If you got a goose feather every time a fashion industry observer sung the praises of down jacketeers Moncler’s Genius project, you could fill...well, you know. But in an industry exhausted by the presence of a proverbial “x” between two brand names, Moncler Genius is a consistently exciting act of luxury powerhouses coming together, successful both commercially and creatively.
Moncler Genius, first launched in 2018, presents a seasonal suite of collaborations during Milan Fashion Week’s fall season that then appear in stores each month until the whole shebang of starts again in February. The eleven collections shown last February included a few repeat Moncler collaborators as well as some new names, giving the not-so-modest quilted jacket the majesty of a Valentino gown, under Pierpaolo Piccioli; the Edwardian goth of Simone Rocha; and, of course, the highly conceptual yet highly wearable design credentials of Craig Green. (There was also a collection of puffer couture for dogs, but that is a story for another time.)
Green’s collection, which launches in stores today, is the designer’s sixth with Moncler, a relationship that predates the launch of the Genius project with a handful of capsules in 2017, and a sign of Moncler’s willingness to bet early and big on designers. (One imagines that a number of Moncler fans likely discovered Noir Kei Ninomiya and Richard Quinn through Genius, for example.) “It’s a great fit,” Green said in a phone interview from London last week, of the relationship. “I see Moncler as a brand that’s about protection and functionality and also about uniform, and those are things we explore within the Craig Green mainline collection.”
In other words, to use the corporatese term for “abracadabra”: synergy. After all, Green pointed out, he believes “the most interesting design comes from working within restrictions”—which means that, when approaching a collection with Moncler, “there are so many possibilities, but also there’re also an incredible amount of restrictions in what you can and can’t do in the format.” Green certainly proves that limitations leads to great creativity: his previous collections have included puffer space suits, puffer tents, and, for the collection that hits stores Tuesday, puffer rafts. Each season starts with “functionality,” he said, and by asking, “How can we do protective padding in a new, interesting way?”
“This one was about lightness and travel,” he said of the latest collection. “What I think is amazing about a Moncler jacket is that it looks so heavy and protective, but it’s so light that you can actually pack it into a small space. So the whole collection was based around trying to create garments that could be condensed into very small spaces.” Green and his team presented paper mock-ups of the pieces to Moncler’s team, showing how they might construct a garment with down pillows, “and how it could be folded through a series of hinges, and lips to suck the air out to reduce the volume of the down.” That packability isn’t so clear from the static lookbook images, he said—so there are videos showing how the pieces can be shrunken down. (Like the opposite of an unboxing video!) Pretty nifty.
So why does Green think the Moncler project works so well? What’s kept him coming back for more (six times)? “As a designer, I always think it’s equally important to have an accessible reality to what you’re doing, or a version that can be accessed. But it’s also important to make people think, or push it forward in some way.” Moncler asks its customers to do both, he said. Plus, Moncler chairman Remo Ruffini is really, truly dedicated to developing new ideas, “and I think he allows for those ideas in a way that makes sense for each designer,” said Green. To be able to please Piccioli, Green, and Hiroshi Fujiwara in one collection certainly speaks to the company’s respect for its variety of guest designers.
Speaking of which: Green likes the company, too. “You create a community, in a way, because you get to know designers that maybe you wouldn’t have crossed paths with initially,” he said. “When I saw the first Genius show, I was so interested that there were so many different outcomes.”
“Everyone kind of wants to do something,” he added. “You have no idea what other people are doing. So you keep pushing it forward.”
