What Would a Fashion Music Festival Look Like?

MILAN — The Moncler Genius 2020 presentation could be seen and heard blocks away, all thumping music and strobing lights.

A crowd hovered around the exterior gate, a sea of craned necks trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was unfolding inside the warehouse — occasionally parting to make way for a stream of invited guests: the editors, influencers, buyers and executives known in this particular part of the world at this particular time of year as “fashion week people.”

Parked outside, cradled in smoke-machine fog, was a black matte minimalist tour bus made in collaboration with Rick Owens.

On the exterior, it was clearly a scene. On the inside, that was an understatement. The cavernous warehouse showcased 12 designer collaborations with Moncler, each given its own room or installation. The British designer Jonathan Anderson, who had his own room, compared the whole thing to a music festival.

While several other designers at the warehouse had produced Moncler Genius collaborations before, this was Mr. Anderson’s first collection with the brand.

His was an all-black space, where models walked a continuous loop among several inflatable air dancers — fashionable versions of the flailing tube figures often placed outside suburban car dealerships to entrance potential buyers. The models wore pieces from the JW Anderson archives that had been inflated in the Moncler puffer style. There were puffy scarves decorated with spikes, and large metallic puffed-up chains, attached to weekender bags, dragging on the floor.

Mr. Anderson said he had tried to make puffers before but hadn’t been able to get it right. Giving Moncler the technical reins allowed his vision to be realized; and presenting at this wild, sensory-overload warehouse allowed him to have a little fun.

“This leaves you with a different type of feeling of what fashion can be and how we can evolve,” he said.

Mr. Anderson wasn’t the only Moncler Genius designer fresh off a fall collection show during London Fashion Week.

In Simone Rocha’s moody screening room, mannequins were dressed in puffer-and-tulle versions of her dramatic, whimsical, oversize designs. She said she was inspired by dance, creating a “little play in my mind”; she worked with the artist Petra Collins to produce a short film about a ballerina’s bad dream, which was playing on a screen in the red-draped room.

One whitewashed room had people in Moncler Grenoble ski wear walking horizontally along the walls.

The set for Richard Quinn’s show — a few rooms over — looked like a mod spaceship. Models wore puffer dresses and coats in 1960s-inspired patterns, with black or white feather headdresses encircling their faces.

Like the entire warehouse experience (which opens to the public on Sunday), it was a lot of things at once: futuristic, sporty, loud, impressively crafted and often gorgeous — though not exactly practical.

“I always find collaborations successful when they’re polar opposites,” Mr. Quinn said.