As part of my journey through Italy, I managed to catch a fleeting edge of Milan Fashion Week — and to turn that moment into a note marking perediza’s first step beyond the cultural landscape of London.
Italian streets are lined with old ateliers and boutiques selling handcrafted leather and suede goods. In contrast to London’s avant-garde fashion week, New York’s commercial pulse, or Paris’s haute couture, Milan is rooted in the heritage of family brands, in artisanal craftsmanship, and in a deep attentiveness to material.
Maccapani — a womenswear brand — was launched in 2023 by Margherita Missoni, an Italian actress and model. “Maccapani” is her paternal family name. The brand conveys the idea of multi-event, multi-contextual clothing: garments should not constrain the movements, contexts, or identities of the woman who wears them. Authenticity stands at the core of its ideology, articulated by its founder and embodied in each piece. The clothing is created with a sensitivity to naturalness and restraint. At the same time, the brand is grounded in the value of community and tradition: its name traces back to the founder’s family history, while a kind of sacred artifact of Maccapani is a bag — a promotional item from a travel agency owned by her grandfather in the 1970s.
The Maccapani FW26 collection show reaches everyone walking toward it with the sounds of a joyful DJ set from the start of the street where the brand's new home is located. The grand opening pairs with the new collection reveal.
The event is set up cleverly: guests move along the street between facing storefronts — one even hides a beautiful restaurant with a bar where presentation guests are served cocktails — the main cluster of guests gathers on the opposite side, where big glass panels let everyone outside see the real party. The presentation follows classic Italian party vibes, like those in Sorrentino's films.
A slow savoring of conversations, drinks, and a shared state of languor is wrapped in the sensation of being cradled within the birthplace of European culture. At an Italian party, everything is beautiful, delicious, unhurried, and lavish; it quite literally creates the conditions for pleasure—just as the brand’s clothing does: its delicate, openwork dresses do not constrain the body in dance, but instead accentuate its natural form, echoing the humanism and languid grace of Italian Renaissance pictorial scenes.
Guests enjoy casual window-shopping: models dance loose and fun inside the store while we watch through the glass.
Later, you can go in and check out the knitted dresses and sets with flowers and animals on everyday long-sleeves, bags, and necklaces with natural stones. The experience weaves through every detail: you head to meet the clothes, then the clothes — alive on everyone able to wear them — meet you.
It's a showcase of both the collection and the space: glass bubble vases from Eastern Europe, a huge lily bouquet adding scent to the party, and fun 1970s-style furniture.
Maccapani's event smartly flips the model's usual role: it is the models, conventionally objectified in shows, fashion weeks, and other clothing displays, who take on the subjective, active, and dancing (living) position. Traditionally, models on the runway have been living mannequins — objectified, stripped of subjectivity, one might even say, deprived of a body. At the heart of Maccapani’s philosophy lies the opposite idea: clothing shaped around the woman’s corporeality and naturalness. The presentation of Maccapani’s collection in Milan, of course, inherits the tradition of redefining the model as a living, natural presence rather than a functional mannequin. From the Victoria’s Secret shows of the 2010s where models did not merely walk but smiled, winked at the audience, interacted with one another on the runway, and sent air kisses, radiating vitality rather than detachment, to Jacquemus shows in lavender fields, and the performative spectacles of Gucci (FW2018) or Chanel under Lagerfeld (the brasserie show FW2015, the couture casino), where models engaged with the space itself. If one looks at the performative and dance components of such presentations, a connection emerges to free and authentic movement, whose origins can be traced to the revolutionary figure of dance, Isadora Duncan. In place of the constrained costumes and movements of classical ballet, she championed an aesthetic of naturalness—of the body and of movement on stage.
These dancers shuttling between window and bar across the street — even in cocktail lines — enable the real clothing demo: showing outfits in action beyond the static display. How the design hugs the body while sitting on a balcony edge with a cigarette; how the long-sleeve fits while pouring sake from the crystal-blue bottles; how skirts and dresses look from the perspective of fellow queue-mates for the bathroom? Everyday realness and wearability is the core message of the collection launch and Maccapani's brand. Makes you want to join the circle of fun and beautiful people in the brand's dresses and skirts.
