Following the global economic downturn last year, designers and executives of the Milan menswear shows are hoping that Milan Fashion Week mark the beginning of a fashion recovery.

According to Reuters, Gianluca Brozzetti, chief executive of fashion house Roberto Cavalli, said they were seeing positive signs and that the sales hemorrhages seen at the end of 2008 and in the first half of 2009 had stopped.

The first day of Fashion Week was a huge success, with designers drawing their inspiration from war, vampires, and in one reporter’s opinion, a 1982 Walt Disney film.

Christopher Bailey’s show at Burberry mirrored an extended military exercise with the design impetus to “protect, explore and inspire”. The Giorgio Armani team focused their designs on “military romanticism”, in an effort to rejuvenate their label by shortening quilted down jackets to waist length and reducing their colours to a near monochrome, reported The New York Times.

Italian designer Maurizio Modica’s fall and winter collection boasted a gothic motif recalling the vampire flick, Twilight, with an introduction featuring angels and shattering stained glass, the pale models with accented dark eyes paraded down the runway in neutral colors, reported MTV.

According to The LA Times, Versace stole the show, drawing its collective inspiration from the 1982 Walt Disney film “Tron” and William Gibson’s 1984 novel “Neuromancer”, with heavy influences also coming from “Terminator” and the dispersive prism album cover art of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”.