Massimo Nicosia
Designer/Architect/Britophile
In early September, on the second floor of the newly-opened
Nicole Farhi flagship in London's Conduit Street, O:Man got to see
the first, finished pieces from the label's autumn/winter menswear
collection up close for for the first time since. So did the man
who designed them, Massimo Nicosia. Thanks to a holiday in Mexico
and subsequent trips to Europe and Asia in the line of duty, the
cosmopolitan Italian, who came to the Anglo-French label after
heading a venerable Scottish brand, hadn't previously had the
chance.
In the windows and on the hangers, the refinements that you
might have missed from the catwalk, let alone by looking at a
photo, came to life. There's a quiet subversiveness in the way the
garments' sober shades and sharp tailoring only reveal the secrets
of their unusual textures when you get up close. That, as Nicosia
explained, was part of the idea.
"I really like working with an idea in my mind so that the
energy will be focused. Sometimes I work with a decade or a
geographical area or something like that, but this one was very
abstract: one of Nicole's favourite things, which is linen. Nicole
loves linen, and of course linen is a very spring/summer yarn and
fabric, and in this case it was really about reworking linen for
this season."
Because he wanted that to work with clothes that were not only
warm, but also had much stronger silhouettes than linen allows, the
fabric was was mixed with wool, bonded with jersey, and backed by
mesh in various pieces from the collection, which also includes
some nice chalk-striped flannel and clever takes on modern winter
staples like the pea-coat.
"When I joined Nicole Farhi I was asked to reinterpret Nicole
Farhi", Nicosia recalled - hence the mix of classic suity
structures and "soft and scrunchy textures." It's hard to imagine
now he could have embraced the brief more emphatically. No wonder
that, when his appointment was announced shortly before the new
collection was seen in Milan in January, Farhi said that her new
menswear man "has a sensibility very close to mine."
Yet he might never had got his hands on a pair of scissors in
earnest had fate not intervened. Though "already obsessed with
clothes" in his teens, Nicosia responsibly decided to study
architecture in Florence. Soon after completing his six-year
degree, he found himself designing stands and installations for
special displays by brands like Prada and Zegna at the city's
fabled men's fashion trade show centre, Pitti. That led to a job at
Alessandro Dell'Acqua, where Nicosia learned quickly about every
other aspect of fashion, from cutting to casting. "At an
independent label", he says, "you have the struggle, but also the
freedom, the creativity. It's not a corporation or a Cathedral of
Art." Then he was recruited by Pringle of Scotland to extend its
menswear image beyond argyle jumpers and polos, without leaving
that past behind.
"As an Italian, I probably knew more about it than most Scottish
people, because I was interested in the heritage, but also the
environment of a brand like Pringle. Nicole Farhi is not so
different in the way; it's a completely different approach to the
collection, but in each case there is a lot of identity and in each
case there is 'lifestyle', which is so clever for a brand. There
are a lot of very directional fashion brands, but Nicole has built
style rather than fashion, and that lasts."
