Niccolò Pasqualetti

Interview by Filep Motwary

San Miniato, a quiet jewel nestled in the rolling Tuscan hills just outside Pisa, is where Niccolò Pasqualetti first learned to read the world through texture. It is a place where craftsmanship is inherited, where centuries of expertise are passed from hand to hand, workshop to workshop. Growing up in this fertile environment, Pasqualetti absorbed an instinctive understanding of materials, process and dedication long before he fully grasped the language of fashion. Fashion, in its conventional sense, still felt distant. It arrived gradually, mediated through family and community. Leather artisans, shoemakers and factory workers—the town’s most immediate custodians of sartorial craft—introduced him to fashion through the realities of making rather than its polished public image.

Looking back, Pasqualetti remembers being surrounded by virtuosos of Made in Italy from an early age, a proximity that profoundly shaped his understanding of craftsmanship long before he began to see fashion as image or spectacle.

> “I saw fashion more as a world of production,” he says. “Leather craftsmanship and shoemaking were my closest connections to fashion. I wasn’t interested in glamour or runway shows. That came later, through spectacle, imagery and the narrative power of magazines like *Vogue Italia*, which revealed how fashion could be visual, expressive and deeply narrative. Print became a gateway into a world I could imagine inhabiting—first as a reader, and eventually as a participant.”

His childhood unfolded in curiosity, solitude and play.

> “At first,” he explains, “I imagined artistic expression through whichever medium felt right. Collage, drawing, sketching… I was fascinated by the process of making something out of almost nothing. There was always a desire to tell stories. Growing up in the countryside, in such an isolated place, creativity became my way of entertaining myself within the solitude that surrounded me.”

Before establishing his eponymous label, Pasqualetti refined his craft in the ateliers of Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen’s The Row before continuing at Loewe. Each experience proved formative, though in profoundly different ways. The Row immersed him in technical precision, American manufacturing and the meticulous mechanics of garment construction. Loewe, by contrast, opened up a more fluid and expansive space for experimentation, where concept and imagination were allowed to flourish.

> “Both shaped me,” he reflects. “I learned to master technical craftsmanship while understanding the importance of conceptual freedom—how to push boundaries without losing respect for structure.”

Together, those experiences crystallised into the design language that now defines his work: one rooted in refinement yet unafraid of experimentation. By the time he began designing capsule collections in Paris, he had developed a rare understanding of both worlds, one that continues to inform every garment he creates.

Over the past two years, Pasqualetti’s presence in Paris has grown impossible to ignore. A finalist for the LVMH Prize and recipient of the Camera Moda Fashion Trust Award, he has earned widespread critical acclaim while quietly becoming one of the most compelling voices of his generation. *Vogue Italia*’s 60th anniversary celebrations in 2024 further affirmed that trajectory, with Isabella Rossellini appearing dressed entirely in his creations—from ready-to-wear to jewellery—in what felt like a symbolic passing of the torch to a new generation of Italian visionaries.

For Spring/Summer 2026, Pasqualetti presented a collection that explored allure in its most confident—and deliberately destabilised—form.

> “Form, function and glamour,” he says, “are the principles at the core of my design.”

The collection questioned convention and expectation, embracing both what feels instinctively “right” and what is intentionally “wrong.” It unfolded as a dialogue between sculpture and movement, elegance and disruption, realised through laser-cut suede, delicate hand embroidery and fragments of metal piercing the fabric like fleeting constellations. Italian tailoring met abstract intervention, reshaping proportion through an interplay of substance, silhouette and surprise.

At the heart of Pasqualetti’s practice lies the body. Everything begins there—not as an object, but as something alive, in motion. He often describes garments as sculptures: three-dimensional constructions that only fully reveal themselves when they are worn.

Structural elements are used with precision rather than decoration. Internal reinforcements lend tension to the shoulders; zips are placed within folds; jewellery is integrated directly into the fabric. These are not ornamental gestures but intentional disruptions, recalibrating the silhouette and allowing it to shift, adapt and respond. Body and garment exist in constant negotiation, each reshaping the other as it moves. Panels appear to hover, folds open briefly to reveal skin, volumes expand and contract in real time.

