What is desire? Francesca Liberatore, for Spring/Summer 2027, explores the need for variable reward that sustains and excites us in different areas: socially, materially, and personally. What for the child is the joy of an unexpected surprise, in the adult, constantly seeking gratification, becomes a mechanism in which unpredictability results in persistent behaviors. It’s the phenomenon of “Blind Boxes” that enters the catwalk.
Eight models open the presentation wearing iconic jackets from the Francesca Liberatore 2010-2020 archive: all black, all paired with nude. But here’s the surprise: they’re enclosed in human-sized blind boxes, ready to be recognized and desired by the avid collector. A dopamine rush that, thanks to the renewed partnership with Sony, returns to accompany the 1000XM6 headphones, offered across the entire color range, as acoustic interference translated into fashion. A hidden and then revealed path, between waiting and revelation, but also a generational comparison between adults and children, each with their own imaginative references.
And while the women of SS27 Liberatore parade wearing fancy cotton suits and dresses, with a prevalence of pop tones and prints, the little ones, the result of an exciting collaboration with the Chinese brand ASK, are paired with technical fabrics with jacquards that evoke angels and UFOs, planets and galaxies: images through which the designer exhorts an imaginative gaze towards the sky.
Once again inside a school, State Educandate Emanuela Setti Carraro, now the designer’s fourth choice, sealing a message she particularly cares about, Liberatore creates a bridge between childhood and adulthood, a visionary exchange that extols codes and symbols. A crossover with exceptional knitwear, inlays and jacquards, precious to both, from pixelated graphics in shades of brown, bright green, blue and burgundy, to echo the magnificence of the building’s interior.
Then the shapes and decorations mix in overlays free from rigid references, between romantic couture embroidery, geometric and floral jacquards, edged in satin. Two-dimensional becomes three-dimensional depending on use and movement, giving rise to skirts that change proportion around the body, opening up to new possibilities. Unmissable the bomber jackets, the Maison’s signature style, wide and soft, dubbed in patterns and striped lines.
An interpretative freedom that wants to break the classic patterns and associations of proportions and colors. The message is clear: beyond the commercial phenomenon of blind boxes, which relies on the excitement of waiting, the desire for Francesca Liberatore is a productive and creative force, capable of generating reality and creating bonds between things, people, feelings, ideas and contexts.
