The fashion industry is a complicated machine, but it functions on very simple truisms such as "there's safety in numbers," "people like new things" and "always consider the rise and power of social media and online shopping".
Moving from these principles, Italian billionaire Remo Ruffini, CEO and part-owner of luxury brand Moncler, came up last year with a plan to re-organise the house in an innovative way and launched the Moncler Genius Group initiative.
The project, set to replace the expensive and rather boring Gamme Rouge and Gamme Bleu lines designed by Giambattista Valli and Thom Browne respectively (characterised by entertaining shows, but coldly received by consumers, especially by younger generations), consists in offering not just one collection designed by one creative director, but a series of individual collections created by some of the most Instagram-friendly, high-profile designers out there, such as Valentino's Pierpaolo Piccioli, Simone Rocha, Craig Green, Palm Angels' Francesco Ragazzi, Noir Kei Ninomiya and Fragment by Hiroshi Fujiwara.
The other key element for this project is that each collection is released one at a time on a monthly basis, to imitate the successful drop phenomenon launched by streetwear brands à la Supreme.
The project has been an ambitious one from the start especially considering the fact that the company had to upgrade production facilities, logistics and supply chain.
For the A/W 19 season the project expanded to include also Richard Quinn and Matthew Williams of 1017 Alyx 9SM, plus a collection of dog couture.
So far the most visually striking collections were produced by Valentino's Pierpaolo Piccioli: the previous one had a hieratic quality about it, with classic padded jackets transformed into monastic quilted capes and mantles that evoked portraits of Medieval Madonnas and the moods of Francisco de Zurbarán's paintings (that Piccioli had already filtered in his A/W 17 collection for Valentino) and featured some vague references to Pier Paolo Pasolini (certainly not a new inspiration for Piccioli).
Piccioli seemed indeed to be inspired by the concept of the "effetto dipinto" and the Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino's pinks, reds and greens that characterised the tableaux vivants the Italian writer and director recreated in "La Ricotta" (View this photo).
Knowing that collaborations are all the rage in modern fashion (see the one between Valentino and Undercover), for his latest collection for Moncler Piccioli decided to team up with Ethiopian model, designer and actress Liya Kebede from sustainable and socially responsible label Lemlem. The latter produces pieces characterised by traditional patterns and made by local artisans in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa.
Piccioli worked on ample volumes coming up with gargantuan ball gowns made of down-filled nylon in a palette of powder pink, pistachio and tangerine. One design looked like a giant octopus; another integrated a cape evoking visions of Veruschka portrayed in 1967 in a Balenciaga creation.
Yet there seemed to be also another inspiration: a white ball gown and the mood of the lookbook shot in an empty palazzo seemed to point at Claudia Cardinale's iconic white dress in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard.
Sumptuous and elaborate, some of the other designs also seemed to reference in their pastel shades the dresses from the ball scene in the film, albeit with a graphic twist added courtesy of Lemlem.
Showcased during Milan Fashion Week in series of disused railway arches under the local central station, this new offering by Moncler - that also includes Richard Quinn's floral motifs replicated on Moncler fabrics, Simone Rocha's romantic moods inspired by girl guides and Craig Green's pieces evoking the shapes and functionality of inflatable vessels - will drop every month.
At the moment the designs created by the Genius Group remain extremely Instagrammable and the marketing strategy surrounding the project has resulted very successful, attracting a younger audience, increasing online traffic and improving the visibility of the brand.
There's something to highlight, though, about the Genius line - it is not for the masses. In the '80s Moncler was still expensive, but its jackets, adopted by the "paninari" as their uniforms, were coveted by a lot of young people who would go to great lengths (saving money or begging parents...) to buy one. In the mid-to-late '80s prices for classic Moncler jackets were equivalent to €300,00 in 2015, if we consider inflation maybe you could say they were equivalent to €600,00 in 2018, yet they were usually an investment as the quality was high and would last for years (and would not be trendy for just 6 months...).
While some of these Genius collections are thought with the concept of timelessness in mind, most of them fall under the luxury/design category, even though they are produced with the rhythms of the fast fashion industry in mind (bear in mind the "drop" model). In a nutshell, while Moncler Genius is a highly entertaining "Insta" success, prices are rather discouraging (a jacket by Piccioli will set you back €1,500; a coat/cape almost €3,000) and remind us that these pieces are for the very few out there. The rest of us can instead look at the pictures, share them on social media and only dream about a Leopard-inspired padded down ball gown.
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