Italian designer Maria Calderara draws inspiration from Tomaso Binga's poetics for the FW 2026/27 collection, continuing in the contamination of languages, which she has chosen as the distinctive feature of her work.

The #WWWWOMANWORDWRITING collection will be presented on Friday, February 27, at 6:30 pm, at Spazio Maria Calderara in Milan. The exhibition project, which frames the collection's presentation, will be on view until March 13, 2026.

"Conceptually #WWWWOMANWORDWRITING continues Binga's artistic and intellectual research," said Calderara. "Since the 1960s, she has developed a strongly political practice through visual poetry, the body, and the spoken word, aimed at denouncing the endemic exclusion of women from the art system."

In this collection, subtle and refined references allow the artist's works to enter into a dialogue with the garments through integrated applications. The intent is not to didactically illustrate Binga's work, but to explore it by embracing its method: the subtraction of meaning, the rebellion against dogma, the centrality of the body as a narrative tool. The result is an open system in which each element is designed to be freely interpreted. Volumes, materials, and colors overlap. The modular garments, adjustable with laces and elastic, are designed to adapt to different body shapes and postures.

Binga's desemanticized writing is further stylised and interpreted through the insertion of small rectangles of white fabric that form a hatching on dresses and jackets. Binga's words also extend to jewelry. Those extracted from the correspondence in the work "Ti scrivo solo di domenica" (I write to you only on Sunday, 1977–1978) become material engraved on small metal plaques, applied to necklaces. The jewelry, made from a variety of materials, from Murano glass to pearls to gold-plated jersey chains, narrates a play of contrasts between traditional femininity and conceptual incisiveness. The crumpled cloth, the felt, the raw cotton, the eco-leather worked to recall the artist's iconic "Carta da parati" (1976-1977), giving an account of Calderara's always timely investigation on fabrics, to which is added the artist's signature: the "Bi" multiplied and repeated in different formats on shirts and trousers.

"The manual labor employed in the creation of the collection," Calderara added, "directly refers to the historical removal of female artistic work, to its marginalization. It is the same mechanism that pushed Bianca to adopt a male name, highlighting how access to artistic recognition was, and in part continues to be, profoundly marked by gender inequality." This concept takes shape in a simple dress, reduced to a rectangular structure, crossed by an opening for the head and two for the arms, on which is printed the photographic diptych "Bianca Menna and Tomaso Binga. Oggi spose" (1977). Designed to be worn on both sides, the dress invites a conscious play of identity reversal, challenging consolidated stereotypes.

The exhibition project accompanying the presentation of the collection is organized in collaboration with the Archivio Tomaso Binga, the Tiziana Di Caro gallery, and the Frittelli Arte Contemporanea gallery. Accompanied by a critical essay by Francesca Interlenghi, it brings together some of the artist's most significant works.

Presentation
WWWWOMANWORDWRITING FW 2026/27
Opening: February 27 / 6:30 pm
Open to the public: March 2 - 13, 2026 / 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Spazio Maria Calderara
Via Lazzaretto 15, 20124 Milan