Just two days after Labor Day, menswear designer Sergio Zambon is boldly wearing white pants, detailed with the map of a dizzying mountain travel route. Behind him, a neon red “1952” sign illuminates an otherwise blank white wall, referencing both the year Moncler was founded as well as the name of the new 2 Moncler 1952 + Valextra collection, which he dreamed up alongside womenswear designer Veronica Leoni.

“Every season, I have three days where I have to be by myself to think and find a focus,” Zambon says, straightening his yellow-lensed aviators at the Fashion Week launch party and explaining how he found inspiration for the collection (now available on Moncler.com). “It’s my creative tempesta, my creative storm.”

Highlights of the collection include those aforementioned map pants, graphic knit sweaters, ginko-leaf printed, nylon dresses, chic duffels, leather berets and, naturally, plenty of puffer jackets (including a few tie-dye versions).

“I was always a kid who followed streetwear and youth culture in terms of music,” Zambon tells Alexa. “I saw young kids wearing these big jackets.” For his contribution to the second season of Moncler’s Genius Project (which consists of ten separate collections by guest designers who put their own creative spins on the iconic brand), he channeled both the relaxed Paninari movement of 1980s Milan, as well as the bohemian aesthetic of 1970s hippies.

Leoni, meanwhile, also reimagined Moncler’s classic puffer, but this time as a cape. “I wanted to design something to understand why we should choose to wear a puffer in the morning instead of a coat,” she tells Alexa, explaining that she and Zambon worked along “a parallel path” to create the collection together.

Given her previous stints at the highbrow ateliers of Jil Sander and Celine, Leoni says she experimented with various silhouettes to find the right balance between her point of view and Moncler’s effortless streetwear-meets-luxury mindset. She remembers the first time she laid her eyes on her original Genius prototype: “I saw my ideas coming together, and thought: This is possible, even though I’ve never done this before.”

Designing a down jacket for the Moncler Genius Project is more than fabric and feathers, she tells Alexa. “The creativity starts very much before the clothes,” she says, pointing to a colorblocked, quilted puffer with exaggerated sleeves.

And of course Valextra — the Italian luxury leather goods brand — also added to the cutting-edge collab. “I either went with superbig or supersmall handbags, while always keeping an eye on the functionality,” notes Valextra CEO Sara Ferrero, referring to the exaggerated proportions of the pouches and totes in the collection.

She offers this advice on being a Moncler Genius: “Never sit. Always dare.”