Sportmax’s fashion director Grazia Malagoli set up an impromptu showroom for resort appointments on a sprawling terrace in Milan’s city center. While maintaining safe-distance guidelines, the breezy en plein air situation lifted post-confinement moods. Determined to bring the same feel-good factor to the collection, Malagoli played on a more sensual and feminine note than usual, revealing Sportmax’s softer side.
Jacques Deray’s 1969 movie La Piscine has inspired countless designers (and remakes), not only because of the jaw-dropping gorgeousness of actors Romy Schneider and Alain Delon, but also for its pervasive sensuality and dark undertones. As an inspiration, it seemed a world apart from the elegant functionality Sportmax is known for. “We just referenced a certain seductive mood the movie was about,” explained Malagoli.
Graphic constructions were softened into more feminine form-fitting shapes featuring plays of folding, draping, and asymmetrical cuts. Tailoring was still precise, but was given a fresh twist with plisséd techniques, as in a double-breasted trench coat in beige cotton gabardine whose front transitioned seamlessly into what Malagoli called a “vanishing pleats” effect.
Heightening the sensual aesthetic, bustiers, one-shoulder column dresses, and backless knitted tops revealed flashes of bare skin. On a similar note, tight pencil skirts in high-gloss technical fabrics were worn with square-cut military shirts, while an off-the-shoulder printed dress with a flared asymmetrical skirt nodded at the 1950s. Also vintage in flavor was a floral motif, reworked into an abstract pattern and printed on a sexy spongy-textured minidress.
With this collection Malagoli was tapping into women’s post-quarantine desire to look and feel more feminine and seductive—basta sloppy tracksuits and loungewear. She chose a quote from Simone de Beauvoir and plastered it on the collection’s moodboard: “If God created something more beautiful than women, he must’ve kept it to himself.”