Magliano built his label on the spirit of Bologna’s underground culture and his own lived experience. The characters it celebrates are stand-ins for the brand’s values: forward-thinking, communal, humanistic, craft-first. The designer is reluctant to share details about his upcoming show, but he does allow that it will be both “cinematic” and “nostalgic,” calling it a “very specific conversation with the word classic.” On the Pitti runway, he’ll unveil collaborations with Kiton and Borsalino, “two Italian companies representative of a very radical way of doing things.”
The heritage labels reflect Magliano’s ambitions for his own brand. “Kiton does everything by hand, and they are very famous all over the world, yet they are also very silent,” says the designer. “I’m fascinated by the way they grew, building something big while staying local and [committed] to their principles.” The same applies to Borsalino, says Magliano: “These are two examples of how we’re talking about classics but within bigger realities that talk about Made in Italy, which is what we do.”
Looking forward, Magliano is aiming for measured growth. “Everybody wants to be big, because the bigger you are the more you can do,” he says. “But I don’t want to do this in a way that I don’t feel in control of what we’re doing. This is my pace, I’m slow but incessant, and that will continue.”
If he’s ridden a wave of popularity after his LVMH Prize, his turn at Pitti will surely amp up the attention. His goals for 2024 also include building a stronger presence in the US, leveraging this opportunity and the partnerships to cement his name in a global market. But he’s not depending on wholesale, and instead sells primarily direct-to-consumer through his own e-commerce site. “They are now smaller,” he says of his wholesale accounts, acknowledging the shifting multi-brand retailer landscape, “but we did not feel it like other brands, it could have been very dramatic.”