Yuppie retro codes, country inflections, and archive silk in unexpected places – see Marco Falcioni's AW26 collection for BOSS
Boss creative director Marco Falcioni has been mining the brand’s ’80s and ’90s catalogues, those painstakingly assembled full looks photographed flat for buyers, accessories perfectly placed. “The inspiration for my team and me came from creative trailblazers – artists, actors, writers, and musicians – who, at defining moments of their careers, choose to wear tailoring,” he said backstage. The showcase was soundtracked by The Passions’ 'I'm in Love With A German Film Star': a swooning ode to louche, off-duty glamour, and it channelled a distinctly late-20th-century mood: that studied nonchalance of a man in a corner booth, jacket slung just so, with a slightly dishevelled collar. “In a period where we consume time, I would like time to consume us,” Falcioni mused.
Within this palpable mood, the spine of the show was tailoring. “In tailoring – whether a three-button single-breasted suit, a perfectly tailored coat, a crisp shirt, or the most elegant silk neckwear – the message on the runway is clear: it’s even more powerful when you make it your own,” said Falcioni. There were boxy three-button suits with a ’90s sobriety, double-breasted numbers cut broad through the shoulder with a subtle power surge, and trim sack shapes that felt lifted from an executive floor circa 1988 and reissued for now. “One of our key ambitions was to position tailoring within a more lifestyle-driven context, moving away from traditional office attire and aligning it with hybrid situations.” Trousers were tucked into hybrid boot-loafers – “whose silhouettes are derived from an archival men’s loafer” – and leather blousons were cinched into double-belted waists.
Falcioni set this tailoring against outdoors and equestrian inflections. “As just one example of this approach, we styled some suits with equestrian-inspired boots,” he noted. Tyrolean jackets stripped of fuss, windcheaters spliced into the sartorial mix, shoulder-patched knits that nodded to country pursuits without lapsing into costume. “Texture – and the art of manipulating fabrics to create something unexpected – was key.” Leather, “which has become a pillar in the BOSS wardrobe in recent seasons,” played an important role, appearing in sturdy finishes with a soft hand feel, in ostrich-effect leather, and ponyhair-effect leather. “By experimenting with this material, we see it featured throughout the collection in different iterations.” Even knitwear was taken in a new direction, “introducing a sharper edge through unique knitting techniques that echoed the same bigger, bolder attitude seen across the collection.” Womenswear largely borrowed the masculine template – suiting softened with cowl-neck knits and cotton tops instead of shirts – before loosening into velvet toward the close, plush and decadent.
The detailing was where the collection sharpened. Falcioni tracked down historic suppliers to reproduce archive-pattern paisley silks for ties, linings and pocket squares – the very “sartorial success symbols” he set out to reinterpret – then disrupted their propriety, splicing them into the backs of knits, slicing them across sleeves, inserting them where tradition would never have allowed. Striped sleeve linings escaped their hidden function; scraps of leather embossed to mimic ostrich or brushed like pony were repurposed into small, almost fussy boutonnieres. “The colour palette followed the best expression of the materials’ texture,” he added, citing ink black, midnight navy, smoky gray, olive, russet brown, warm terracotta and golden ochre. “We wanted to offer an uplifting point of view: sophisticated, elevated, positive, and full of BOSS confidence.”
See the full BOSS AW26 collection below.
