Scary movies have been trending this season, but leave it to Massimo Giorgetti to go right to the source. Following a successful collaboration with Dario Argento for his fall menswear collection, Giorgetti and the master of horror were back at it for the women’s show. The main product of their partnership was prints: On pleated skirts, Giorgetti collaged together posters of Deep Red, The Cat O’ Nine Tails, Suspiria and Phenomena; on sweatshirts, stills of Jennifer Connelly’s eyes from Phenomena peeked out from under a lace dress; on flowing dresses were symbols of The Cat O’ Nine Tails. “Fashion, and specifically that of MSGM, managed to perfectly capture on fabric all of the many emotions one can find in my movies,” Argento told Vogue Runway’s Brooke Bobb after the show.
Making one’s blood boil isn’t exactly Giorgetti’s speciality. He is a designer so associated with lightness, frivolity, and joy that taking a turn for the dark side seems like a perilous surprise. But as with all things MSGM, even the existential terror came with a side of neon colors and sparkle. As he motioned to his models backstage before the show, Giorgetti explained how Argento’s young female protagonists had inspired him to think of his woman this season as a student in “witch school.” That meant lots of boarding school tweeds, boxy blazers, pleated skirts, coated cable knits, and prim collared shirts in an acid array of colors and grounded with lethal square-toed mary-janes or platform creepers. This theme evolved into a sinister blood red babydoll dress—infantilizing frocks might actually be this season’s scariest trend—before liberating itself on printed dot blouses, pleated high-rise trousers, and floating ’40s-silhouette dresses. Even if these items were in shocking pink, bubblegum, and that eerie shade of foreboding green, they were cut in some of Giorgetti’s most adult shapes.
Then, the most unexpected twist! A camel car coat with an asymmetric wrap neck. Is this Giorgetti’s commentary on the horror of the bourgeoisie? He demurred. He’s still a child at heart—see the cascades of sequins and ruffles that closed his show—but he has the range to make some uncanny femme fatale clothing, too. Women of all ages should take note of MSGM’s fall offer.
