Alberta Ferretti’s Hyper-Comfy Hostess Dressing
Anders Christian Madsen reviews the Alberta Ferretti Spring-Summer 2026 show by Lorenzo Serafini.
Lorenzo Serafini was the hostess with the mostest on Tuesday evening in the bright and opulent surroundings of Palazzo Donizetti. Dressed in a slouchy, luxurious trouser-and-shirt combo, he welcomed the press to a pre-show briefing and announced his Spring-Summer vision for Alberta Ferretti: “Host dressing: welcome to my private world,” he said with a smile. “It’s an invitation to intimacy. It’s a woman of substance. It’s a discovery of the private world rather than the public, sometimes-fake image that everyone is spreading all over the world. I was trying to imagine the perfect wardrobe for a modern host.”
His “padrona di casa”, as the Italians say, couldn’t have been farther from the corseted, panniered silhouettes that minced down the London runways this weekend. Instead, Serafini made a case for laid-back, comfortable, highly crafted glamour. Dresses and tops were slung across the physique like single pieces of fabric, sheathed, swathed, and enveloped with the technical control of draping and movement that the house’s ateliers have always excelled at. Sitting front row, you could picture Signora Ferretti, who retired last year, hosting family and friends in dresses like these. (Full disclosure: She’s hosted me before and looked a vision of at-home glamour.)
ALBERTA FERRETTI
“It was all about caftans,” Serafini said. “Caftans were my favorite pieces when thinking of this lady; cape dresses came right after — cape dresses that feel like scarves, and then scarves that became kimonos, and kimonos that became caftans again. Suits became pajamas. It’s a celebration of movement; of ease and comfort; a comfortable state of mind.” His vision seemed positively extreme compared to the trussed-up burlesque dressing we’ve become accustomed to in recent times. By contrast, his hyper-comfort felt almost as extreme as the trend it counters. In the current fashion climate, there’s no middle ground.
“I wanted an easy spirit, and something very real. I wanted dresses you can actually live in, not dresses you put on for a picture and take off again. I would love for women to truly live in my dresses, surrounded by the people they choose to live with. That was my inspiration for the collection,” Serafini said. “For sure it’s a reaction to what’s going on around us. I want to be surrounded by people I love and choose to stay with. It would be nice, actually, to be able to spend more time in the private space with those people.” In his sophomore season at Ferretti, Serafini showed that he doesn’t just have an aesthetic vision but a social one, too.
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