MILAN -- Iceberg is marking its 50th anniversary this year and Tuesday's show during Milan Fashion Week is bound to be a celebratory affair.
Without ever indulging in nostalgia, it represents, most importantly, an opportunity to retrace the brand's five decades in business, the string of marquee designers -- from Marc Jacobs to Kim Jones and Anna Sui -- who have lent their creativity to the house and the distinctive voice it has carved out since its founding.
"Iceberg was born -- as it often happens in my opinion for all the things that have had history and success -- from a series of consequential intuitions, which then led to the birth of the brand," said Paolo Gerani, chief executive officer of 's parent company Gilmar, which also has a stake in the No. 21 brand, which it produces under license. The Paolo Pecora Milano brand is also licensed to Gilmar.
Back in 1974, Gerani said, creativity and business acumen were led by intuition rather than "science," as he defines the toolbox of marketing and consumer intelligence data.
In 1974 Gerani's parents, Giuliana Marchini Gerani and Silvano Gerani, who'd been in the fashion manufacturing business since 1959, when Gilmar was established in San Giovanni in Marignano, on the outskirts of Rimini, Italy, introduced Iceberg from sensing that fashion was living an ebullient time.
"She realized that a different way of dressing was probably being born," Gerani said of his mother. "That was linked to the fact that people had more money and therefore also began to think of dressing in an alternative way [than] the jacket and tie for men and the apron [dress] for women."
Out of all talents she approached in Paris, Marchini Gerani picked Jean-Charles de Castelbajac -- originally to develop the Gilmar brand.
De Castelbajac was responsible for the Iceberg name and for ushering Gilmar into an era of unconventional sportswear. According to Gerani, together with his mother, de Castelbajac fueled the brand through innovation.
"He brought to the market a practically non-Italian named [brand], innovated the product, and the third extraordinary intuition was provided him by [photographer] Oliviero Toscani. They said 'well, [we have] this innovative project, let's communicate it in an innovative way'," Gerani explained.
That would lead to advertising campaigns starring famous contemporary people, including the likes of artists Andy Warhol and Toni Viramontes, designers Vivienne Westwood and Ettore Sottsass, soccer players Roberto Mancini and Gianluca Vialli, as well as Toscani himself.
Across the five decades Iceberg's creative direction has been helmed, to different extents, by marquee talents including Sui, Jacobs, Dean and Dan Caten of Dsquared2, Jones, Giambattista Valli and Arthur Arbesser, among others.
The current creative director, the British designer James Long, was appointed at the helm of the men's collections in 2015 and promoted to also oversee womenswear the following year. He is the longest-running creative director the brand has ever had apart from de Castelbajac.
The anniversary is being celebrated with the launch of a book in October. Curated by journalist Angelo Flaccavento with visual identity developed by Luca Stoppini, the coffee table tome, titled "Iceberg 1974-2024 Rewind-Fast Forward" and published by La Nave di Teseo, was conceived as a scrapbook retracing the brand's five decades of helping to shape the fashion landscape.
"It's a real concentrated edit on the 50 years of the history, which obviously I wasn't part of, but I'm very proud of my period here," Long said. "I've grown with the years as well in my responsibility, so I think in a way we're kind of lucky on the 50th that we have all worked together for so long because you know the story and the design DNA has grown with us to a point where we're all a very tight design family," Long said.
Working on the book led Long to reimagine archival pieces and references -- almost one from each of the 50 years, he said -- through a contemporary lens.
The coed lineup to be unveiled with a show at 7 p.m. CET at former sports center La Pelota in Milan's Brera district, followed by an after party, has somewhat of a minimalist bent with macs worn with wraparound miniskirts for women and shorts for men. A zingy color palette of acid green and lemon yellow, rust red and bright blue pops out against sandy beige, with suede outerwear tossed over rib-knit dresses, polo shirts and mohair mesh sweaters.
There is no space for nostalgia and every garment nods to the past but subtly embedded as to feel current and contemporary, Long explained.
"Everything I've ever done here has been a homage to the past work because that's the process of design, how we generally start. The references are there, and the pinpoints are there for me, but the process and the development of the design ends in a new vision," Long said.
"Almost every single piece has a reference in a way, but it's also a combined reference. Sometimes I mash two references together or sometimes it's a color or a silhouette... You have to edit, 50 is a long time and fashion has changed within that. I'd say that the new collection has a lot more technology [in it]," he explained.
"Gilmar makes some of the designs better than they ever are on paper. So, I think that's also something that needs to be celebrated in the 50th year as an important topic," Long said.
"I think one of the key inspirations was connecting the dots between the 50 [years]. So, the contrast of knit and leather, the contrast of utility and softness, it's more about finding the dots between the 50 years and using that as an inspiration as opposed to creating a pastiche," Long explained.
He wanted to offer a glimpse into what Iceberg's history has been as a whole.
"Iceberg has a very precise and clear DNA. I always ask James [Long] -- and this is the only thing I tell him -- to respect the DNA of the brand by giving it the innovation that he can give... obviously in a luxurious way, in a feminine way... in these 50 years, there have been so many hands that have worked [on the brand], it is alive, and I'm happy I picked him... there is a great relationship, and I think that he himself is faithful and fundamental to the brand," Gerani said.
"The key is to respect the past, but create the future, really, essentially," Long chimed in.
"I think the job has always involved referencing, giving homage to past work and past designers, but also bringing something modern and new for fashion now. And it was always important to respect the craft of Gilmar and the Italian roots and the fact that it still is one of the old Italian families," the designer said.
"My overall outlook was that Iceberg was about taking on young stylists, young designers, young creators, a sort of bubble trial and then they grow them when they're there so that's kind of the inspiration for me. I think it's a really lovely and quite unusual story for a brand to have done that through the years and I kind of focused on the uniqueness of that," he said.
The collection marks also the debut of the first Iceberg eyewear collection under the new licensing agreement with Italian company AVM 1959 for the design, production and global distribution of prescription frames and sunglasses.
Iceberg's 50th anniversary comes at a time of seismic transformations in the fashion landscape, marked by a dampened economy and polarized luxury market.
In 2023 Iceberg's sales stood at 40 million euros and Gerani said making long- or midterm predictions has become harder.
The brand has lined up a couple of openings in Russia by the end of the year, as well as further investments on its recently introduced golf line, a South Korean exclusive.
"Contrarily to what economics book teach -- the investment-equals-growth principle -- this is a moment when that's not necessarily the case. You've got to be very careful and take the same steps that big companies [are taking], but maybe one doesn't have the same firepower to make weighted choices," he said.
"Fashion must become a little friendlier to the market, especially taking into account that today we are increasingly tapping into [new] generations, who are approaching the fashion market in a completely different way," the executive said.
Iceberg's customers are skewing younger, and global, too, Long and Gerani contended.
"Iceberg's really always been about including different communities. I walked into it as a global brand, so it has a global voice," Long chimed in.
"But I think that it's impossible to talk to everyone now, and I think that's the mistake a lot of people make. My goal is to actually create a cohesive vision, which is how we want to be. And I've always been supported in doing that. We were just trying to kind of hone in on the right vision. And quite a fact, ever since I started working here, Paolo has always said to me, I want the vision right, not anything else from you. So that was always our goal from Day One. It was never to please everyone or to deliver huge numbers here. It was always to get the vision right and get the right product," Long said.
"It's a nice time to celebrate 50 years, but it's not my 50 years, it's someone else's. It's ours," the designer said.