From its elegantly appointed 1,000-square-metre showroom at 11 Via Uberto Visconti di Modrone in Milan, which showcases the brand’s entire universe, high-end clothing and accessories label Eleventy presented its Autumn-Winter 2026/27 collection, marked by colours new to the house, an expanded assortment—especially in footwear—and the use of new raw materials such as vicuña, as revenue stabilises and new store openings are readied, starting in Chicago.

“It’s an important year for us, one in which we wanted to reinvent ourselves, because we believe it’s right to go back to being special,” Marco Baldassari, who continues to lead the brand he owns as CEO, tells FashionNetwork.com. “We had certainly spent many years operating in our comfort zone, with light colours, which by now are no longer distinctive. So we wanted to introduce new, more sophisticated, darker colours and silhouettes that are new to us, to differentiate ourselves once again from what the market offers.”

“The inspiration for the collection,” Eleventy’s CEO continues, “begins with an inner journey of reconnection with nature, which becomes our stage.”

Brown, therefore, assumes a central role in Eleventy’s wardrobe, as do very deep, almost black greys—like the winter sky—alongside forest greens and burgundy.

“This change has been noticed and, I must say, warmly received by buyers, also because I think it’s right to rekindle the desire of a consumer who perhaps had found the market a bit flat, lacking truly new propositions, where everything seems interchangeable,” the entrepreneur notes.

“It’s one of the contributing factors to this global downturn in fashion and luxury sales. More than tariffs, which in my view have somewhat distracted from the real issue—the strengthening of the euro, alongside the weakening of the yen and the dollar—pricing has certainly played a part, and in many cases the end consumer has not found it justified. With a very balanced price-to-quality proposition, Eleventy has not been particularly affected by this phenomenon. I hope this new collection of ours will reignite a great deal of desire, because we have completely reinvented ourselves, including in terms of fit and aesthetic.”

Eleventy, which in late 2025 opened its first flagship in Lisbon, will continue its programme of monobrand openings in 2026. The most significant will be in Chicago, in the United States.

“The U.S. is our most important market, thanks also to the mentality of the American consumer, who tends to spend more and is more inclined to purchase than the European customer,” Baldassari observes.

Eleventy currently employs 200 people and has 18 monobrand stores managed directly from headquarters, plus 22 with franchise partners, for a total of 40 monobrand stores. In the multibrand channel, the Milan-based label is carried in around 300 carefully selected doors worldwide.

“To be special, and thereby sell a quality product, you also have to be more selective in distribution, sometimes sacrificing opportunities in favour of a longer-term vision,” the CEO said.

The womenswear collection is growing within Eleventy’s business; today it accounts for 25 per cent of revenue, with turnover rising to 127 million euros from approximately 100 million in 2024 (it was 43 million euros in 2022 and 65 million in 2023, ed.), with 18 per cent generated in Italy and 82 per cent abroad. After the US comes the Middle East, Europe overall, and Asia, where Baldassari highlights South Korea and Japan as growth markets, while China remains to be defined.

The agreement between the European Union and Mercosur to further liberalise trade between them “is certainly a new opportunity that we will not fail to evaluate with great attention and interest,” said the founder, in the presence of Gianmarco Tamberi, who has officially become Eleventy’s new brand ambassador.

“The choice of Gianmarco Tamberi is due to two fundamental reasons. First, we are Italian and we want to bring Italy to the world, which an athlete like him represents excellently. Second, the alignment of our respective values: to achieve the results we have, we have made many sacrifices, with hard work, consistency, commitment and discipline. These are all elements that unite our paths,” the founder continued.

Since in recent years fashion has first seen the rise of tennis-inspired style and then that of skiing (preceded about fifteen years earlier by golfwear and polowear), can athleticwear be trendy in the coming years as well?

In other words, will athletics succeed in conveying its values to the general public, as it has almost never managed to do in the past? “Achieving results certainly helps to spur similar developments,”  Tamberi replies.

“We were coming out of a period (from around 2000 to 2015) when athletics had a huge void of champions in Italy. Now something has shifted, especially since the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, after the famous five gold medals we managed to bring home. Results can allow the personalities who achieve them to emerge; otherwise it’s difficult to bring a movement to public attention. Today, many young people in athletics are coming through,” explains the high jumper, who in his discipline has won at least once everything there was to win, having been Olympic champion at the Tokyo 2020 Games, world champion in Budapest 2023, world indoor champion in Portland in 2016, and three-time European champion (2016, 2022, 2024), not to mention victories at the European Indoors and two Diamond League finals reached.

“The collaboration with Eleventy came about very naturally, as we share similar values,” confirms the Ancona-born athlete. “For a few years I had the honour of being a Giorgio Armani ambassador, whom I take this opportunity to thank and acknowledge. When that partnership ended, several companies came forward to have me as a testimonial, but I couldn’t find any that resonated with me and with what I want to represent and communicate. Then Marco Baldassari got in touch. And everything clicked into place naturally.”

Founded in Milan in 2007 by Marco Baldassari and Paolo Zuntini, joined in 2009 by Andrea Scuderi, and now majority controlled (65 per cent) by the Fashion Cube fund—a holding company composed of the VEI Capital fund and a Gulf financial group that controls all the sales networks of the high-end apparel and accessories company—Eleventy works exclusively with natural Italian materials and 100% made in Italy production. Present in more than 30 countries, it also has directly operated stores in cities such as Milan, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul and Dubai.