Memory, Make-Believe & Reclaimed Codes

With What a Wonderful World, Marco Rambaldi embraces the emotional terrain of nostalgia, refuge, and reclamation. He imagines a "fairy tale world" as a shelter, a place to recuperate from the rigors of daily life. In doing so, he weaves together past and present: crochet from reclaimed yarns, vintage-inspired prints, and leather treated with sensitivity. The collection speaks of imperfection, memory, feminine assertion, and the poetic potential of craft.

Rambaldi frames this collection as the story of an adult who leans on childhood refuge and myth to face the world. The moodboard references Pippi Longstocking - rebellious, free, unconventional — as a feminist emblem. He wants his pieces to show the "signs of battles," yet also radiate lightness, softness, and dreams.

This duality between frailty and strength, memory and reinvention, is the emotional core. What's striking is how it's not shy: the work shows stitches, seams, contrast, and layering. The show is less about concealing conflict and more about wearing it.

One of the collection's strongest threads is crochet, often using reclaimed yarns. Rambaldi reworks it in varied scales and techniques: as overlays, as "fake" layering, embroidered trims, or whole garment bodies. In moments, crystals are embedded into crochet, giving sparkle to what is often considered a humble technique.

Leather - always potent — is reimagined. Rambaldi uses leather in thin strips, sometimes interlaced or used as accents, layered over or with sheer fabrics like tulle, creating transparency and contrast. Prints from the 1950s with floral and stripe motifs also appear, recontextualized. Slip dresses, heart-knitted sweaters, patchwork leather skirts-all carry this vintage echo-yet Rambaldi works them so they feel neither costume nor pastiche, but reclamation. Accessories also reinforce the handmade energy: Vienna straw bags with wooden beads (in collaboration with Rosantica) become accents of artisanal storytelling.

Silhouettes in SS26 walk between body and layering — slip gowns, skirts worn low on the hips, soft knit tops, and layering that sometimes sags or yields rather than clings. The effect is casual but considered. One stand-out strategy is layered illusion: crochet or lace overlays suggesting one garment atop another, leather panels breaking the planes of softer fabrics, or parts of skirts blending into trousers. Rambaldi orchestrates transitions rather than fixed forms. A memorable gesture: the "upcycled unconventional wedding gown," where Swarovski crystals adorn crochet, making a statement about the transformation of tradition.

The collection feels personal and expressive. It doesn't hide scars; it frames them. Rambaldi's signature crochet, his work with leather, his vintage prints - all show a maturity in mixing materials without feeling forced.

Through choices in prints, layering, textures, and even silhouette, Rambaldi speaks to codes of femininity, turning them inside out, reclaiming them.

Some of the more romantic or crystalline crochet moments may struggle in daily wardrobes; the balance between dreamy and usable is delicate. Vintage print + leather + crochet + layering + crystals — without strong anchors, there's a risk of visual overload. The darlings (key looks) must carry enough weight. Because much of the power lies in textures, layering, interplay, editorial photography, and styling must capture shadow, depth, and transition. Static images can flatten what lives in motion.

Marco Rambaldi SS26 is an invitation to tender, remembering, and bold reinvention. It inhabits that grey zone between memory and present, nostalgia and agency. It's a show that doesn't seek spectacle, but presence: presence in craft, presence in vulnerability, presence in statement.

In What a Wonderful World, Rambaldi offers more than dresses; he offers refuge in textures, in remembered codes, in layers you can peel off and put back on. It is a collection that asks you to lean in, to touch, to read the seams — because meaning lives between threads.