Writing this from a room that looks on to Stoke Newington Road, there are few places I’d like to be right now more than among the snow-laden pines of the Alps. If his latest collection for MSGM is anything to go by, it looks like the label’s founder Massimo Giorgetti agrees. For AW21, titled ‘Vertigine’ (Italian for ‘vertigo’), the Milanese haute-streetwear purveyor sought to harness the dizzying sense of disorientation that we’ve all felt of late, equating it to the sense of existential fear and adrenaline that spurs climbers on as they scale the highest peaks.
“Like life, mountains are a space that cannot be fully understood or tamed, but are open to infinite possibilities,” read the notes that accompanied the collection’s blizzard-struck short fashion film. “They are unsettling, extreme providers of adrenaline rushes, but also majestic and peaceful, welcoming and reassuring.”
A similar sense of balance — between prepared protection and a sense of zany extremity — carried over into the clothes, with the reassuring comfort of chunky ribbed knit pullovers counterposed by expedition-appropriate jackets in hardy shearlings. The collection’s tech-y tone, though, needn’t deter anyone who isn’t a big fan of the great outdoors. If a momento of the mountains is all you’re after, then you’ll be pleased to see the thick cotton shirts printed with vintage postcards from ritzy ski resorts like Chamonix, Courchevel and Courmayeur — perfect for if you’re about the look, not the lifestyle.
And if you’re the sort that only ever does the après-ski without, well, doing any skiing beforehand, you’ll be enamoured by the rave-y nostalgia that colours the collection. With a Kangol bucket hat collaboration, shirts with psychedelic “rave of stones” and “trees on acid” prints, and baggy jeans with grass-stains and outlines of Mont Blanc etched along the seams, this your go-to wardrobe for the post-pandemic Summer of Love that (we hope) lies ahead.
