Moncler’s Moving Moment in Milan

Yes, they moved: Vanessa Beecroft had declared herself unsure before as to whether the ballerinas who were featured alongside a street casting in her performance piece for Moncler tonight would be directed to remain static, as is customary in her work. In the end, she opted for movement.

A huge, densely packed crowd that intriguingly included Michèle Lamy as well as Marcelo Burlon and pretty much every fashion haunter in Milan made like sardines to get a glimpse of the Beecroft performance and its 43 slowly stretching dancers and models in vintage Moncler pieces. They were also here to see the newly-opened House of Genius, a retail expression of Moncler’s multi-collaborative Genius project. These spaces—there are two more in Paris and Tokyo—have been designed by Genius member, long-time Moncler designer and Palm Angels founder Francesco Ragazzi, who said the idea was to evoke the back-of-house storage area of a major museum.

“I wanted to create this sensation of work in progress, and to reflect all the different designers’ different aesthetics together in a space that you can transform. So we worked to transform that into a reason for people to come into the store, explore, and buy. Because for me the question ‘why should you go into the store?’ is important right now. Of course the product is important ,but if you can buy it on the internet, why go into the store?”

Ragazzi and Moncler’s answer to that is experiential. This Milan store and its sisters will host a series of workshops and events such as tonight’s from Beecroft. The stores also contain unique products which Ragazzi commissioned each designer to contribute—his are a Palm Angles x Moncler Zippo and water bottle—and cool vending machines from which you can buy yourself a Craig Green x Moncler T-shirt, for instance. There is also a lot of gateway merch, micro-products like rubber bracelets and stickers that allow you to purchase a souvenir from the visit even if you haven’t got the financial muscle to pick up a Simone Rocha.

Moncler’s governing genius Remo Ruffini, chilling shortly before the event with one Spritz and two IQOS at Marchesi, said: “The House of Genius is where we show everything we showed you guys at the first presentation in February, with all of the collections together. It’s about attracting people and explaining this concept, that we have all these different Genius designers who are expressing themselves in one project.”

Speaking of Moncler’s February Genius presentations, the presence of Lamy drove me to wonder whether a certain cleavage-flashing American in Paris fashion maestro might be lined up to join Ruffini’s crew. That would be complete Genius.