Formafantasma creates "intentionally banal" set for Marni's Milan Fashion Week show

An office chair, a lighter and a close-up of a PDF on a laptop are among the everyday scenes hand-painted on canvases by design studio Formafantasma for the set of Marni's Autumn Winter 2026 show at Milan Fashion Week.

The set provided the backdrop for Belgian designer Meryll Rogge's debut show as the creative director of the Italian fashion brand.

Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma constructed the scenography from floor-to-ceiling dark wooden frames and mirrored panels spread across a brightly lit room at Marni's headquarters in Milan.

Various rectilinear canvases were attached to the walls and mirrors, hand-painted with quotidien motifs, including orange peel, a bar of soap, house keys and a comb.

Among the other scenes were the legs of an office chair, a bright-yellow lighter placed upright on a table and a depiction of a PDF on an Apple computer screen, with its recognisable ellipsis menu.

Speaking to Dezeen, Trimarchi explained that the intention was to root the set in familiarity, "grounding the runway in elements that feel completely ordinary".

"We were trying to bring fashion closer to the environments clothing actually exists in," he said.

"The images we painted are intentionally banal. They are the kinds of things you barely register in daily life."

Formafantasma wanted to create a distinctly domestic interior, but one that looked fragmented – "almost like a room that has been taken apart and reassembled slightly out of order", Trimarchi explained.

Despite their banality, the paintings were created to draw in show guests and invite them to slow down and pay attention to their surroundings.

"Fashion today moves at a very high speed, especially in terms of images," considered Trimarchi.

"We liked the idea of introducing a medium that requires time and attention."

Guests were seated on a series of benches covered in pleated grey fabric, placed across carpeted flooring that was "conceived as a monumental doormat".

"We liked the idea of enlarging something humble and transitional," said Trimarchi.

"A doormat marks a threshold between outside and inside, which felt aligned with the idea of a runway as a space between daily life and staged presentation."

Considering what Formafantasma hoped guests would take away from the show, Trimarchi said, "ideally, people would leave thinking about clothing as something that lives in real environments, not just as an image".

"The set was there to support the garments and to frame them in a way that feels closer to how we actually encounter clothes, in passing, in reflection, and in movement, rather than only frontally and perfectly composed."

Formafantasma is known for its research-heavy projects, which have unpacked everything from a critical perspective on modernism and its legacy to the global impact of the forestry industry and the history of wool production.

The photography is courtesy of Formafantasma.

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