Massimo Giorgetti’s eclectic starting points this season were Karl Lagerfeld’s early sketches of felines for Chloé and Federico Fellini’s clowns. Like the Italian filmmaker, the MSGM founder hails from the seaside town of Rimini, and he has been pondering the director’s fascination with circuses, clowns, and itinerant performers, seen in his films La Strada and 8 1/2 and the freewheeling documentary I Clowns. As ever, the young designer gave such inspirations a strong personal vision.
The ruching and ruffles of clown costumes played starring roles in the collection’s knitwear. Frills also adorned wide pants, voluminous bomber jackets, and even footwear, often in contrasting colors that had an exuberant appeal. His other flights of fancy here included macro agryle intarsias and those dreamlike felines curled up as prints. Jacket lapels were embellished with metal bottle tops that called to mind the U.K.’s late-’80s boy band Bros. (It’s a period Giorgetti admits he wished he’d experienced as an adolescent, but he was still in school then.)
As usual, there was a distinct sportswear component to the collection. This season it comprised daisy-print silk tracksuits, plissé skirts, loose dresses pepped up with running stripes, and great acid-hued velour turtlenecks.
Elsewhere, Giorgetti layered tulle skirts over pants and tops. He described them as grungy, but to this reporter they were rather more in line with the dreamy outsider aesthetic Fellini often captured. In any case, they contrasted nicely with the spare, architectural feel of the collection’s fresh, slim-line silhouette. Giorgetti is managing the challenging task of maintaining MSGM’s existing youthful clientele and garnering an increasingly sophisticated one.