The Brand Nobody Knows

There is a brand in Bologna called Magliano.

Luca Magliano is from Bologna and his brand is an act of insistence that Italy exists beyond its own postcard. His is the Italy of social centres and factory floors, of Adriatic winter beaches when the tourists are long gone, of partisan politics and ordinary people who have never been on a catwalk but whose clothes and lives and attitudes are the entire point.

In 2023 Magliano won the LVMH Karl Lagerfeld Prize. He then showed as guest designer at Pitti Uomo. 10 Corso Como stocks his work. The international press has noticed him. None of this has changed what the brand is.

The brand is still made in Bologna. The clothes still reference the workers and the social clubs and the specific light of the Emilia-Romagna winter. The knitwear still has phone numbers printed on it like workers' uniforms from a different era. The silhouettes are still oversized in a way that prioritises the body inside rather than the silhouette itself.

This is what makes a brand worth knowing before everyone knows it. Not the aesthetic alone. The specificity of the argument behind the aesthetic. Magliano's clothes make a specific argument about a specific place and a specific set of people that no other brand is making. The argument does not become less interesting when more people hear it. It becomes more interesting, because more people hearing it proves the argument was worth making.

The brand nobody knows right now is the brand everyone will be talking about in three years. The skill is in finding it before the three years pass.

Magliano is still that brand. Barely.

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