Exclusive interview with Luca Magliano, founder of Magliano

We had the pleasure to interview the incredible Magliano’s founder and creative director, Luca Magliano. Winner of Vogue Who’s on Next, Luca founded his brand in 2016 and since then he regularly shows his collections in Milano Men’s Fashion Week.

He is one of the most promising young names of Italian designers, and he reflects his strong passion for Italian literature and cinema in his collections.

Based in Bologna where he grew up, Luca actively takes part in the city’s underground LGBTQ+ scene, with a commitment to independent organizations that fight for minorities’ rights.

Style-wise, we can see strong references from the 90s and early 00s in his designs, and his collections are always deeply emotional and rich in detail. He draws inspiration from Italian classical aesthetics subverting garments according to his vision, “messing up with the wardrobe fundamentals”. He’s very connected to the local underground scene, with personalities such as Isabella Santacroce, Italian novelist with a strong gothic aesthetics that’s the voice of his latest collection’s video.

Seeing Luca’s creations made us wonder which is the inspiration behind his latest release, the Spring/Summer 2021 collection. He told us that he alongside his team, choose a discussion topic from which all the ideas for the collection are born. For this collection, the discussion topic was ‘a pirate’s wardrobe’

We basically imagined our hero’s characters (that basically are always mentioned in our research of style) as pirates trying to cope with a dystopian/utopian future.

His style is also influenced by his country and what he calls the ‘Italian province but with kind of a romantic and very characteristic connotation.’ And as a piece of advice he says:

Weird is the most effective of all styles.

Q: What made you become a fashion designer? 

A: I don’t know exactly, I think I’ve always had a passion for fabrics and a fetish for clothes in general. This inevitably brought me to interpret on a deeper nerdy level the meaning of clothing.

Q: Which is the most important accomplishment you’ve reached? 

A: (Luca laughs) for me surviving season after season is a big accomplishment itself. It’s an exercise of bravery and passion, and facing this risk makes me feel proud both of myself and of the people who work with me.

Q: What does inspire you in order to create new pieces?

A: Every season we choose a topic of discussion from where all the ideas of design are born. For example this season the topic was “a pirate’s wardrobe”: it’s a way of talking about reality in a dreamy analogical way. 

Q: You have a pretty unique style. How would you define it and which references does it have?

A: I think what we do is a raw pret-a-porter dedicated to ritual individuals. Of course, we reference a lot the tradition of Italian menswear mostly from the ’80s and ’90s but the real spirit of our vision lays in the magic realism of the “provincia italiana”, literally “Italian province” but with kind of a romantic and very characteristic connotation. 

Q: Can you tell us more about the background of your last collection?

A: We basically imagined our hero’s characters (that basically are always mentioned in our research of style) as pirates trying to cope with a dystopian/utopian future.

Q: Can you define yourself as a person and as a creative director of Magliano?

A: A nervous Italian gay man in his thirties. As a director of my project, I’m obsessed with the quality of ideas rather than form.

Q: How did you start your professional career and how did you start on Milan Fashion Week? 

A: I studied with this beautiful person called Barbara Nerozzi which I consider my mentor, she showed me fashion as an intellectual thing and I fell in love with the idea of becoming a fashion designer.  I started showing in Milan after winning a contest held by Pitti Uomo, then Camera della Moda supported all our last shows.

Q: How did the brand Magliano start?

A: After a series of job interviews that did not work well. I could not find any job and I decided to start something of my own.

Q: Which is the brand’s essence? 

A: Basically it is about treating with wild irony a stereotyped ideal of manhood by messing with the fundamentals of a classic wardrobe.

Q: How does your hometown and your country influence your style? 

A: Deeply. The Italian Provincia is the scenario of all the brand staging and the core of our research in terms of aesthetics.

Q: How do you think gender is represented in fashion? Do you strive to make a change in this field? 

A: Fashion has a tendency for commodifying issues like this. Gender is an open conversation that needs as many representations as human beings are. 

Q: Which is your biggest dream as a fashion designer? 

A: To have a place of my own where to work, to have my own company. 

Q: How do you see the evolution of fashion? Does it really evolve or are we going backwards, as for example using 80s trends?

A: Fashion always changes and even if it sometimes looks at the past, it’s always projected to the future. I don’t think that trends exist when people or designers are interested in the ’80s is because they are studying the essence of that, learning a lesson, assimilating conceptual information that is then delivered to reality with a specific sense of technology, specific weather, a specific sense of fabric and political sensibility. In my opinion, all of these make an evolution. 

Q: Would you give any kind of advice to young designers and to our readers?

A: A simple lesson that my favorite person in the world once thought to me: weird is the most effective of all styles.

Exclusive interview for Vanity Teen online!