In short: Magliano is the Bologna-born label that turned the Italian provinces, their bars, their nights and their dishevelled elegance, into a poetic kind of tailoring that has won the Karl Lagerfeld Prize and a place on the official Paris calendar. The story, the garments with unforgettable names, and where to find it in Italy's best stores.

There is an Italy whose story fashion has rarely told: that of the dance halls out in the plains, of bars under the porticoes, of good suits kept for special occasions and then worn until they lose their shape. Magliano has built an entire language on precisely this Italy, and it has done so with a sartorial seriousness that no amount of irony can hide. The result is the most interesting phenomenon in independent Italian fashion: a brand born in Bologna in 2017 that today shows in Paris, without having lost an ounce of its strangeness along the way.

Bologna, 2017: a wardrobe for a man in love

Luca Magliano, born in Bologna in 1987, founded the brand in his home city, and the choice was ideological rather than logistical: Bologna, with its history of movements and countercultures, is the lens through which the designer looks at the Italian male wardrobe. The debut was electrifying: in 2017 came victory at Who Is On Next, Vogue Italia's competition for new talent, and the following year the first show at Pitti Uomo with a collection whose title was already a manifesto, "Guardaroba per Uomo Innamorato", a wardrobe for a man in love. In January 2024 Pitti called him back to Florence as Guest Designer, a consecration on home ground.

In between came the recognition that changed everything: in 2023 Magliano won the Karl Lagerfeld Prize at the LVMH Prize, the award with which the world's largest luxury group singles out the talents destined to matter. For an independent label from the provinces, deliberately outside every centre, it was confirmation that the road less travelled was the right one.

Elegance that is wrong on purpose

The brand's codes always start from the fundamentals of the Italian male wardrobe, the suit, the shirt, the cardigan, treated however with what the label itself describes as a dark, off-beat, dishevelled attitude, to the point of becoming a naturally genderless code. Jackets close with hooks and utility straps, knits have edges frayed on purpose, collars look like survivors of a long night. The house motto says it all in one line: luxury is nothing more than a gesture.

Then there are the names, which alone are worth the trip through the catalogue: the Pasolini shirt, the Big Monopetto blazer, the Drew Barrymore cardigan, the A Mess Of A Vest knitted vest, the Romanticone sweater, the Piccolo Paradiso overshirt. Every garment is a small character, and whoever buys Magliano is not buying a trend piece but a fragment of that provincial magic realism the designer has chosen as his creative homeland: peripheral landscapes, dialects, lives that are in no hurry.

From a Milan ferry to a Paris debut

Even the way collections are presented refuses routine. Spring-Summer 2026 did not walk a runway: it became a short film shot at night on a ferry, directed by filmmaker Thomas Hardiman and screened during Milan fashion week in June 2025, with the collection narrating an imaginary sabbatical year among ropes, hooks, raw hems and lace-up boots from another era, plus a collaboration with Beja on a football-inspired sneaker.

Then, the leap: on 24 January 2026 Magliano made its debut on the official calendar of Paris men's fashion week with "UNPLUGGED", staged as a dreamed concert, with a live melodic whistling performance by the artist Elena Somaré. On the runway, an anthology of the house codes filtered through noble, coarse fabrics, Shetland, Harris tweed, mohair, organza, and a new signature piece with a perfect name, the Taxi Jacket, made for those who linger in the cold of the night. The elegance of the outskirts, this time, performed on the most central stage there is.

Why it is a cult brand (and where to find it)

The Magliano cult is born of a rare coherence: every collection widens the story without ever betraying it, and those who follow the brand feel they belong to a community rather than a client list. The proof lies in the stores that have chosen it, the exact map of retail that matters: Dover Street Market in Paris, Leclaireur, La Garçonne in New York, H Lorenzo in Los Angeles, and in Italy 10 Corso Como, La Rinascente, Antonioli, Slam Jam, Tessabit, Eraldo. Prices remain those of an independent, made-in-Italy luxury, from t-shirts at around one hundred and fifty euros to outerwear approaching one thousand.

In a system that often mistakes experimentation for coldness, Magliano has proved you can be radical while staying warm, human, even sentimental. The Italian provinces had always been waiting for someone to bring them to the runway without disguising them as something else: now they have him, and he speaks Bolognese.

The latest chapter, straight from the brand's official Instagram: the Spring-Summer 2027 campaign.