Maccapani (Q3245)
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Maccapani is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Maccapani |
Maccapani is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
“I think fashion shows are overrated,” said Margherita Maccapani Missoni: “I’ve been going to them since I was two-weeks-old, so they are not my goal with Maccapani. Instead to present this collection I want people to enjoy a moment, to feel the storytelling and vibe.” She said this from a bamboo chair in the garden of Via Caltanissetta 3—the beautiful Art Deco former home of the Olimpia Milano basketball team—while a friend in a knit bodysuit cut figs on a moss-bedded floral display nearby.She continued: “The idea here is that this house is lived in by a group of girlfriends. They’re tired of social expectations and constraints so they’ve moved in together to be a cultural hub. These are not teenagers: These are women who’ve decided to get together and get on with their lives.” As if on cue a young women in a rib-knit cardigan (new category alert) and droopy-flower printed vest top with artificial boning (counterfeit corsetry) appeared on a balcony above and gave us a wave. The rooms upstairs contained various Maccapani mise-en-scènes; in the bathroom a woman in fishnets washed a floral catsuit in the basin; next door a DJ in a fringed wrap mini and bias crop T-shirt fine-tuned an upcoming set, and along the way two friends—one in a stretchy floral print dress, the other in a bodysuit, opera gloves, and a hoodie/snood/wrap—did a jigsaw puzzle.The grown up grunge Maccapani is tilting toward is taking shape. Another development today was the announcement of a new partnership with eBay that will give Maccapani a permanent shop front—all Buy It Now, no auctions—that will see both garments and Missoni-curated vintage accessories sold on the platform. Today’s collection was styled against accessories—dubbed MaccaFinds—that the designer had previously sourced on eBay. These included a vintage Missoni shoulder bag, Murano glass necklaces, a Roberto Cavalli belt, and some rhinestone heels by Rene Caovilla. This was an interesting new experiment in shaping a DTC platform for this young but well-supported concern.
19 September 2024
Margherita Missoni’s emerging brand has already launched with retailers including Nordstrom and Browns. Now it has a pop-up space of its own in Milan. Sited by coincidence directly opposite the door to the Prada offices, the little “Spazia Macca” showcases the brand’s latest collections as well as a selection of Missoni-curated vintage accessories against which she styles them.“I feel that because we are so small this is an opportunity to explore new ways of doing things,” said Missoni. “Instead of working to classic rules we’re adapting to work in ways that feed our needs and necessities.” Amongst the freshest pieces, her rails were also scattered with older stock: just like her last-season e-store offerings, these were not marked down. “The whole strategy and structure of the collection is to be sustainable from an ecological and also economical point of view,” added the designer: “and that’s never going to change.”What has changed as Missoni defines Maccapani through these early seasons are some of the pieces she chooses to emphasize. Data derived from earlier drops revealed that most customers hail from the 25 to 35 age group. Furthermore, pieces that the designer did not necessarily anticipate would prove hot sellers regularly have. This collection reflected that by reviving and developing the netted bodystockings and house-print long-sleeve shirts that are already performing well. It also saw the development of Maccapani’s offer of modular dresses that have a sort of Swiss Army knife versatility depending how they are tied, draped, or set on the body. Her look-7 “backwards dress” plus the look-5 lace-edged embellished black lurex wrap were the stand-outs here.All the predominantly jersey fabrics are dyed or detailed in-house, and the emphasis on lurex remains. A soft black unconstructed jacket in black jersey was a key piece which, like the dresses, created a foundation around which to build looks. Removable upcycled faux fur shoulder pads and cuffs plus a pink and magenta “portable train” (worn with the bodystocking) looked typical of Missoni’s atypical clothing. Maccapani is at least in part rooted in late ’80s/early ’90s era party/dancewear: Missoni mentioned Dimensione Danza and Todd Oldham, amongst others. As it warms up, the brand is steadily feeling its way into an alt-leisure rhythm all of its own.
