MILAN — Alberto Aspesi is one of the fathers of luxe urbanwear, normcore even.
After championing a very Milanese, but globally resonant, understated aesthetic for the brand he established in 1969, Aspesi left the company in 2017.
Now he’s back.
For spring 2026, Aspesi has designed a womenswear capsule collection to be unveiled Saturday during Milan Fashion Week.
It’s a move down memory lane aimed at celebrating “a return to origins, filtered through a gaze that has never given in to the urgency of noise,” the company said.
Flanking the main line, which is going to be presented to buyers via showroom appointments, the 70-piece capsule collection bears no logo, with labels sewn backward as they used to be in Alberto Aspesi’s Blu line that was hinged on women’s wardrobe essentials and which was then integrated into the main line.
The capsule marks an opportunity for new generations to discover the work of the OG founder.
To be sure, the media-shy Aspesi’s minimalist aesthetic can be seen in the capsule’s lean silhouettes with a sophisticated bent, resulting in a wardrobe-building lineup that taps into an unfussy look hinged on high-quality pieces. These helped cement the brand he founded as a favorite among art and design professionals.
A look from the Aspesi spring 2026 capsule collection by Alberto Aspesi.
Courtesy of Aspesi
The new capsule comprises suits in mannish pin-striped cotton and metal threads with a crinkled effect, featuring elongated, tunic-like shirts; pristine collarless shirts mixed with roomy dress pants; sundresses in washed silk, and ankle-gracing full skirts matched to simple T-shirts bearing the Japanese word for silence.
The latter references the signature Aspesi “Silenzio” T-shirt, introduced in 1999 as a gift to the artist Robert Frank, a close friend of the brand’s founder, who simply loved the sound and meaning of the Italian word. The graphic T-shirt soon trickled down to Aspesi’s offering as a manifesto for the understated quality of the brand’s clothes, per its founder’s ethos.
The muted color palette of chalk whites, beige, gray and navy leaves room for bursts of colors, such as orange and deep red, in sync with the designer’s sensibility for daring color schemes.
A look from the Aspesi spring 2026 capsule collection by Alberto Aspesi.
Courtesy of Aspesi
The collection will make its retail debut in January at the 16 Aspesi flagship stores across Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan and South Korea, as well as online and in select stockists.
Established as a shirt brand, Aspesi started to offer men’s and women’s ready-to-wear collections at the end of the ’70s, collaborating with designers including Walter Albini and Franco Moschino.
The Armònia fund has owned a controlling stake in the Milan-based brand since 2017. Its collections were designed by Lawrence Steele between 2020 and 2023, and the company appointed Alessandro Pescara as its new chief executive officer in 2024.
