Magliano’s elegance on show at Pitti Uomo

A weak halo of light glimmered at the top of a monumental staircase. In semi-darkness, the models emerged from a cinematic veil of mist, and walked slowly down steps that seemed never ending, until they reached the stage set in the vast Forum Nelson Mandela sport and concert hall, and strolled amidst the spectators. On Wednesday night, Magliano staged a high-impact show in Florence, unveiling a rich, sophisticated Fall/Winter 2024-25 collection.

The staircase setting gave Bologna-born designer Luca Magliano the chance to adopt a glamorous register, his starting point being “the notion of a romantic encounter” inspired by Nostalgia, the Andrei Tarkovsky movie filmed in Italy. He dreamed up a hazily vague atmosphere, within which floated a cast of disparate characters. From a vagrant clad in shapeless old sweaters, patched-up garments and carrying a plastic bag, to a night reveller wearing ruby-red velour mules, black sequin trousers and a jacquard mohair sweater with a large white cat embroidered on it.

They were joined on stage by a mechanic in a stained, washed-denim jumpsuit, a rocker type wearing a gilet bedecked with pins and brooches, a tough guy character flaunting his virile, sensual attitude in ample leather trousers and a tank top peeking out from under a raglan-sleeved sweater, and dandyish types in long cashmere overcoat and double-breasted pinstripe suit, or in an all-white total look. In the latter case, the suit was worn by a woman and matched with black sneakers and a bandeau top covering the chest.

The collection featured many women’s looks, which Luca Magliano had started to introduce a few seasons ago. He said that “we need to look up to women for their style, their elegance. I think that classic style is synonymous with a kind of hyper-femininity which can also be turned the other way round. My women wear suits over a flattened bust. The contemporary body cannot be binary. Gender is a landscape, a journey, within which different identities have needs they must be able to express through fashion.”

In January 2018, Luca Magliano staged his first Pitti Uomo show, after being recognised at the Who Is On Next? menswear awards in 2017. Six years later, with the Karl Lagerfeld award he won at the 2023 LVMH Prize under his belt, he is back in Florence as Pitti Uomo’s guest designer. This show has fully confirmed the potential glimpsed earlier in his career, exhibiting a coherent style that has strengthened and purified over the years.

From its inception, the Magliano label developed around two central themes: body and gender identity issues, and popular culture. Luca Magliano remarked that “beauty is an anti-fascist word,” adding that “we’ve adopted a type of elegance as our benchmark,” the elegance of the disenfranchised. “This is the social and political aspect of what we’re doing,” said the designer, who has reinterpreted classic menswear staples with great care and a genuine passion for Italian tailoring expertise.

Proof of this are the new collaborations he unveiled at the show, with two Italian style icons: the wonderful tailored jackets typical of the Neapolitan sartorial tradition, hand-made by Kiton, and five models of Borsalino hats, amusingly refashioned as jolly, pointed party headgear. “It’s a kind of cute trick,” said Luca Magliano, who has always been keen to upend and subvert the codes of fashion. 

He studied at the Libera Università delle Arti, an art faculty in his hometown of Bologna, before starting out in fashion with an internship at Alessandro Dell’Acqua. In 2016, he launched the Magliano menswear line, backed by Arcari & Co., a long-established Italian textiles producer from Faenza. The label is currently distributed via 70 multibrand retailers chiefly in China, South Korea, Japan and Europe, notably Italy.

In January 2023, he powered up his organisation by joining forces with Underscore District, a fashion start-up accelerator specialised in digital solutions led by Edoardo Di Luzio, and launching the label’s e-shop. He also set up the Magliano srl company, with the two partners holding equal stakes and Arcari as a minority shareholder.