Lady Diana has dutifully served as muse-in-chief for a plethora of designers, her revered image plastered on countless mood boards. Diana’s aura of drama, her deceptively fragile beauty, not to mention her shrewd fashion sense, apparently continue to fascinate. Massimo Giorgetti, who is normally drawn to more cutting-edge characters, is the last on the list to have succumbed to her spell. Yet instead of referencing Lady D’s bouffant coiffures and the puffy-sleeved, polka-dotted cocktail dresses she paraded on official royal occasions, he turned to her off-duty looks, where her British sportswear-inspired style had a cool verve. “What I find attractive was her unconventional attitude, which was very rulebreaking and modern; it looks relevant even today.” Giorgetti also professed to an addiction to Netflix’s The Crown, whose soundtrack of sweeping classical music is currently on his playlist with Blur’s “Boys and Girls,” a fact that highlights the very of-the-moment feminine/masculine conversation at play in the designer’s vision.
“After my Spring collection I felt the need for a cleaner, more reduced approach, less over-styled,” he said. The mix he concocted for Pre-Fall, regardless of the quite substantial number of references involved, looked surprisingly streamlined. Masculine tailoring was injected with a Cool Britannia flair, then infused with elements borrowed from saddlery, polo, and jockeying attire. The clashing blend gelled in a neat lineup of sharply cut, slightly oversize masculine suits in patchworked Prince of Wales and houndstooth techno-wool fabrics, “broken” by polo necks in shimmering paillettes; smart, slim city coats decorated with horse-shaped intarsias; and long tiered dresses in silk georgette printed with watercolor renditions of jockey and polo motifs.
The MSGM logo had a comeback of a sort; it was scattered throughout, subtly printed on white T-shirts, emblazoned as an appliqué on the back of tailored bombers, and spelled in bold lettering on hooded sweatshirts worn under blazers. Elsewhere, the streetwear vibe so ingrained in the label’s aesthetic was evidenced in smart viscose tracksuits in micro floral prints with an abundance of ruching details. Shiny surfaces like vinyl, gold, and silver eco-leather and metallic paillettes gave the lineup a dash of twisted urban glamour, which Giorgetti boiled down to a sharp sentence. “It’s minimalistic maximalism,” he said.
