2 MONCLER 1952 (Donna)
Veronica Leoni is one of the apparently endless supply of Phoebe Philo studio protégés who have broken cover since the great Celine schism of 2018. I can’t tell you she is the next Philo, but I can tell you she knows how to show a collection. Leoni’s space was a large box filled with feathers in which her models stood looking out. The box was apparently made of reverse-reflection glass, so while the audience could see the models, they could not see us. About thirty seconds after we entered the room it was plunged into darkness, interrupted only by strobes and Kate Bush (I think) at top volume on the PA. So the clothes were essentially invisible but the designer was not, and she said: “We would consider this box a gathering of the greatest women we can find, in there to feel empowered by themselves but also exposed to us. We are kind of spying on them And yeah, I think it is a fine line in between fashion and what needs to be after fashion. The dream of what you want to share.”
At this point I pleaded with Leoni—we were standing in pitch blackness and her clothes were invisible. She laughed. “Yeah, but you are going to buy them! You will get the chance to see them!” I had glimpsed some patches on a down jacket. “They were a collaboration with Itchy Scratchy Patchy—made by Edie Campbell and Christabel MacGreevy. We tried to bring a little bit of that do-it-yourself vibe. And we decided to do a recognition of all of the female heroes in history, so there is Salome there is Sappho… there’s a little bit of a ’90s London clubbing atmosphere.” In the strobe-punctuated darkness, it all made sense.
2 MONCLER 1952 (Uomo)
Sergio Zambon’s was, along with the Grenoble collection and Fragment, my favorite tunnel of the night in terms of being full of clothes I wanted to hustle the Moncler PR department into giving me. Sergio said: “This season it is about a very laid-back guy who loves nature but lives in a very big city. Specifically it is a guy from LA, where the nature is very close. There is a slightly hippie mood in the collection. So there is a fringing on a down jacket and a down jacket in a cotton tie-dye.” The looks were presented in surface-less survival domes and were pretty great. There was also a side note in Zambon’s collaboration with Valextra, which was made up of oversized totes in super-luxe leather with piumino straps and customizable letter identification.