“I love China,” declared a wide-eyed Rick Owens as he walked out of his interstellar installation at the Moncler Genius spectacular on Saturday night in Shanghai, with Michèle Lamy. The night prior, the pair had hosted a rave. It was their third party last week to celebrate the designer’s first time in the country. Owens is big in China. Huge. That much was made clear with the chaos that ensued when he ventured out to trek across the mega expo and catch a showing of Luke and Lucie Meier’s Jil Sander collection for Moncler. He created a Rick Owens vortex: The designer walked, the group followed. He looked to the right, so did everyone else. The size of the fandom trailing behind him and their devotion didn’t just illustrate Owens’s popularity. It contextualized the scale of Moncler’s event and the vast numbers of people in attendance. The only escape route from Owens’s whirlpool, in fact, was getting absorbed into someone else’s. Enter Rihanna, en route to A$AP Rocky’s neighborhood in what Moncler dubbed “The City of Genius.”
Moncler’s event was the hot topic at Shanghai Fashion Week: How big it would be (around 8,000 people), where it would be held (at a historic shipyard astride the Huangpu River), the size of the space (over 300,000 square feet), and, of course, how much it cost (rumors among attendees placed the production price tag at around €30 million). But the most recurring query: What exactly is it?
Back in 2018, Moncler CEO and chairman Remo Ruffini launched Moncler Genius. Multiple designer collaborations followed, and, until last year in London, Ruffini reimagined Genius, expanding beyond fashion designers to include “geniuses” of all walks of life. Saturday night’s event followed the London extravaganza in an attempt to push Genius further. The idea, said Ruffini at a press conference, was to take the Genius logo—a building with eight windows—and manifest it in real life. “There is a genius in each window,” he said. Cue Edward Enninful, Hiroshi Fujiwara, Donald Glover, Lulu Li, Nigo, Francesco Ragazzi of Palm Angels, A$AP Rocky, Willow Smith, plus Rick Owens and the Meiers as special guests.
From the building came the idea of a city. What if Moncler Genius could create its own metropolis, and what would it look like if each creative could build their own neighborhood? The pavilion was fashioned as an urban jungle with crosswalks, traffic lights, street food stands, and more. There were even folks whose job it was to keep the floors wet, for that glistening city lights glow. Each Genius was given free range to imagine their own section to showcase their interpretation of the Moncler vernacular.
Willow Smith and Donald Glover opted for green spaces. The puffer giant’s youngest-ever collaborator, Smith showcased her black-and-white looks around (what else?) a willow tree. Glover found inspiration in his farm in Ojai, California, presenting his lineup surrounded by an abundance of orange trees. Around the corner was Nigo’s building in partnership with Mercedes-Benz, a scaffolded structure that showcased his collection—stylized in his signature ’90s streetwear vibe—with two ’90s style G-Class vehicles. The car exhibited on the second floor will be the first-ever purchasable vehicle stemming from the three-way partnership. Francesco Ragazzi also put his need for speed on display with a Palm Angels mini Grand Prix. If it was hard to discern what exactly made up his collection, it was certainly a good time: The designer was said to have been driving one of the go-karts himself.
Nearby was Hiroshi Fujiwara’s FRGMT collection. One of the OG geniuses (“It’s important to me to always have a Japanese designer in the mix; they always bring something new,” said Ruffini), Fujiwara worked with British sculptor Richard Wilson to bring to life a minimalist and rather contemplative space where his jackets hung from the ceiling over a pool of dark reflective liquid. Signage said not to touch it. A colleague did, it was a gooey, inky black silicone.
Across the “street,” Edward Enninful offered another reflection, this one on climate change and the way we will one day need to be equipped to live in extreme realities. One of his models relaxed in a sand dune, while another endlessly traversed inclement weather on a treadmill. A third sat on her desk under the snow; she appeared to be working on photo edits, as Enninful once did as a glossy editor. Times change, but fashion remains—at least that seemed to be Enninful’s poignantly comedic message.
Lulu Li, a cross-disciplinary artist and curiously the sole Chinese creative tapped to render a collection, showcased her lineup and AI-driven digital-first creative process in a room full of mirrors. Hers will be the first Genius collection to be made available in stores, later this week, with the rest following through next spring. While the entertainment portion of the evening featured remarkable performances by Henry Lau and Chen Lijun, and the expo showcased an art installation by Xu Bing, it was rather perplexing that Moncler did not make the more of the occasion by tapping other Chinese designers to co-create collections—many of the talents on the Shanghai Fashion Schedule would have made worthy partners. (This reviewer’s draft pick would have been the creative maverick Xander Zhou.)
Foot traffic and orders shrunk at many of SHFW’s showrooms, but China continues to be an opportunity for mega brands like Moncler. This was the first-ever Genius event outside of Europe: “I would say we need a global strategy but with a domestic approach,” said Ruffini. “Domestic means learning the different cultures around the world, and China is very important to us.” Ruffini said he visits the country every six months, and remains impressed by “how fast they are in everything; in mentality, culture, and fashion.” Moncler reported a double-digit growth among Chinese consumers in the first half of this year. “China is a very good market,” he added. “It felt like it was time to give back here, and not just in terms of the market.”
A highlight of the showcase was the Jil Sander collection by Luke and Lucie Meier. Despite Ruffini’s determination to move away from the traditional runway show, the designers staged a catwalk presentation every half hour from 6 p.m. through 10 p.m. Inspired by nature, the lineup featured beautiful paper yarn feather-like textures, knitwear lined with down filling, double-faced wool pieces with removable down linings, and practically no logos other than the Moncler symbol utilized as jewelry and brooches. “We wanted to make it a collaboration but not compromise our design language,” said Lucie, with Luke adding, “we are quite happy because it feels organic and true to both brands.” That it did; it was a great Jil Sander collection, and a standout Moncler Genius one.
Back at the Rick Owens pavilion, which featured a scaffolded metal structure that models walked on with a tiny house on top, the designer said, “everything I’ve done with Moncler is about insulated aesthetics, because they’re all about insulation and protection. We have done a tour bus and a soundproof bed, and now we did a refuge.” It’s available for purchase, in fact. “I don’t like making stuff that isn’t available to people,” said Owens. “It’s technically a viable product.” Even more so were his remarkable puffer coats with structured shoulders and swirling or diagonal quilting.
A$AP Rocky’s collection, meanwhile, followed his current creative ethos of exploring “ghetto futurism.” In an interview, he said his goal was only to make clothes he would actually want to wear. While he himself was sporting Bottega Veneta, his Genius collection was well represented by Rihanna. In the center of the room sat a modular console of Rocky’s design with 14 different features, including an ashtray, a projector, and recording and music producing capabilities. It was, for lack of a better word, extremely cool.
The evening wrapped at an after-party with a performance by Rocky overlooking the Shanghai skyline. From start to finish, the event was astounding, and Ruffini only showed an appetite for more: “We’ve never been in the United States, for example,” he said tantalizingly. But what really impressed, in the end, was the fashion. Yes, Genius is a platform about creativity and expanding its boundaries, and yes, the industry has never been more interested in entertainment, but Moncler is still in the business of selling a good garment. Clothes are what Genius should keep in focus as it levels up further—wherever it is there is left to go.
