“This is like Glastonbury, somehow,” observed Jonathan Anderson as we dashed from frontstage to back at his showspace in tonight’s Moncler Genius launch event. As so often, he wasn’t wrong. We were on the east side of Milan next to a radical squat in a sprawling, abandoned factory, within which Remo Ruffini and his cohorts had laid out separate stages for their eight (!) full Genius collections, plus three (!) accessory collections (a fat-tire-d Danish e-bike; the super-cute hot-model-thronged Poldo dogwear; and Rimowa luggage) plus, oh yes, the genius but not “Genius” Rick Owens tour bus project on the side. During an intense boom-boom-boom of collection viewings almost as remorseless as the techno that DJ Pandora’s Jukebox was playing outside, Will Smith rolled up (and shook my hand!) as we were talking to Moncler’s mastermind Remo Ruffini in a room designed to look like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and created to shoot the fabulous Richard Quinn collection (number 8). In total there were 12 collections on show in tonight’s third installment—is Genius going to keep on growing? Said Ruffini: “Maybe not in terms of designers, but in terms of energy I want it to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I think the brand has changed thanks to the energy this project has given us. If you walk into the store today it is totally different than two years ago—the crowd is having fun and enjoying the programs we have. It is a totally different way to work but it brings us energy.”
