Moncler Genius: Democratizing fashion… live!

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Feb 21, 2019

There were remarkable cocktails and swing coats made in magnified white daisy prints; stunning versions in blends of massive water lilies and windswept tropical forests; hyper large zebra puffer coats and cheetah-print jumpsuits with matching crash helmets. All presented inside a railway arch at Milan’s Stazione Centrale, done up with a fantastic fantasy Impressionist Monet ceiling, contrasted by an English garden of blossoming all black flowers.

 
A quite brilliant collection courtesy of Richard Quinn, 18 looks by the new British wunderkind for Moncler Genius. Remarkably, one of 10 art-installations-meet-mini-fashion-shows all staged under the main rail line into the Italian fashion capital.
 
Marking the latest installment of Moncler Genius: One House Many Voices.

Talk about democratizing fashion. Consider it fashion’s answer to Le Fooding, the French culinary project of bringing haute cuisine to the streets. In Moncler’s case, literally bringing fashion forward design on to the streets. The atmosphere Wednesday night felt more like a rock festival than a fashion event, with some 5,000 fans queuing to enter the 10 different arched warehouses.
 
Other exhilarating works of performance fashion included one by Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino, who teamed up with Liya Kebede, fusing patterns from her native Ethiopia into operative couture gowns with enormous matelassé shawls. All seen in a video shot in a decayed Renaissance palace that was then projected onto the railway wall.
 
Plus, one couldn’t help liking the Palm Angels vision. A half dozen Space Station hooded mechanic suits in day glow metallics. Where every minute a buzzer allowed guests to blast each model with a spray of primary-colored paints.
 
And let’s not forget Simone Rocha’s ghostly collection of mega-puckered and layered black calico dresses and coats finished with crystal trim, and shown inside a mock silver birch forest.

 
Though, for sheer chutzpah, it was hard to beat Craig Green’s stupendous sense of staging. He clamped a series of humungous parkas onto giant meat spits and then hung them 5 meters in the air. A series of giant fans had them bellowing eerily in a setting worthy of Fritz Lang or Ridley Scott.
 
Come to think of it, "Genius" seems something of an understatement for this exceptional joint show.