During London Fashion Week on Monday, the luxury outerwear brand Moncler presented its latest “The Art of Genius” series of collaborations with a madcap evening of immersive live events. The night culminated with the unveiling of a Mercedes-Benz art piece dubbed Project Mondo G. The sculptural hybrid was revealed to be a G-Class off-roader merged with a Moncler puffer coat—a monster truck for the fashion set.
Moncler’s fashion show-turned-technological extravaganza took over London’s Olympia venue and drew a crowd of 10,000 people. Alicia Keys started off the evening with a nearly hour-long set of hits. The uplifting performance also served as a preview of Keys’s own Moncler pairing; her dancers were spotted in pieces from her upcoming collection. Other participants who introduced Genius collaborations included Pharrell Williams, Palm Angels, FRGMT, Adidas Originals, Salehe Bembury, Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, and Rick Owens.
Pharrell Williams attends Moncler’s ‘The Art of Genius’ at Olympia London on February 20, 2023. (Photo: Dave Benett/Getty Images for Moncler)
Pharrell Williams (Louis Vuitton’s new men’s creative director) delivered an outdoorsy tech mashup. FRGMT designer Hiroshi Fujiwara employed animatronic baby robots to model the collection. Jay-Z installed dozens of speakers that allowed guests to contribute their vocals that were then engineered into music in real time by award-winning producer Mike Dean.
For his “The Art of Design” installation, Rick Owens showcased sleeping pods in which theoretical travelers would slumber while wearing his bubble-inspired designs. Owens’s exhibition space turned into an outdoor dance floor, where a roster of DJs played, carrying the festivities into the night.
Moncler first introduced its “Genius” series of collaborations in 2018 as an experimental platform for outside designers to reinterpret its core DNA, particularly its wildly popular puffer coat. Or as Remo Ruffini, Chairman and CEO of Moncler, said, “Our ambition was to create and share new energy with ever new communities, while going beyond the conventions of the fashion sector and collaborating with extraordinary talents to create something totally new and unexpected.” The idea has taken off.
Moncler and Mercedes-Benz reveal Project Mondo G. Photo: Lukas Müller. Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz.
