What happens when fashion turns memories into clothes? Inside Cascinelli’s SS27 world
Childhood memories, family rituals and technical innovation converge in Filippo Cascinelli Staudacher’s SS27 vision for contemporary menswear
Why are childhood memories such a powerful source of inspiration in fashion today? From family rituals to the places we carry with us, a growing number of emerging designers are revisiting the past to understand the present. During Milan Fashion Week Men’s SS27, Filippo Cascinelli Staudacher explored this idea through Via al Castello, a collection rooted in summers spent in Trentino and the emotional landscapes that echo long after childhood ends. In this piece, editor Agnese Pasquinelli examines how Cascinelli weaves personal experience into a contemporary language, balancing technical innovation, vulnerability, and imagination.
During Milan Fashion Week Men’s Spring/Summer 2027, Filippo Cascinelli Staudacher is steadily carving out a distinctive place for himself among emerging designers. As founder and creative director of CASCINELLI—a brand recognised for its commitment to recycled fabrics, upcycling practices, and Made in Italy production—he presented Via al Castello at the new Istituto Marangoni Milano campus. The collection balanced material innovation with a sense of wonder and marked an important evolution for the label, debuting its first complete total-look offering across menswear and, for the first time, womenswear.
Drawing on summers spent at his family’s estate in Castel Ivano, Trentino, Cascinelli Staudacher translated those impressions into a reflection on vulnerability, creativity, and the enduring value of curiosity.
The setting immediately established the collection’s narrative framework. Small tables dressed with embroidered tablecloths, domestic details, and carefully curated objects evoked the intimacy of an Italian country home, suspended somewhere between memory and imagination. More than a traditional presentation, Via al Castello welcomed guests into a space that existed beyond time. This sense of stepping outside the present became the collection’s greatest strength.
What Makes Childhood Memories So Powerful in Fashion?
Fashion often celebrates ambition and transformation. Yet Cascinelli Staudacher continues to explore a territory still rare within contemporary menswear: wonder
That is why the designer views childhood not just as a reference, but as a methodology. Through garments that unite material research with a unique sensitivity, he explores how curiosity and openness can survive into adulthood. The result is a collection that never becomes sentimental, despite its autobiographical origins.
In Via al Castello, Filippo Cascinelli Staudacher turns childhood summers in Trentino into a light menswear language, where technical layers and domestic memories share the same quiet space. Courtesy of Press Office Many of the collection’s details reflect this approach. Even when Cascinelli Staudacher draws directly from his family history—pearl buttons inspired by his grandmother’s everyday elegance, bow collars recalling the scarves she wore, and reinterpretations of garments once belonging to his great-grandfather—these elements are not presented as nostalgic, but as part of a modern fashion vocabulary.
Here, childhood is not something to return to, but something worth carrying forward.
Cascinelli’s references to family rituals never read as pure nostalgia: they surface through school shirts, picnic objects and soft tailoring, turning memory into something wearable and precise. Courtesy of Press Office
How Personal Storytelling Is Rewriting Contemporary Fashion
What makes Cascinelli Staudacher’s work especially compelling is his ability to balance softness with structure. There is an underlying precision to his SS27 collection that prevents it from becoming purely poetic.
Throughout Via al Castello, technical outerwear remains central, softened by details that feel almost emotional. Lightweight jackets, safari-inspired tailoring and silhouettes, and functional pieces are elevated through three-dimensional floral embroideries—a brand signature that transforms outerwear and functional pieces into something unexpectedly delicate.
Three-dimensional floral details soften the structure of Cascinelli’s menswear, bringing a sense of garden memory into pieces built with contemporary discipline. Courtesy of Press Office The interplay between utility and romance keeps the collection firmly contemporary: heat-sealed details and performance-driven constructions coexist with references to gardens, outdoor rituals, and moments of youthful discovery.
Rather than choosing between experimentation and wearability, Cascinelli Staudacher embraces both. The garments never sacrifice relevance, proving that sensitivity can be just as powerful as spectacle.
When Personal Experience Becomes Universal Through Fashion
What lingered after the presentation was not a specific garment, but the feeling of stepping into someone else’s memory, and unexpectedly finding fragments of your own.
The setting, domestic references, and atmosphere of a family gathering—translated into fashion language—all contributed to creating an immersive experience: the collection became inseparable from the world surrounding it, and perhaps that was precisely the point.
Between functional bags, pale shirting and scarf-like details, Via al Castello builds a wardrobe that feels suspended between a family archive and a present-day uniform. Courtesy of Press Office
From Prada to Pitti Uomo: The Rise of Filippo Cascinelli Staudacher
The resonance of Via al Castello feels inseparable from Filippo Cascinelli Staudacher’s own journey. An alumnus of Istituto Marangoni Milano, where he graduated in Fashion Design & Accessories in 2021, the emerging designer first honed his craft at Versace and Prada.
After an internship in Versace’s product development department, he joined Prada, where he spent three years as Assistant to the Menswear Design Director. This experience was especially formative, offering an insight into what it means to operate at the highest level of the industry and shaping his design approach around excellence and meticulous attention to detail.
In 2024, Cascinelli Staudacher launched his eponymous label, CASCINELLI. The brand quickly became recognised for combining high-performance and sustainable textiles with intricate three-dimensional embellishments and a refined commitment to craftsmanship.
Recognition soon followed. While still a student, he participated in a project with the Italian textile company Manteco and was selected as one of the top ten designers in his graduating class for the final fashion show. More recently, CASCINELLI made its debut at Pitti Uomo during the Fall/Winter 2025–26 season within the Emerging Designer and Futuro Maschile programme, and was then selected for CNMI’s Fashion Hub as part of Designers for the Planet, an initiative dedicated to brands that integrate sustainability into their collections.
How Vulnerability Is Redefining Contemporary Menswear
At a time when menswear often swings between hyper-commercial minimalism and spectacle-driven excess, Cascinelli Staudacher is carving out a space of his own, with a vision anchored not in provocation but in authenticity.
Cascinelli’s SS27 menswear treats vulnerability as a construction method, balancing technical outerwear, floral gestures and everyday objects without turning softness into spectacle. Courtesy of Press Office Via al Castello demonstrates that vulnerability can be sophisticated, imagination can coexist with technical expertise, and fashion still has the power to create emotional connections, not just visual impressions.
Ultimately, the collection’s greatest achievement may be its refusal to choose between growing up and dreaming. Instead, Filippo Cascinelli Staudacher offers something far more compelling: the possibility of embracing both.
Agnese Pasquinelli
Alumna and Editor, Milano