MILAN — Any showgoer who has attended one of Magliano’s recent runway displays knows the designer’s cinematic showmanship is as central to his creativity as his soulful concoctions.

Luca Magliano has consistently sought to instill humble poetry into his shows, eschewing postcard-like clichés in favor of a more melancholy and nostalgic view rooted in provincial Italy.

For the brand’s spring 2026 display on Saturday during Milan Fashion Week, it’s ditching the catwalk and inviting guests to “CineMagliano” instead, the screening of a movie directed by Thomas Hardiman at a still undisclosed location.

Toying with a new format has resulted in many perks that have succeeded in bringing the brand’s expressive vocabulary forward, Magliano contended.

“It stemmed from universal and undeniable complexities, which triggered us to reflect. It’s been a few seasons now that the [fashion] system is weary and we’re thinking about alternatives. The movie is not far from our vision. At a time when we’re trying to challenge the status quo, it holds meaning,” the designer explained.

He said fashion weeks are seeing fewer participants and attendees, yet the costs related to presenting a collection remain very high. As a result, “we wanted to avoid something that would entail [physical] presence, and think about content that could be experienced by everybody in the same way. I like mounting shows, it’s something I didn’t know how to do and learned with Magliano, but there is much more we like,” he said.

“We are committed to doing something new and avoiding the fragility that comes from always repeating the same format. It’s an opportunity for our young brand to challenge itself with something new,” Magliano offered.

Most of all, he loves cinema.

Hardiman, known for his avant-garde filmmaking, is among his favorite directors. The British director and writer’s debut feature film, the murder mystery story “Medusa Deluxe,” won the Magliano team over after its release in 2022.

“Thomas represents the working class in a super glamorous and redeeming way, imbued with fantasy and irony,” Magliano said, touting the decision to work with a professional at the start of his career and expressive journey.

Every Magliano collection “always starts from an image, and the vibration of that image needs to echo immediately, regardless of the format,” the designer said.

Spring’s image is “a Shakespearian story set against the province, which really resonates with me,” he added.

To be sure, the province — with its suburban conventions and conflicts, blots and beauty — has always been integral to the ethos of Magliano, who is based in Bologna, a university city in the Emilia Romagna region, far from the glitz and glamour of Milan.

“Throughout my life in the province I’ve always been exposed to complexity and contradictions. Compared to urban life that tends to wear you down, I find the opportunity to avoid banalization,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that the Magliano brand resembles me, but there is definitely an overlap when it comes to the province [references].”

The short movie for spring — whose title is being kept under wraps until the screening — is set on a ferry boat trip, its destination unknown and irrelevant, Magliano added.

“It’s a very democratic, people’s place. This, too, triggered us, to subtract fashion from the sterile environment of the catwalk and set it against a real, rough scenario, not something we created and elevated to the realm of make-believe reality, but reality itself,” Magliano said.

The characters — embodied by a diverse cast that includes actors, models and street-cast regular people — spend the night aboard the ferryboat adapting to the unknown timeframe and location of their journey. “Nobody knows where they are headed, we only know that they are confined on this ark’,” he said.

Hinged on realism, the movie is collective, with all characters commanding equal importance, spotlighted by the camera as they have conversations, interact with one another, spend time on the phone, and more.

“Through these conversations the audience gets to discover the tribulations of the passengers, who are bound to have a moment of collective redemption at the end of the night, when they all witness together the sunrise on the main deck,” Magliano explained.

There is of course a social and political undercurrent to the movie, as is customary for Magliano, going against the grain and reclaiming time to pause and reflect.

As the designer was developing the concept with his team, they nicknamed it “Sabbatical Défilé [Runway Show].”

“It’s about claiming and reclaiming time, pausing, which is what we are constantly prevented from doing. It’s about the need to step back and veer away from the standards,” Magliano said.

The boat itself becomes a tool for social commentary, charged with references to the legend of creation and the biblical Noah’s Ark story.

“It’s an object that saves us. People are protected in the middle of the sea by the boat, and yet very much exposed, it’s a tension between these opposites,” he said.

“The sunrise was paramount for me, it needed a cinematographic representation to convey the idea of an act of collective redemption. The undercurrent to the entire collection is to make-do-and-mend for all the tears [in society],” he offered.

Despite the cinematic setting and “the necessity to give characters a full ‘parure’ [look] that would complete their identity,” as Magliano put it, the spring collection is only in theory a stage costume wardrobe. Rooted in a sophisticated reality, and sublimation of everyday summer dressing, it stems from the concept and aesthetics of free camping, with pieces that become modular via functional or decorative details.

“When we toy with function, we’re hyper provocative to the point that we probably love non-functional fashion better,” Magliano said with a chuckle.

Cue crepe de chine silk plied into sportswear concoctions, an overcoat turned into a chemisier dress, panels of organza running down the back of a blazer, scarves and foulards turned into barely there frocks, “the baseline of summer dressing, when dressing up [in the heat] is a no-go for many,” Magliano said.

“It’s about rushed luggage [that our characters prepared] in which pieces blended with one another chaotically,” he said.

A fashion design graduate of Bologna’s Libera Università delle Arti, Magliano cut his teeth with Alessandro Dell’Acqua’s team in Milan prior to moving back to Bologna in 2013 to work with designer Manuela Arcari on the Ter et Bantine fashion line. In 2015, he decided to go solo and launched the I Was Naked women’s brand, which has since been discontinued. The following year, Arcari, who is also the president of Arcari e Co., offered him the chance to produce his own line under license and the Magliano brand was born.

In 2018 the brand made its runway debut at Pitti Uomo with a collection dubbed “Wardrobe for a Man in Love,” before joining the official Milan Men’s Fashion Week calendar.

His style and approach to fashion have evolved since. What started as bold collections filled with references to the ‘80s, different subcultures, “small-town boys” from his hometown and occasional tongue-in-cheek and irreverent prints,matured into vintage-looking menswear imbued with charming tailoring and a sense of color. In 2023 he scooped up the Karl Lagerfeld Special Jury Prize at the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers.

At the end of 2022, the company sold a minority stake to fashion business accelerator Underscore District to support the next stage of its growth and has since opened its online store, revamped the website, focused on accessories and collaborations, and increased its wholesale footprint. As of June, Magliano counted 130 stockists, including Bergdorf Goodman, Dover Street Market in Paris, 10 Corso Como and Boontheshop, among others.

“It’s really hard and painful to make long-term projects and this fuels confusion,” Magliano said about the brand’s next business steps.

“It’s always a matter of balancing the efforts made so far, but showing flexibility to adapt to different scenarios,” he said, noting how, for example, the U.S. was overperforming until recently but the prospects are now less rosy than a year ago.

“We’re looking at approaching retail with a clear vision, without undermining the relationship with our stockists, which continues to be based on mutual trust and exchange,” Magliano explained. “Until recently we thought retail would be a quantum leap, but we’re realizing that mixing different strategies could actually be helpful,” he said, pointing for example to the opening of shop-in-shop formats.

“We need to step on the gas, and be able to change and adapt,” Magliano concluded.