To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here.
For Spring/Summer 2023, emerging label Magliano staged a runway show on the roof of a run-down building on the outskirts of Milan. Worn by a diverse cast of models, the collection featured loose, fluid pyjama-style suiting, open-chested silk shirts and wide legged, flowing trousers — a departure from the classic styles shown during the rest of Milan Fashion Week from luxury powerhouses like Prada and Giorgio Armani.
“We want to redesign the idea of Made in Italy,” says founder Luca Magliano, who launched the label in Bologna in 2016, inspired by and rooted in LGBTQ+ culture and Bologna’s vibrant club scene in the 80s.
While self-described as “quintessentially Italian”, Magliano rethinks the country’s menswear tropes, creating genderless clothes partially made from deadstock and upcycled vintage garments. “It’s genderless because sometimes we do super classic ‘masculine’ things, but we do it with our queer touch,” says Magliano, giving the example of a formal suit made with fluid silk, rather than a traditional, more rigid material like wool or tweed. Attracting a new generation of consumers across menswear and womenswear, the label has 60 stockists including Farfetch and Ssense, and sales doubled to approximately €3 million for 2022, according to the brand.
As Magliano has matured, however, its founder has struggled with the growing pains of building a stockist network while maintaining more circular sourcing methods and a genderless approach. The designer used income from consultancy and design work at other brands to fund his own business, including Grifoni, where he served as creative director until 2022 — but managing both was challenging.
In December 2022, the brand announced a strategic and financial partnership with Milanese holding company and accelerator Underscore District (formerly Impossible Brands). Magliano will remain majority shareholder, with Underscore District holding a significant minority, helping to handle distribution and marketing of the products, with some involvement from Arcari e Co., Magliano's historic licensee. Underscore District’s other ventures include footwear and accessories brand Piumestudio and 10-year-old Milan retailer Wok Store.
With this partnership, Magliano has already moved into a new design studio in Bologna, is due to open its own showroom in Milan for Autumn/Winter 2023 and plans to launch its first-ever e-commerce store this month. Other strategic priorities include boosting brand awareness, credibility and positioning, says Underscore District CEO Edoardo Di Luzio. This means taking over the “ancillary” services including logistics, finance and e-commerce, to free up Magliano to focus on the creative and support the brand in moving from an “artistic project" to a “proper company,” Di Luzio says.
“In the beginning, the central thing when building a brand is creating the team,” Magliano says. “You start with the people who work on creativity because that's the core. But then in time you realise that you need other stuff, which is not only financial resources, but also people who can manage [those resources]”
Investment barriers
Magliano has been supported by Camera della Moda Italiana (CNMI) throughout its journey, says CNMI president Carlo Capasa, who outlines Milan as an increasingly attractive springboard for new talent. “We are very proud of Luca’s growth in the last few years,” he says. “I’m very curious to see what his new collection will show.”
However, it can be difficult for fashion brands to find long-term investment in Italy due to scepticism from lenders around the growth potential of fashion labels, and a lack of long-term vision from distribution partners and sales agents, Di Luzio says. Those who employ new methods like upcycling have also found it challenging to find the right partners. Magliano is one of only a handful of emerging Milan-based labels finding strategic support for their businesses, although Capasa notes many are finding support from major luxury labels: Marco Rambaldi was supported by Valentino for his SS23 outing, while Gucci Vault has previously supported Milan-based labels like Jordanluca and Cormio with sales.
For Underscore District, this represents an opportunity. “Often you find small brands moving from one showroom to another and then changing distribution, changing sales agents,” says Di Luzio. “There’s a lack of long-term that is typical of Italians, which is jeopardising the emerging brand ecosystem.” Emerging Italian brands typically manage to build momentum from shows and secure initial retail partners, allowing them to reach €3-5 million in sales, he adds, but they lack the financial and industrial means to scale further and eventually fail.
By contrast, he notes that London-based label Casablanca, which shows in Paris, reached around €50 million in sales in just five years. “In Italy, these experiences are still a bit hard to come by,” he says. “That’s where we want to come in.”
New ventures, old spirit
Magliano had spoken to other potential partners before Underscore District, yet they were all too focused on growth and returns, he says, rather than adapting their approach to fit his business.
Underscore District’s team is also close to the designer in age, which makes communicating “easy”, he says. For example, while changing suppliers or moving production to Asia might cut costs, Underscore District understands Magliano’s desire to stick with his original factory in Bologna. “We know the people who produce Magliano by name; it’s important to us,” Magliano says, “It’s not always [about] making more money.”
Magliano visits a market in Naples regularly to source pieces to upcycle for his collections, such as silk foulards for AW22 or blankets for the upcoming AW23 collection. This will continue, says Di Luzio, but with a more robust network of suppliers to give higher volumes of deadstock or source materials: “The idea is to elevate the upcycling proposition to provide more luxury garments and fabrics.”
The brand has hired new employees to run its new showroom, in Milan’s via Tortona. For now, Magliano has no plans to build out the creative team of three any further. “We decided to remain ‘us’, at least for the first two seasons [post-investment],” he says. AW23 will be the first season that the designer and his team aren't working on any other collaborations or consultancy, so he wants to test this to figure out where he needs to build before growing the design studio in time.
Despite financial support from Underscore District, he will not throw lots of money at the show. “We don’t want to all of a sudden spend all the money in the world, right? That’s not the way we want to grow.”
Harnessing opportunities: Womenswear and new markets
Magliano’s first venture into direct-to-consumer, via the new e-commerce site, will be created with a test-and-learn approach, to “grow and design the brand’s personality” in a sophisticated way, the designer says. While he’s keen to retain and build out Magliano’s wholesale network, e-commerce will help the brand connect with — and receive feedback from — its consumers, he adds.
Magliano has had female fans from the beginning, particularly in Asian markets like Japan and Korea. For AW23, the brand will debut some pieces more traditionally associated with womenswear silhouettes, such as dresses and skirts, to serve this customer. Further expansion into women’s styles will become more “concrete” in SS24, says Magliano. “We’re enlarging the Magliano wardrobe,” he says, “We are not doing a ‘women’s line’, we’re just enlarging the focus.”
Often there’s confusion from buyers on where to place gender fluid brands, Di Luzio says. “But I think it’s not the case with Luca because it’s a fluidity that is way more defined. The statement is still being a menswear brand, but that is really fluid in terms of purpose and use: both men and women can feel comfortable in the clothes.”
“We don’t talk about it, necessarily,” Magliano adds. “We don't explain that something is done in one direction or another. And by not talking about it, everything comes super naturally. Buyers just know where it’s right for them and where the particular piece might go.”
Ultimately, the goal is heritage status. “We want to become something that people look at when they think of Italy and of Milan,” he says. “It’s not only about being youthful; it’s about being considered mature.”
Key takeaway: In the Italian luxury landscape, it can be challenging for emerging brands to scale, particularly when they subvert the accepted norms, for example by employing newer production methods such as upcycling, or creating genderless clothes. Magliano is benefitting from investment and strategic support in developing DTC, opening his own showroom and building out his team. However, he’s remaining faithful to the core values of the business, even when it’s more expensive or challenging, to try and redefine Made In Italy for a new generation.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
The year in brand building: Lessons from fashion and beauty disruptors