Essence, identity: Massimo Alba presents the men's spring-summer 2019 collection

Massimo Alba p-e 2019, uomo

Each country has specific somatic features, linked to its geographic conformation, to the territory. A land of North Africa, is recognized mainly for the desert dunes, the small houses, tending to a pale color, sometimes ivory, others more lively, but still without diverting attention from the beyond offered by nature. On the other hand, other south regions of the continent are more fertile, they have the unique possibility of seeing and experiencing the passage of the seasons. There are identifiable habitats for a single element, maybe two: the lake region in Finland, the Amazon rainforest. Unicum on the whole planet. Italy has in just 1300 kilometers, and on a reduced scale, all the elements mentioned above which, together with the sea that surrounds it, contribute to make it a singular reality, unparalleled. Massimo Alba takes creative inspiration from it and its Mediterranean for the creation of the menswear collection for next spring-summer.

Massimo Alba p-e 2019, uomo

The literature remains a confirmation, for the occasion is Italian, or rather, meridian. After David Foster Wallace and Italo Calvino, pens to which the brand has been linked in the past presentations, it is in fact the work of the Neapolitan writer Raffaele La Capria the starting point signifying the new work of the Milanese designer. He “lived as a boy in Palazzo Donn’Anna,” a wonderfully Neapolitan seventeenth-century palace, where you can portray all the history of Naples, and living in that building my relationship with the sea was very great … I could dive into sea from the window “.” It is with the image of the author as a young man – now he is splendidly 95 years old- that Alba observes as in a Bertolucci film the same man, living his contemporaneity in an authentic way, through the experience of everyday life. “A boy watching the sea from the window of his house, almost blinded by all that light, from the splendor of that Eden: he dives from the window directly into the water of the sea, into the blue that reflects the light of the sun, and when finally reappears has become a writer. ” The creative explains.

Massimo Alba p-e 2019, uomo

But beyond the poetic aspect, much felt and unconscious presence in each collection, since it is inherent in the Alba’s fabula, what remains significant is, in addition to the strictly Italian production and precious fabrics, what has been written about the typical aspects of the territories, concept to be matched with that of fashion, as the company interprets it. Whatever the starting point for the embedding of a new stylistic project, the basic elements always remain the same: sobriety, essentiality. Quality.

Massimo Alba p-e 2019, uomo

The brand presented the new proposals during the Men’s Fashion Week in Milan few days ago, where once again the same aesthetic pattern was imposed by marketing and social networks, where the affirmation of self no longer passes through culture but the tilling of a desperately homologated image. The paradox lies in the fact that placing itself ideally outside of this mechanism – not in absolute terms, however, having its own account on Instagram and a new e-commerce website – especially from the point of view of the approach as distinct as strongly expressive, Massimo Alba manages to emerge, to create around itself a clientele capable of discerning the two worlds, the one now in disarray and the one well rooted in its naturalness, identity. There is in fact an analogy between the person Alba and his way of expressing himself through clothes, gestures. The same photographs of each collection express what for our country is its shape, memory for us. Quoting La Capria: “The lines of a landscape, the green of a hill, a mirror of the sea, speak to us over time, remain etched in us, become time and speech, a part of our existence.” Authentic.