MILAN — Don’t ask Pierre-Louis Mascia to abide to marketing rules or to give up his identity to please customers’ shifting fashion tastes.
The Frenchman is not showing for the first time in his 16-year career with delusions of grandeur. Instead, he just believes that his spring 2025 collection deserved a runway stage — and some theatrics — to convey his message of freedom.
“With this show, we just wanted to let the fashion world know that we exist. We are here and they have to deal with us,” the designer told WWD on Zoom from his Toulouse, France-based studio where he was prepping the show.
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Mascia has been a regular Pitti Uomo exhibitor for 15 years and he feels his brand has grown along with the menswear fair where he will host his inaugural runway show on Thursday night at 6 p.m. CET, capping off the four-day showcase.
Known for his color sensibility and knack for eclecticism telegraphed by his signature patchwork fabrics and prints, the menswear designer refutes the idea of polarization within fashion and the world at large. Rather, he has a different take.
“It’s always nuances of colors and nuances of ideas that work for us…in this kind of minimal and polarized world where it’s always black or white, yes or no, like or dislike — we would like to have a conversation,” Mascia said. “When there is a conversation, you have to express all the emotions not just like or dislike, that’s why we propose a larger conversation, an invitation to think about how we feel about the world, with characters embodying freedom, free thinking,” he said repeatedly shifting the subject of conversation between the spring collection and the brand ethos.
“There is no diktat in our brand, it’s [about] freedom of creativity. That’s our mantra,” he said.
Titled “Le Cavalier Bleu,” or “The Blue Rider,” in a nod to the namesake art movement from the early 20th century jumpstarted by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, the spring collection is Mascia’s “eloge de la nuance,” or “praise of the nuance,” as he put it.
“It’s not a direct reference to their paintings, but more to the concept they focused on, their artistic purpose and [penchant for] mixing all the artistic forms, such as sculpture and painting,” Mascia explained. “We think fashion now can gather many forms of artistic [expression]…and become a larger creation, a concept or theatrics,” he said.
Mascia has embraced his usual flamboyant aesthetics with evanescent silhouettes playing with transparencies and lightness that strikes a balance between coziness and sophistication. Garments — from silky blouses and shorts to baggy pants and lab coats — will be decked in prints galore with graphic and botanical patterns among the 20 entirely new motifs done in watercolor nuances of beige, dusty pink and Gauloise blue.
They add a gentler touch to the lineup inspired by art school students commuting in the early-morning hours with messy hair and their quintessential youthful flair.
“It’s a collection evoking tenderness,” Mascia said.
To be sure, those arty types are the ones he misses seeing on the actual city streets — which he describes as “super boring” — and sought to recreate with his debut show.
“At the beginning, we never think directly of the format [of the presentation]” when creating a collection, Mascia explained. “We are first thinking about the collection and then we say ‘OK, this one could be very interesting,” to see the clothes and the concept in real life, on models.
The show will take place at the Tepidarium del Roster, a Liberty-era greenhouse in downtown Florence. The space will be left spare, letting fashion do the talking, except for a performance titled “R.onde.s” by choreographer Pierre Rigal’s dance company, set to prequel the runway show.
“This show is not a strategy,” Mascia declared while talking about ambitions for the future of his namesake brand.
Although the natural next step would be a retail push, he plans to take it slow. “We never plan — this brand is not about marketing, we are not an opportunistic brand, all stems from product and from my passion for fabric and prints,” he said.
Consistency and coherence are his main mantras, the French designer said.
“We have a very specific identity, we are not part of a huge [fashion] group…we are a little brand with a special sensibility, and we want to keep that in our DNA. This specific identity is [the reason why] we can exist next to huge players,” he said.
“Every collection for me is the same collection, the same idea. I cannot change my DNA because of a marketing strategy and start doing an all-black collection, for example. I try to be sincere and to do my best,” he said.
The Toulouse-born Mascia launched his namesake collection in 2008 in collaboration with the Uliassi siblings, owners of the storied silk printer Achille Pinto in Como, Italy. He launched with a series of scarves, then expanded into apparel and accessories. In celebration of his 15-year partnership with the manufacturing company, he staged an exhibition at Palazzo Antinori in Florence in January 2023.
Last January he launched an interiors and homewares collection during Paris Men’s Fashion Week and the design fair Maison & Objet, which were held simultaneously.
The brand has two boutiques in Italy and the line is carried at more than 400 retailers worldwide, including L’Eclaireur and Le Bon Marché in Paris, La Rinascente in Italy, Isetan in Tokyo, Joseph Tricot in London and Bergdorf Goodman in New York.