They say that good things come to those who wait, and the old adage may apply to Pierre-Louis Mascia. A well-known exhibitor at the Pitti Uomo tradeshow, Mascia gained throughout the years buyers and fans first with his line of scarves, then with an expanded line of accessories, that eventually developed into clothes and homeware as well.
Beloved by connoisseurs for his luxurious impalpable silk and cashmere scarves characterized by collages of archival prints, Mascia is a one-of-a-kind designer who has been charting his own course.
An illustrator, artist, colorist and pattern aficionado with a keen eye for clashes of shades and motifs, in the vast landscape of fashion Mascia is the sort of gem that gets overlooked by the industry because he doesn't really follow trends, but prefers going his way.
At this year's Pitti Uomo 106 he was finally invited to present his new collection with a runway show. The venue of choice was Florence's Tepidarium del Roster and guests sat on benches covered in Mascia's trademark cushions.
The Liberty-era glass and iron greenhouse went well with the dichotomy intrinsic in Mascia's designs. All his pieces are light, but they can resist the test of time as the designer tends to focus on timelessness rather than on trends.
Dancers from choreographer Pierre Rigal's company with their heads covered in Mascia's floral shawls with extra-long colored fringes, introduced the collection. When they removed the shawls, they revealed shirts with a printed zig-zagging patterns, matched with knitwear designs with the same pattern in contrasting colors, pants with abstract geometric prints and scarves fashioned as skirts.
As the dancers continued their performance, the collection unfolded with models donning a variety of designs. There were light silk shirts with floral prints, elegant thin knits, silk bombers or more functional and affordable windbreakers, then silk pants, pleated skirts and relaxed pajama sets.
Among the items that completed the collection there were large bags (that represented a link with the first ever item Mascia designed, the Ravel bag) and versatile shawls, that you can wear around your neck and shoulders, as a skirt or wrapped up as an eccentric turban.
The looks were accessorized with vintage jewelry pieces and beaded bags and models carried a variety of objects – albums by Patti Smith, David Bowie, Klaus Nomi and Lou Reed, a Pierre-Louis Mascia portfolio, and a painter's palette covered in thick paint splashes, both references to Mascia's illustrator career – that provided clues to the inspirations behind the show.
Mascia had indeed in mind art school students commuting in the early morning: art and youthful inspirations reflected in several details such as a logoed T-shirt spelling the designer's surname in a font reminiscent of the Metallica logo, soccer jersey-inspired tops (a reference to the European championships that have just started?) and cameo-shaped badges and pins with portraits of statues.
Shirts emblazoned with slogans such as "Bonjour tristesse" or "Cavalier Bleu" hinted at Mascia’s passion for books and art: the former referenced Françoise Sagan's 1954 novel and eponymous film by Otto Preminger; the latter may have been a reference to the Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider), a group of artists inspired by Expressionism, formed in Munich in the early 1900s that featured among its members Vassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke and Paul Klee among the others.
You may argue that Mascia's mix and match style (a concept that in fashion was first launched by Missoni that in the last few years sadly lost its flair for vibrant color and pattern clashes) and maximalist aesthetics with those botanical, entomological, geometric and wild animal prints (many are usually taken from his personal illustration archives of 19th century prints) is not so new as these prints and combination of patterns aren't rare on other designers' runways and at times they call to mind Alessandro Michele's Gucci collections.
Yet Mascia actually arrived first, way before the multi-layered collaged vintage patterns became widely popular.
Besides, there is a key difference between Mascia's designs and luxury pieces by mainstream fashion companies: the quality of the former is higher compared to the latter. At the same time, prices are lower as here you're not paying for the whole package – logo, status, hyped up fashion designer, brand ambassadors, etc. – that constitutes the final price of a luxury product by an established house.
A silk trench coat by Mascia may indeed set you back €745 (check out products and prices on his site) which is still expensive, but it is still a third of what you would pay for a similar design by a well-known luxury fashion house. The silk shawls with extra-long fringes are definitely more expensive (over €1,000), but they are made with a lot of material (but, for cheaper options, you can turn to Mascia's own version of the currently trending skinny scarf which, at €85, is almost a bargain).
Mascia founded his label 15 years ago, manufacturing his designs with established Italian companies, while he also worked as an illustrator for fashion magazines, and, season after season, he went to Pitti Uomo to launch his latest designs before being offered the chance of doing a runway show.
His parable makes you think a lot: in a previous interview I did with Mascia, the designer explained me how his modus operandi was very simple and consisted in adding one genderless piece in each new collection – starting from the Maurice Ravel bag, then adding scarves, jumpers and so on, taking one step at the time. While he built his label little by little and he is still going, younger designers quickly celebrated as the next big thing at Pitti, disappeared not just from the tradeshow, but from the fashion scene.
So, while you wish they would have invited him to showcase his creations at Pitti years ago when they may have looked even fresher, maybe waiting all these years allowed Mascia to build a more solid label and avoid burning out too quickly. Looks like it's true, then, good things come to those who wait.
