Milan Fashion Week: The Mind Uncaged ~ PDF by Domenico Formichetti’s Sartorial Unshackling

Backstage before Domenico Formichetti's SS26 show at Milan Fashion Week. Photograph (above) and cover picture by Jay Zoo for DAM 

On a hot summer night in Milan, Domenico Formichetti lit a fuse under the status quo. While some designers opt for classical style, polish and predictability, the Italian creative director and founder of Italian label PDF, dug into the raw and the real, turning his Spring/Summer 2026 collection into a visceral act of self-disclosure, an unraveling of psychological tension rendered in seams, silhouettes, and sound, writes Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photography by Jay Zoo 

The escape of prisoners in the performance piece,

before the show, represented the designer's breakout 

from the mental shackles holding him back. 

DOMENICO Formichetti chose to stage a reckoning for his new collection in an industrial lot that represented a brutalist theatre of the mind. It looked like a back block of the Bronx, complete with a fenced off 'prison' at its centre. The show unfolded like an emotional drama, one that began in captivity and exploded into cathartic release.

With a giant chain-link fenced cage at its core and a cast of restless avatars of emotion, the runway became a battleground between inner chaos and outer composure. What unfolded wasn’t just a collection, it was a confession, a confrontation, and ultimately, a creative exorcism. Through garments that moved from constriction to release, the Italian designer posed a powerful question: What happens when we stop performing and start telling the truth?

Inside the cage, the show’s opening moments presented not models, but figures wearing striped uniforms pacing, lifting weights, dropping and doing push-ups. These were all symbols of Formichetti’s internal dialogue. “I wanted to make my mind visible,” he explained after the show. “Sometimes my mind feels like a cage. Like all these emotions and possibilities are trapped in there, and the only way out is to create.”

It’s a sentiment that resonated throughout the 42-look collection, which tracked a journey from restriction to liberation. Gone was the chaotic spectacle of PDF’s first off-calendar show. In its place: a more refined, narratively driven presentation that still held onto the brand’s raw emotional core. This was Formichetti at his most introspective and yet, paradoxically, his most accessible.

“Sometimes my mind feels like a cage, the only way out is to create.”

Domenico Formichetti (at right) joins 

the joyful running in leaps at the finale. 

As the cage cracked open, so too did the silhouettes: evolving from cinched, armoured garments to looser, more expressive forms. The tension between containment and release played out in the clothes themselves, tight, layered outerwear gave way to flowing denim, while oversized tailoring evoked both swagger and vulnerability.

“There’s always a tension I’m exploring,” Formichetti said. “Between what people expect of me and what I actually want to say. Between the business, the noise, the image, and the truth.”

It was evident in the elevated treatment of PDF’s signature elements. The denim was more intricate and layered with sheer mesh or accented with exposed seams. Outerwear played with exaggerated volumes and utility detailing, nodding to workwear and street uniforms while subverting both. And in a move that signals the brand’s growing commercial confidence, there was a notable focus on footwear: vivid, velvety loafers, striped slides and brilliantly-hued sneakers that felt pulled from a childhood memory of rebellion.

“There’s always friction, between what people expect of me and what I actually want to say”

Formichetti's new collection showed

a strong sense of expressiveness. 

The result was a collection that felt more mature but never muted. Formichetti managed to deepen his aesthetic without losing PDF’s original pulse, an uncommon achievement for a designer just three years into his new label’s life.

Where many fashion shows stage fantasy, Freed-dom felt intensely real. The set, a concrete yard hemmed in by steel fencing, was less set dressing than psychological architecture. 

The soundtrack underscored the show’s emotional gravity, with distorted voiceovers repeating lines like, “Mind can be a prison, trapping emotions and locking away ideas… Don’t die in silence. Set your mind free.”

The choreography reflected this tension. Models didn’t just walk, they ran, jumped and leapt. Each movement suggested struggle or emergence, often both. It was performance art disguised as a runway show, with the fashion acting as both costume and revelation.

And yet, the show never tipped into self-indulgence. Even as it mined Formichetti’s inner world, it spoke to a broader, more universal experience: the difficulty of expression in an age of constant surveillance and curated identity. It wasn’t about escape, it was about confrontation.

As with past shows, Formichetti’s casting was personal. He tapped artists, athletes, and collaborators from PDF’s growing orbit - names like Rafael Leão, Stefon Diggs, Alvin Kamara, Tony Effe, and Julez Smith. These weren’t traditional models, but represented PDF’s ethos: authenticity over artifice, emotion over polish.

What unfolded wasn’t just a collection, it was a confession, a confrontation, and ultimately, a creative exorcism

Italian rapper Tony Effe walked 

the runway for the designer. 

“They’re not just wearing the clothes - they’re part of the message,” Formichetti said. “They represent different parts of me, and of the community we’re building.

The casting strategy aligns with PDF’s grassroots rise. Since its 2023 launch, the label has been powered by organic momentum with the likes of Drake and Central Cee helping to boost the labels profile, but the real strength lies in Formichetti’s commitment to accessibility. PDF may show in Milan, but its soul remains tethered to the streets of Chieti and the manufacturers in his native Abruzzo, where the garments are still produced.

Ultimately, the new collection marked a shift in scale for PDF, not just commercially, but conceptually. The collection is sharper, the messaging more focused, the vision more clearly articulated. But it’s also riskier. It invites the audience to not just admire, but to feel, and that’s a vulnerable ask in fashion’s notoriously detached arena.

“This is the beginning of something,” Formichetti explained. “Because once you break out, you don’t go back.”

With Free-dom, the designer didn’t just break out but broke open. What began as an expression of one man’s internal struggle became a communal declaration, an insistence that style is not just surface, but substance. In that prison yard in Milan, Formichetti didn’t just show a collection. He let something go. And in doing so, he asked everyone watching: what are you still keeping locked inside?

Scroll down to see highlights from the PDF by Domenico Formichetti collection plus exclusive backstage moments.