Massimo Alba

Massimo Alba directed design at the Italian cashmere houses Malo and Agnona, and then at Ballantyne, the Scottish house in the Borders, before starting his own label in Milan in 2006. The knitwear training shows, though not in the way you would expect. What carried over was not a category so much as a temperament, an interest in how cloth behaves once it has been washed, dyed, and worn rather than how it looks flat on a table.

The method is garment dyeing. Pieces are constructed first and go into the dye bath afterward, which is why the colors on the labels read like a painter’s inventory rather than a color card. Fango. Polvere. Ferro. Lava. Caffe. The process softens the hand and leaves a faint irregularity across seams and panels, so a new Alba jacket arrives already looking as though it has been somewhere. The tailoring is unlined or barely lined, the shoulders are unstructured, and the jackets fold into a bag without protest.

Massimo Alba at W Department

We carry Massimo Alba across menswear and womenswear, spanning SS24 through SS26. Nearly all of it is made in Italy. The spine of the collection is the linens and cottons: Lois and Ionio2 trousers, the Genova and Bowles shirts, Kevin and Agone2 shorts, the Sloop suit in desert cotton with the jacket and trousers sold together. The Florida jacket appears in three registers, a wool, silk, and cashmere in navy, a linen and silk in summer sand, and a plain cotton shirt jacket in smoke, which is a fair summary of how the house thinks. One shape, several weights, no ceremony about which is dressier. The knitwear runs to cashmere, virgin wool, and the alpaca and mohair Persico in lava.

We stock the line because it solves a problem our clients actually have. These are clothes for someone who wants to look considered without looking assembled, which is most of Santa Fe most of the year.

---

Continue Exploring

• All Massimo Alba. Every piece we hold, menswear and womenswear together.
• Lemaire. Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran’s Paris house, also carried at W Department.
• Knitwear at W Department. Cashmere, wool, and alpaca across the roster.
• The Library. Our writing on the houses we buy, plus the monthly playlist.
• Visit W Department. 54½ Lincoln Avenue on The Plaza, open daily, 11 to 5.

Shop Massimo Alba