MILAN, June 24, 2007 (AFP) - A week after Italian designer Gianfranco Ferre died the fashion house that bears his name on Sunday presented its summer show for men to a tearful audience that gave him a posthumous ovation.

Gianfranco Ferre fashion show in Milano June 24th - Photo : Giuseppe Cacace/AFP

As each male model presented a design by Ferre warm applause broke out and when the show was over the audience of guests, journalists, buyers and professionals, many weeping or obviously in the grip of emotion, rose to their feet and applauded for 10 minutes.

"Of couse I'm moved and the parade today was the right place to pay tribute to this personality who was in my view the only person capable of creating high-fashion level ready-to-wear," Mario Boselli, president of the national fashion chamber, told AFP at the Milan show.

Gianfranco Ferre's picture during Giorgio Armani fashion show Photo : Filippo Monteforte/AFP

The collection followed Ferre's preliminary designs and showed a selection of items tailored in very fluid dark blue materials, used both for formal and casual wear.

White was widely used with light see-through shirts and embroidered jellabas to wear with swimming costumes.

"My collection for men for spring-summer summons up discovery, development, research," Ferre wrote in a statement describing his collection distributed to reporters.

"Development of forms and search for new configurations, rounded although flawlessly executed, in the respect of a code proper to my way of 'feeling' male style."

Ferre died on July 17 aged 62 after a brain haemorrhage and was buried in his birthplace of Legnano near Milan.