“Everything starts from the word ‘content,’” said Massimo Alba at his dreamy Navigli showroom this afternoon. You can guarantee that when Alba considers ‘content’ he’s not thinking TikTok trifles, Snapchat stuff or call-out posts—he’s going deeper. Content is a state of being, a spiritual and physical satiety, as well as a word that, before it was recast to signify digital filler, once meant the ingredients that are combined to create a whole. Alba’s ingredients today started, well, with content: a brief film shot in Pescallo on the east-facing side of Lake Como, just across the point from Bellagio. Here his models dragged a row boat down the cobblestones and into the mountain-framed waters, then dived in. “As always I’m trying to show a community living together, sharing time and beauty, colors, energy and love,” said Alba.
Diving into the collection itself, there was plenty of color and energy to love. Finger-painted cashmere sweaters, every example hand-made and different, floated above tie-dye shorts. Unironed unfinished cotton, a little bobbly and uncolored too, was cut into loose jackets that would gain a lovely patina with age if you avoided red wine or coffee calamities. Soft, light and barely-washed lightweight jeans and coats were 100 percent Italian content. “Sustainability-wise, I like the idea of wearing something that has come from close by and has not travelled halfway around the world to be here,” said Alba. His perennial ultra-light corduroys, his second most consistent characteristic after that dreamy cashmere, were dyed in tangy, lip-smacking, almost lurid tones: a pair of pants in unripened banana green; one of his Tyrol jackets in an orange so urgent you could probably see it from the other side of the lake. Alba’s super-thoughtful slow fashion has seen him gradually expand to a network of five impeccably-placed stores across Italy. What would bring him further contentment, he said today, would be to find modest but meaningful places in both New York and London to continue to spread his super-soft, wear-forever gospel.
