Ten years after making his runway debut, Leandro Cano returned to his origins. For his fall 2024 proposal, titled Menú, the designer went back to the same moodboard he had made for his first collection. “In Buffet, my first collection, there was a little bit of everything,” he said at the car park in Madrid’s city center where the show was held. “For fall, I have been streamlining and distilling the designs—it still shares some of the same colors, shapes, and concepts as that first collection, but now everything is more mature and with a more international point of view.”
The Jaén-born designer likes looking at historical figures to reinterpret them through his own off-kilter lens; to wit, a toile de jouy print features the Spanish king Philip II and his wife Mary Tudor, riding a motorcycle and hanging out at a gas station, respectively. “I wanted to break up with the bucolic origins of the print and give it a much harder touch,” he explained. The print also features a nod to his grandfather, who was a cab driver, and his Seat 1500. “In that car, I dreamt a thousand times about what I would do for a living in the future.”
Cano also returned to the extreme volumes of his beginnings, updating them through a new shape. “We have always made them round and organic, and this time we went for a geometric quality. They are more architectural,” he said. He also took the opportunity to explore black, a shade he hadn’t used until now. “I have a rather love-hate relationship with black, but now I feel very comfortable wearing it,” he reflected. Key fabrics included nappa leathers, wools, and jacquards. True to his way of conceiving fashion, Cano proposed techniques such as macramé or crochet, with a knitting pattern he found on a pillow that belonged to his grandmother, forgotten for years in a drawer.