8 July 2024
For Maccapani’s spring collection, creative director Margherita Maccapani Missoni built upon the vocabulary she established with her debut collection earlier this summer. “The idea of the brand is to create a wardrobe of pieces able to take women throughout their activities of the day,” she said over a Zoom call from Miami where she was prepping for an Art Basel event. “So ideally from morning yoga to the office to a nice out, but”—and this is where it gets interesting—”without ever borrowing from men’s or sports. Always very feminine.” Whereas many designers thrive on working within, and talking about, the contrasts of hard and soft or traditional male and female aesthetics, Maccapani stands out for its unabashed femininity.That means Maccapani Missoni leans strongly towards pink and lilac, and on saccharine floral prints which often include a daisy (margherita means daisy in Italian). One of the opening looks which features a shirred Pepto-pink dress worn over loose trousers in a hyper-pop digital floral print drives this idea home beautifully. Elsewhere, that same print is slightly modified, and used on a silver foil-printed slinky dress with a cowl back and a detachable multi-chain detail that is begging for a pop star-and-paparazzi moment.The collection is full of jersey separates that can be layered many different ways, and though the pieces are all very body conscious, they’re put together with a vision for practicality; like a mini wrap skirt made from different panels of fabric (left over from last season), or the metallic copper turtleneck dress with a slit cut tothere, which both come with built-in shorts underneath; or the black wrapped mini skirt/belt that comes as a set with a pair of matching trousers, but is also shown over a slinky pink skirt.There is also an item the Maccapani team calls “the hood.” It’s an olive green piece of extra-long fabric which Maccapani Missoni describes as “an accessory that you can wear as a vest or as a top, and in the winter you can wrap it like a scarf around you or wear it as a wrap at the beach.” Its shape and utility recall a classic “baby wrap,” worn by women around the world throughout the ages to carry their babies while they work. “We play a lot around cliches about women and stereotypes and try to use them in an exaggerated way to make kind of caricatures, but at the same time to then make them real again,” she said.
5 December 2023
This new womenswear label opened its first ever presentation during men’s week—in fact, during Valentino—at an industrial space in the far south of Milan: that’s a hard sell. And yet the first guests there, waiting as the doors opened at 2:30pm sharp, were none other than local fashion aristocracy Rosita and Angela Missoni. Of course they were there to cheer for their respective granddaughter and daughter Margherita Maccapani Missoni. And also of course—before you say it—Nepo Baby Alert.However the Missoni most junior has started her line after a considerable apprenticeship within the family firm, but with theintentionof carving out something new and distinctly not-Missoni under her just-as-essential patronymic moniker. And while we are living through the year of Barbiecore and the age of the yoga pant, this afternoon Maccapani offered a glimpse of something tantalizingly different that was both womanly and grrrly that inhabited a third space somewhere beyond the banal and binary poles of dressed up and dressed down.The set-up was that of a house without walls, in which the models flitted from iMac workstation to plywood bar and beyond in a suite of pieces that were designed to be both sportily versatile and grungily striking. Dresses trimmed in multiple devoré panels fell asymmetrically under corseted full armed hoodies with the house flower etched sweetly on each arm. Granny pants waisted up to the navel were worn over sheer spray-paint finish jersey tops and swim caps under trailing flower embroidered shirt dresses. The scoop-back spaghetti strap full length signature Maccapani dress in a deep teal jersey was intelligently draped to look apparently simple. The urgent ombre brightness of the prints had a graffiti edged hardness to them. Said their designer: “It’s for a multitasking, normal woman who wants to run all the different aspects of her life without having to identify her outfit according to different categories of clothing. And it’s about embracing different sides of our being without being compelled to change.” As a prototype for a Swiss Army Knife-versatile style of contemporary dressing whose potential contexts ran from pilates to dating to dog walking to more—plus which was evidently shaped beyond (but not entirely despite) the male gaze—Maccapani’s jersey-centric first outing looked like one to watch.
16 June 2023