“As usual, we started from the yarn; they’re all washed and overdyed, with specific finishes. My understanding is that people want something different, not in a strange way, but cool, with limited distribution, and not so easy to find,” said Massimo Alba in his transporting Milan showroom filled with vintage finds and objects sourced on his travels. “Being small today is very important for the market.”
Offering a subtle maritime mood, the super-soft hands of the collection were dreamy, from a navy polo with a sweatshirt-like cotton exterior and linen interior to pants in a washed featherweight micro-corduroy.
Signature dirty washes — or what Alba referred to as “watercolor” finishes — were used on a range of pieces, including a light blue pique cotton shirt that kept its original color on the inside but had grayed on the outside, and a bordeaux and gray striped suit in pure linen that had been overdyed and washed — a personal favorite of Alba’s as a man who personifies his collection. It looked as though it had been dug up from the garden.
Alba said the words of writer Raffaele La Capria, especially his latest book, “Last Journeys in a Bygone Italy,” played on his mind when he was developing the collection, which is produced locally. “It is tied to our most secret identity and our imaginative memories. The lines of landscapes, the green hues of hills and glistening expanses of water talk to us over time and make their mark on us. They become time, words and part of our very existence,” he said.
This season’s main silk scarf print, depicting a parrot in flight with a backdrop of a waterfall, was designed in collaboration with Brazilian tattoo artist Alan Crisogano.