The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2026 - Issue 39

bitecatwalk SIMON CRACKER S imon Cracker’s ‘Punkindness Forever’ marks the first collec‑ tion in five years created without the founding duo. This shift closes one chapter and opens another, filled with possibility for Cracker and Filippo Biraghi. Their creative partnership may have ended, but the spirit that defined it remains: two wildly different and imaginative minds determined to share their chaos, humour, and heart with the world. With WN Lab’s support, the Cracker family continues to grow, a com‑ munity bound by ideas. The energy comes from collective belief, from the way themes, aesthetics, forms, and colours are shaped together with the people who will wear them on the runway. The wardrobe be‑ comes a vessel for memories: the coin found in the pocket of a vintage jacket, like the 100‑lire pieces Simon kept discovering in the coats he borrowed from his grandfather at thirteen, trying to dress like an adult. That coin now becomes a print across recycled fabrics, oversized buttons, and accessories. The destroyed school uniform was stitched back together across different personalities. A class of misfits reminis‑ cent of The Breakfast Club, generationally, culturally, and aesthetically diverse. Their mascot, the black cat Salem, becomes a lucky familiar, hand-painted on shirts, accessories, and Mary Janes created with Dr. Martens. The collection collides feminine silhouettes of crumpled, dyed, printed silks with tailored jackets blown up to double their volume. Terracotta orange appears throughout, garments dipped and emerging in shifting gradients shaped by each piece’s fabric. Navy blues form a geometric check that replaces traditional tartan, running across mini skirts, ruf‑ fles, and outerwear. This season is a return to speaking through clothes rather than shout‑ ing. The wardrobe becomes a manifesto. Punkindness, once the theme of their first Milan Fashion Week show, is now part of the brand’s DNA, a way of working and being. Simon Cracker makes clothes like many others, but within an environment that serves as a refuge for those who have survived the truly toxic corners of fashion. www.simoncrackermilano.com Images courtesy of Maximilian Linz