Luchino Magliano is in the eye of the storm—and it seems to be a pretty good storm. Bringing home the Karl Lagerfeld Award at this year’s LVMH Prize (which he shared ex-aequo with Julie Pelipas’s Bettter) is a life-changing experience. He’s surfing the (unexpected) swell of recognition with the emotional nerve that has made him survive the wild rollercoaster ride that’s part of every young designer’s journey.
“It’s a beautiful thing to be seen,” was his impromptu acceptance speech at the Prize; today’s show reiterated this sentiment. In a first for Magliano, he staged his spring collection on a catwalk, elevated from the ground “to be better seen by our people, to whom we’re incredibly grateful,” he said. “It takes lots of courage to acknowledge the desire to be seen. It’s an incredibly hard effort, even for a die-hard narcissist.”
The collection was put together before the prize, and had the same integrity and honesty that are part of Magliano’s ethos. “Our brand has always been a sort of ‘citationist’ project, in the sense that it has been generated in my hometown Bologna, is deeply imbued with its underground culture and my own experience,” he offered. “The personalities and characters we’ve been working with since day one are ethical symbols of certain beliefs and behaviors, either social or personal.”
Despite its young life, Magliano has already established a repertoire strong enough to be considered a style. In the show, best-ofs were re-enacted into “sharp, dry statements,” as the designer called them. The label’s “banal objects”—bombers, technical windbreakers, workwear garments, Sunday-best tailoring, worn-out denim—were given a ‘come to see me’ attitude, transformed into a sort of “wretched couture,” that longs to be considered a radical, drastic, impudent paradox.
Voile trailing trains; plays of attention-seeking draping; tight knots drawing the eye to hems and necklines; provocative transparencies; bombers that become sneaky stoles; dramatic scarves pocketed as utility cargos; bags that wrap around the body; a “blazer looking for holiness” intended to celebrate women; ephemeral silly hats “because in the end what we’re looking for is a roof over our heads.” Magliano’s genderless codes have evolved into a raw yet highly sophisticated manifesto that pays homage to its queer roots. “Our obsession has always been to deconstruct the male identity as we know it; that’s why we started doing what we do,” said the designer. “It’s an act of pure joy—joyfully crushing a certain idea of the masculine.”