> “It’s about sensuality, precision—a quiet strength,” he says. “The details define each piece, but also the collection as a whole. Every collection expresses a different part of me, a different need. The summer collection, for example, emphasises the essence of Italian tailoring while introducing more abstract ideas. That combination offers a new way of understanding the body. The body is the key to everything I do. There’s a sense of construction that feels almost perforated, sculptural in nature—a dialogue between movement and form. Each collection explores a different side of that relationship. People change through clothes. Fashion reshapes the body.”

In his hands, the familiar becomes subtly displaced; the classic is rewritten through controlled acts of subversion.

This is contemporary Italian glamour as Pasqualetti understands it: a balance between heritage and rupture, seduction and intellect. Sequins appear, but never where expected; they sit within contexts that destabilise their meaning. Layers slip across the body and merge with it. Zips and pleats shift position, privileging movement and presence over static display. It is sensual without excess, revealing without surrender—an interplay between what is shown and what is withheld.

His vocabulary extends far beyond aesthetics, moving into philosophy, history and the invisible structures of desire. Sensuality, for him, is not exposure but construction: the curve, the contour, the way the body is suggested rather than declared. Silhouette becomes a site of ongoing experimentation, each decade offering a different ideal, each garment a different possibility of transformation.

Behind the scenes, Pasqualetti’s calm, almost reserved presence stands in contrast to the intensity of his work. He is instinctively introverted, preferring to let the clothes speak. Reality remains his grounding force; even his most conceptual ideas are anchored in wearability, in the tactile relationship between body and fabric. His collections occupy both poetic and pragmatic space at once—a duality that feels essential to his practice.

> “I’ve always been shy,” he says. “Fashion teaches you to open up, to participate, to share. The work becomes an extension of yourself—a language that doesn’t need words.”

Running an independent brand demands not only vision, but relentless stamina. For Pasqualetti, each season unfolds as a process of continuous learning—part reflection, part refinement, part reconstruction. Every collection becomes a kind of laboratory: a space where balance, technique and narrative are tested against one another.

> “I always feel I could do more—that what I do is never quite enough,” he admits. “But that feeling is also what allows the brand to grow and evolve while staying independent.”

That independence defines both the challenge and the appeal of his practice. Building a self-sustained label requires constant attention, strategic clarity and an openness to change. At the same time, it grants him the freedom to move according to instinct rather than external expectation, shaping an identity that feels personal, precise and uncompromised.

> “The brand has always been built on emotion and love,” he says. “It’s never about chasing trends or prioritising sales over integrity. People recognise when a designer has a clear point of view. They want to feel part of something authentic—and that connection is invaluable.”

For Pasqualetti, community is not an abstract audience but a living network: the people who wear the clothes, engage with the work, and return season after season. It is a dialogue that extends beyond geography, language and culture, forming a quiet but persistent exchange between designer and wearer.

> “It’s incredibly rewarding,” he says, meeting my gaze with complete sincerity, “to see people recognise themselves in the brand. It becomes a language, a dialogue, a community that grows organically, season after season.”

Sustainability, too, is inseparable from his approach. Deadstock fabrics, collaborations with artisans and small-scale production are not treated as branding tools but as structural principles—part of a broader ethics of making.

> “Imagine a more inventive, sustainable corner of fashion that transforms what already exists into something new,” he explains. “The idea that one person’s waste can become another’s treasure. It allows for creativity without unnecessary environmental strain. For years now, sustainability has been one of fashion’s central keywords, embraced by more and more brands. But craftsmanship still matters, even if fewer young people are learning these techniques. Preserving them takes time, money and commitment—values that are not always properly valued today.”

Running an independent house means living with constant pressure—creative, financial, emotional. Pasqualetti describes a rhythm defined by self-critique and persistence, where each season becomes both a test and a step forward.

Yet within that intensity lies clarity. The brand, he explains, is not built on calculation but on conviction.

> “It has always come from feeling,” he says. “From love. Not from strategy or trend-chasing. When something is authentic, people respond to it. And that shared understanding—that recognition—is what gives the work meaning.”

In the end, what he is building is not just a label but a language: one formed through garments, but sustained through recognition. A space where designer and wearer meet in quiet agreement.

And as Pasqualetti suggests, that may be the most enduring form of luxury today—not spectacle, but connection.