In January, not long after returning from his winter holiday, Emanuele Farneti, the 42-year-old editor of Italian GQ, was chatting with a media friend when the subject of Italian Vogue, the powerful fashion magazine whose revered longtime editor Franca Sozzani had died at age 66 the month before, came up.

“They’ll just have to close it,” the friend said to Mr. Farneti. “No one is going to be able to follow her. There’s nobody.” Mr. Farneti made some noncommittal noises. Then he changed the subject. Because what his friend did not know was that he had already been offered — and accepted — the job.

“I understood why she said it,” Mr. Farneti said dryly a few months later in the lobby of the Hôtel Costes in Paris, drinking a Coke. He was in the city for the couture shows and was wearing a Prada suit, Church’s shoes (Prada owns Church’s) — and a Swatch.

“I wouldn’t have thought of me necessarily either,” he said.

Yet on Friday, after seven months of staying relatively under the radar, Mr. Farneti will be the host of the biggest party of Milan Fashion Week, a 1,000-guest bash in the industrial space once used for Gucci’s shows. The former Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci is creative director of the event, called “The New Beginning” in celebration of, well, Mr. Farneti’s beginning, with Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” as the theme and performances by Sky Ferreira and Primal Scream, among others. It will be as close to an official coronation as fashion can have.