Luca Magliano has left the foggy plains of Emilia-Romagna’s Pianura Padana (the flat valley of the Po river) where he grew up, hauling his caravanserai of Italian provincial characters to Paris, and decamping from Milan in what he insists is not a midlife crisis, but a “necessary adventure.” After eight years of doing things one way, comfort began to feel suspicious. Paris, with its romantic mythologies and new faces, offers a reset: smaller shows, fresh energy, fewer habits. Not a victory lap, but a strategic relocation, downsizing to grow again, swapping cities so things can change and recharge.
At a preview, he said: “What we’ve brought to Paris is a collection precise in its chaos, an effort to educate, or perhaps discipline, our passion for small acts of disorder. It’s also intended as a kind of self-portrait to date. Our fixation on what we call the ‘elegance of the provinces’ has long been our signature; now we want to strip it of geography and recast it as a state of mind, a posture, a way of seeing fashion.”
The collection was largely tailored in the slouchy Magliano way, but animated by gesture. One of its guiding impulses was to arrest cinematic movement within the garment itself: coats sliced with organza at face level that, in motion, cast a humid halo around the wearer. “For us, that tension is tailoring at its most romantic,” Magliano remarked. Jackets had what he called a “taxi” attitude, as if they’ve been left waiting out in the cold, their collars fitted with scarves that wrap the neck like an afterthought. Styling was folded into the garment itself, collapsing object and function into one; it was intended not as decoration but as infrastructure, rerouting the purpose of the clothes. The function, however, was poetic rather than practical: a classic bent to romantic ends. “Our method has always been reinterpreting the familiar, softening formality for those uneasy with it,” said Magliano. “The proposition remains unchanged: classic, yes, but queer.”
To present the collection, Magliano staged a live act in a dimly lit, red-velvet-lined space where the soulful piano soundtrack was whistled-over by a singer. Titled “Unplugged” in the acoustic sense, it signaled a deliberate return to basics: Magliano pared back, unadorned, reduced to its quintessence. The reference point was the intimacy of 1990s MTV Unplugged, like Nirvana’s famous set, or the Roseland gig by Portishead. The influence filtered into the colors, styling, and mood. Words were deliberately excluded. Whistling, performed live by Elena Somarè to music composed by Aase Nielsen, became the chosen carrier of a distinctly provincial soul. “It’s a sound that’s also a bit cafone (boor)”, he joked.
The collection was disciplined to the point of restraint. Each look functioned like a calling card: a précis of the work so far, its scent rather than its spectacle. Curbing performative exuberance, this season wasn’t about an aesthetic choice but a necessity, a way to restate the house’s core strengths and prevent the message from fracturing. That urgency is inseparable from a reflection on the present moment. “There’s no point denying it: Chaos is everywhere, and we needed this work to exist within a context that was precise, ordered,” Magliano said. “In the current rush toward increasingly violent ideals, values centered on brutal strength, aggression, and a renewed right-wing rhetoric, I found myself asking a simple question: What is Magliano for? Our work has always aligned itself elsewhere: with fragility, a specific emotional register, specific bodies. It felt essential to continue saying the same things, with the same intensity, but with greater clarity.”
Among those working in tailoring and proposing a vision of classic clothing, Magliano wants to be a house that makes space for gender that is not a point of exclusion; for emotion as a legit value. “That conviction led us, almost paradoxically, to restraint: not to add, but to subtract,” said Magliano. “The silhouettes are conceived as small manifestos: balanced, concise, and dense with meaning.”
