I was standing in a room dominated by a high stage lined with silver couches and beanbag chairs in a 30,000-square-foot shipyard on the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China, when Rihanna walked in.
The entire futuristic lounge pit, once filled with screaming people listening to music played from a giant modular boom box with its own cereal dispenser, falls silent. Wearing a bright red catsuit with an updo and oversized shield sunglasses, Rihanna was guided by her children’s father, rapper A$AP Rocky, to an angular couch in the center where he sat next to her. They sit next to each other and hold hands. I have it in my hand. The two musicians take a few sips of champagne and laugh together. Rocky then looks around the room and yells, “Let’s do this!”
Shortly after, models take to the stage wearing bright green, orange and yellow motorcycle-inspired down jackets. Some wear helmet-like trapper’s hats, like the one on Rocky’s own head. Rihanna has her phone in her hand the whole time, twisting and turning to get a glimpse of her partner’s Moncler Genius collection. At the end of the runway show, Rocky stands up and takes a bow, while Rihanna grins and claps. Then they walked out as quickly as they had come, and the room erupted with exclamations.
My opinion: “It was like a fever dream.”
I spent most of my time at Moncler’s City of Genius trying to come up with metaphors that could describe what it feels like. Saturday night’s event was technically the closing show for Shanghai Fashion Week, but it felt unlike any runway I’ve seen before. If anything, it felt like another world.
Since 2018, Moncler has invited creative people from across disciplines to collaborate on the Italian luxury brand’s annual Genius project. This year’s 10 winners include designers Rick Owens and Jil Sander, fashion editor Edward Enninful, and actor Donald Glover. The day before the event, 8,000 guests, including thousands of ordinary people who earned invitations, each received a map of the City of Genius, containing each neighborhood dreamed up by a different creator. Moncler has described it as a “metropolis of creativity.”
One fashion editor I spoke to compared the Shanghai event to Coachella because of how vast and festival-like it all was. Attendees grabbed friends and ran around to watch different “acts” on different stages, but instead of music, they saw different interpretations of Moncler down coats dreamed up by designers. (There was music, too, though; the night ended with a concert by Canadian singer-songwriter Henry Lau, and Rocky reappeared a few hours later to perform at the afterparty.)
Another said the presentation made it feel similar to Epcot at Disney World. Neon lights everywhere, guests racing around in go-karts in the Palm Angels area, food carts lining the paths between “neighborhoods,” and lines of enthusiastic people following one after the other. Guests happy to be there.
I also couldn’t help but think about how it didn’t really feel like a fashion show. Indeed, both Rick Owens and Jil Sander had setups in which models walked on loops that resembled traditional catwalks. But that was just part of what was happening. Moncler created a hybrid of fashion festival and amusement park, with guests ranging from Anne Hathaway to everyday people. (I stood next to them at the Rick Owens booth.)
Moncler is primarily known for its down coats. But the brand takes a practical garment (many of us have early memories of being forced to wear it by a worried mother or weather-obsessed father) and turns it into something more than just a symbol of luxury. Instead, they succeeded in making it a symbol of creativity. The best thing about City of Geniuses was, of course, getting to breathe the same air as Rihanna, but also Rick Owens, Jil Sander’s Luke Meyer and Lucie Meyer wore puffers lined with down I was also able to learn how the gowns and knitwear were made. filling.
Creative collaborators, or “geniuses,” also took advantage of the opportunity to build neighborhoods based on their own visions. Of course, Willow Smith’s house had an oversized willow tree. She and her mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, posed with a model standing under a hanging branch. Glover brought his Ojai, Calif., farmhouse façade built over an orange grove to China with a matching collection of soothing layers of light and peachy hues. Enninful then felt the need to create a city optimized to withstand inclement weather, with two identical sets of weather stations, each steeped in climate extremes. A snow-covered model clicked on her computer, pushing away white debris. In another, a model ambles slowly through a sand dune bathed in a shower of heat, as if on the verge of fainting from exposure. Fittingly, the Moncler x Enninful collection consists of 10 looks designed to withstand harsh environments such as sandstorms, blizzards, and windstorms.
As I walked out of the City of Genius at the end of the night, I realized there was no perfect metaphor to sum up all of this. Maybe it was just an incredible fever dream that somehow became a reality and I ended up being a part of it temporarily. We all lament how the world of fashion has become too formulaic, but can you blame Moncler for bypassing it and creating its own?
All 10 districts are clearly etched in my memory, but the feeling of grabbing a friend’s arm and running to the next stop, dizzy with the nervousness of not knowing what to expect, is instantly memorable. I will never forget it. After all, who needs a fashion show? Perhaps we need more of this kind of extravagant fantasy. He is a genius after all.
Tara Gonzalez is senior fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Previously, she was a style writer at InStyle, founding commerce editor at Glamor, and fashion editor at Coveteur.