Massimo Giorgetti, a bona fide seaside creature (he was born and bred in Rimini, a popular Italian summer resort on the Adriatic coast), recently came under the spell of mountain life: “At my green age of 44-years-old, after a lifetime spent in bathing suits on the beach, I must confess I’ve fallen in love with alpine landscapes and high altitudes—and with the lives of famous mountaineers,” he said over Zoom. “They were men as adventurous as they were handsome—which is always a good combination.”
Having recently spent a lot of restorative time roaming the valleys in Northern Italy, Giorgetti was utterly smitten by their beauty. “Mountains are about solitude, oxygen, breath—their energy so potent,” he mused. In the MSGM men’s collection he wanted to convey the powerful feel of experiencing such naturalistic magnitude.
“Vertigine” (the Italian translation of Vertigo) was the collection’s title, a word which captures the dizzy sensation high altitudes can induce; but it was also chosen by Giorgetti as a metaphor for what we’ve been experiencing in our quarantined circumstances—an unsettling feel of being at a loss, almost to the point of falling off-balance. Although being naturally equipped with abundant doses of optimism, Giorgetti acknowledged that times are tough, and that #pandemicfatigue is taking its toll. But being able to escape even briefly to his beloved mountains has proved an energizing antidote—part adrenaline boost, part calm introspection.
The collection riffed on the winter sports repertoire, slaloming between high-performance techno gear and retro-tinged sophistication. Heritage throwbacks were powered by MSGM’s energetic streetwear punch and flavored with a ’90s underground rave vibe. Tweed short suits with a vintage St. Moritz feel were worn under oversized blown-up down hoodies in lysergic colors; postcards of luxury ’30s ski resorts were twisted into magnified prints. Denim trousers and anoraks were lasered with outlines of the Mont Blanc silhouette—they looked cool paired with XXXL boxy shirts in eye-popping colors, printed in abstract motifs imitating the textures of rocks and the icy reflections of glaciers.
The collection’s vibe conveyed images more suggestive of a cool trippy rave in the mountains than a healthy snowboarding picnic in the Swiss Alps. The feel was enhanced by the electronic soundtrack of the online-streamed video presented today during Milan Men’s Fashion Week—a pulsing, high-octane affair composed and performed by Italian artist Nico Vascellari and his band Niños du Brasil.
Asked to expand on the creative concept behind the video, which reproduced models walking randomly under a snowstorm (perhaps a hopeful future post-lockdown scenario of boys on their way to an undisclosed party location in the mountains?), Giorgetti said that this season he opted out of the artistic collaborations which have frequently been part of his fashion practice: “I wanted something normal. Honest. Simple. Experimentation is well and good. But nothing can beat a good, old-fashioned, no-nonsense fashion show,” he said. “Even under the snow would do.”