“It’s Zen, But Make It Technical”—Mordecai’s Ludovico Bruno Makes Comfort Clothes With a Sophisticated Mien

As brand names go, Mordecai might seem a rather odd choice, unless The Royal Tenenbaums is your favorite movie and Mordecai the falcon (whose plumage turned white after a kidnapping trauma) is a character you have a soft spot for. On a more scholarly level, Mordecai’s etymology has ancient Babylonese origins of auspicious meaning. So what’s the story?

Shrugging off any erudite excursus into history books, designer Ludovico Bruno, the Italian menswear label’s founder, said it’s just a name he liked. Yet after some prodding, he concedes that he’s a Wes Anderson stan, and that it felt like a good omen to name his collection after a bird whose “lightness and stealth exactitude of flight seems to sharp-glide over the heaviness of life. I certainly wouldn’t have referenced a fluttering feather, carried by the wind with no direction.”

Bruno launched his menswear brand in 2023. After studies at Pratt Institute, he was offered jobs at 3.1 Phillip Lim and Edward Buchanan’s Sansovino 6 before embarking on a decade-long stint at Moncler. There he worked on the Gamme Rouge and Gamme Bleu lines before they transitioned into Moncler Genius, where he was head designer. During his Moncler years he collaborated with a string of A-list creatives, from Giambattista Valli to Hiroshi Fujiwara to Thom Browne, whose “almost obsessive” tailoring standards had a strong influence on his design. When Browne was Moncler Gamme Bleu’s creative director, he and Bruno experimented on ways of adapting the sartorial to the technicalities of the piuminos, using high-end flannels or light wools and introducing new padded shapes, more fitted and sophisticated than any standard puffer.

After Moncler he went to work for Yoon Ahn of Ambush; then it was time to launch his own line. “I wanted to find an alternative both to streetwear and to the technicalities of sportswear,” he says. “I also wanted something to wear that suited my personal style, a way of dressing much more leisurely, comfortable, and easy to travel in but always adequate.” Bruno’s love of traveling is on par with his commitment to fitness; he trains religiously every day, and he’s adept in martial arts. His physique isn’t of the ephebic variety in the least. “I couldn’t wear any of today’s skinny menswear propositions even if I tried,” he jokes.

His line combines technical elements of high-performance sportswear, memories of ways of dressing he has encountered in his travels, the cool of streetwear, and some formal polish. While volumes are generous, fabrications and construction are all about lightness, to allow functional layering and versatility; the silhouette “has the shape of an 8, with neck, wrists and ankles as points of definition,” he explains.

Ponchos, stoles, capes, and kimonos are staples in the Mordecai wardrobe, often lightly padded and made of ultra-light cotton nylon. In the spring 2025 collection, presented in Milan during Men’s fashion week last month, standouts included a series of ample kimono coats inspired by gym robes, made in featherlight leather lasered and treated to replicate terry cloth textures. Cotton waffle coexists with three-layered membranes and light performance padding; zippered net segments regulating body temperature can be manipulated to change the volume from round-shaped to kimono. Garments are mostly rendered in calming gradients of white. There’s something confidently centered about Mordecai’s look. Says Bruno: “It’s Zen, but make it technical.”