On His Terms: Giuliano Calza on Returning to the Runway f…

GCDS’s cofounder, creative director Giuliano Calza will return to Milan Fashion Week with a runway show celebrating the brand’s 10th anniversary.

MILAN — Arriving at the temporary showroom he flanked to his headquarters to better accommodate his new collection, Giuliano Calza looked relaxed as ever — not even the gloomy, wet day outside could rain on his parade. Surrounded by racks of clothes and a plethora of colorful accessories lined up along tables or piled up, the GCDS cofounder and creative director was beaming for the brand’s return to the show format after a one-year hiatus from the Milan Fashion Week schedule.

“For the first time, I’m happy and amused rather than stressed,” he said flashing a big smile a week ahead of the show. To be presented with a see now, buy now format on Friday, the GCDS spring 2026 collection will mark a celebratory moment for Calza, as his brainchild just turned 10. The hiatus has largely aided both his upbeat spirit and creative process. Slowing down and taking time to be intentional in his choices across product, set props and soundtrack had a regenerative effect on the designer, even more so considering it was set against that creative and retail earthquake that sent shock waves across the fashion industry last year.  “I highly recommend [the other brands] to skip a year,” Calza quipped, more seriously adding that he felt “preparing this collection was more a labor of love than of duty.” The approach is in sync with the spirit Calza first launched the brand with, and tried to reiterate each season ever since.

The mix of accessible designs and bold propositions, rich in pop references and communicated through ironic and irreverent campaigns, activations and collaboration galore enabled Calza to carve a specific niche of loyal fans. The upcoming show is for them, as it is poised to celebrate all the codes he built so far but without falling into the trap of nostalgia. It will open with a daywear section reprising the staples Calza began his venture with — all those fleece separates and denim pieces that resonated with young customers and contributed to the community-building asset of GCDS — before delving into the sexier, more layered and constructed numbers.

“Rather than doing a ‘best of,’ I was more interested in exploring how this brand evolved and how we can combine the GCDS man and woman,” Calza said. “The former represents 60 percent of our sales and is younger, while the latter is slightly more mature, but still wants to have fun. She buys our dresses or shoes because she already has everything and looks for something different and playful.” She will find plenty of lingerie-inspired pieces, from corseted mini frocks to layered lace and chiffon slipdresses printed in GCDS’ recurrent python pattern or hentai graphics, but also more approachable reinterpretations of the bold attires Calza designed for the slew of celebrities that are part of his circle.

These range from takes on designs conceived for BFF Dua Lipa, like the body-con see-through dress she wore while attending the GCDS fall 2023 show or the revealing, custom-made sparkling dress Calza created for her 30th birthday, to Jennie Ruby Jane’s go-to choices, like bras and dresses with Hello Kitty-shaped cups. There will also be garments with unfinished details to signal the idea “that I’ve been learning how to do more elaborate constructions, but this is a never-ending process.

This job is always a work in progress for me,” as Calza said while showing a shiny pink bomber jacket with raw-hemmed burgundy inserts. While there was emotional baggage carried over the past decade, he will also hint to it literally with a fun take on the what’s-in-my-bag theme that will be both in the collection and set design, with prints of shopping receipts splashed over liquid shirts and pieces nodding to iPhone cables, as well as large-scale props punctuating the show venue, like matcha cups and teddy bears.

It’s all part of the Calza’s overarching concept of “toys for adults,” the claim he has associated to the brand and has guided his designs and collaborations for years. With this mantra in mind, he created some of the company’s bestsellers, like the logoed hoodies and bejeweled chokers or the fang-shaped heels “Morso” that became a footwear sensation and were reinterpreted in versions spanning from mules and sandals to sexy boots.  These intuitions enabled Calza to secure the backing of Italian private equity Made in Italy Fund, managed by Quadrivio and Pambianco, in 2020, as well as gradually expand the scope of his business to include mini-me and childrenswear lines and licenses for eyewear and jewelry with Marcolin and Morellato Group, respectively.  “In such a difficult moment for this sector, we’re blessed by the strength of our carryovers, codes and fan base,” the designer said.

“This idea that assortments need to constantly change is misleading: our bestsellers today are products we launched three years ago and people just started to digest.” “Time has shrunken, everything moves so fast. There’s a new trend every six minutes, you can’t catch up with them even if you’d want to,” continued Calza, making a point that he has no interest in following those or looking at what other houses are selling.

“All this scrolling — don’t get me wrong, we all create content. But how long does it last? Plus we all consume the same information, the algorithm is the same for everyone….I don’t care about doing [collections] that look like the others. The goal can’t be just to sell and make money: it’s to create a moment that can inspire someone, be memorable. And in times in which this mechanism is so pressing, we need to keep our head high, have a direction and affirm our identity.” Following his guts proved to be instrumental to reach the 10-year milestone, even though the fashion establishment has often raised an eyebrow toward Calza’s fashion credibility and approach to business, from designs often seen as echoes of Moschino to his aggressive strategy of collaborations and marketing activations.  As a result, he received his biggest learning of the past decade: never let yourself be defined from the outside.  “At a certain point everybody started to tell me I was a great communicator.

I saw that as a critic and started to believe that was all I was good at, and that I didn’t need to learn anything else about the product,” Calza recalled. “But then I decided to unlock that possibility, actually do it and do it for myself, even if no one would have acknowledged it….This idea to shrink the others, to box them into definitions is such a big part of today’s world, but the key is not to succumb under that weight.

I would be still doing just jersey hoodies if I listened to [those voices], while today we do plenty of stuff, from collabs to consulting for other brands.” His mission is to never stop learning. “Last year I realized there’s no finishing line. There’s a sentiment you need to keep carrying in yourself and that’s the joy of doing things. That’s the engine of everything and my goal for the next 10 years is to keep carrying that feeling.

In such an end-of-the world moment overall, that’s the only thing that can save us,” Calza said. It’s with such a spirit Calza approaches side projects, too, which through the years saw him partnering with everyone from Barilla and Pepsi to Polly Pocket and Universal Pictures, or most recently saw him making a cameo as a judge next to Heidi Klum at “Germany’s Next Topmodel.” “It’s not about the ego, but about the challenge.

If they ask me to do a bridal or couture line, for example, I would be wowed, because they are completely different worlds,” Calza said. Ditto if he were to take the creative helm of another house, a scenario where he would go on unexpected routes and working with different codes from his own, as he cited brands such as McQueen, Ann Demeulemeester and Sonia Rykiel as potentially of interest. But far from the runway, Calza would like to explore new media altogether, envisioning giving movie direction a try.

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