Burberry and Pringle took historic themes for their Milan shows, with the former bringing a modern twist to armour and the latter updating traditional cable knits.

Burberry, best known for its beige and black check linings for raincoats, has been showing in Milan for about six years, while Pringle is presenting its third women's wear collection in what the designers see as a major centre for fashion.

Burberry's Christopher Bailey said Milan is "a huge fashion capital," adding "you certainly have a bigger audience here". For Pringle designer Clare Waight Keller, Italy's financial capital is "a very important place to be for our sales, it's the commercial centre of Europe."

At Burberry's show, Bailey sent models out in padded tunics belted at the waist or in parka style jackets and big gauntlets, a cross between medieval knights and motorbike messengers. To a soundtrack of David Bowie and The Rolling Stones, girls stepped out on a cream stone catwalk largely in black, with soldier-style buttons and wide belts with three-tier buckles, while black leather boots were groin-high.

"I wanted the mood of this girl to be a bit stronger and a bit sexier and I think darker is always a bit sexier," Bailey told Reuters after the show. "I took inspiration from the Burberry (knight on a) horse, and I wanted the idea of this tunic, taking the length from this tunic and belting it, putting the emphasis on the waist, and on the arms, the gauntlets, the big boots," he said.

The military theme was picked up by the handful of men which Bailey dressed in army-style trench coats. No checks were seen for either them or the women. Pringle also turned its back on trademarks with none of its famous Argyll designs in the collection, which featured lots of heavy cable knits contrasting with silk satin frills.

"Pringle is taking a direction which is much more about fabric and really thinking of knitwear in a new way," Waight Keller said after her show. Models sported huge cable knit collars or yokes on satin-rich metallic dresses, while sleeves were short to the elbow and either frilled or rib-knit.

Both British designers kept the focus on black, with only a few colours peeping through, while their Italian colleagues Giorgio Armani and Dolce&Gabbana had diverted earlier in the day from that tradition in either dove greys and dusky pinks for Armani or leopard print and brassy golds for the D&G line.