MILAN, Italy — Massimo Giorgetti, creative director of MSGM, is an energetic, straightforward guy and makes his fashion accordingly. Brainy concepts and twisted detours do not work for him. He keeps it simple. This season, for instance, he wanted to pay homage to the city of Milan, working with an idea of casualwear that had a good-boy Italian feel, rather than the harsh metropolitan swag normally associated with the cliché of contemporary streetwear. It was a smart intuition. Thereafter, Giorgetti cast a wide-ranging group of university students in place of professional models, and staged the show in the hall of the Università Statale. Photographs of scribbles and graffiti from the premises were turned into prints and splashed all over t-shirts and sweatshirts. The smashing Franco Battiato soundtrack — a treat for any Italian above the age of 30 — was the icing on the cake.

Yet, despite all the good presuppositions, the only part of the collection worked. The idea of a more dignified casualwear materialized only in a few, almost normcore looks: a jacket with a high waist pair of jeans, for instance. Elsewhere, proportions, combinations and attitude mined a bit too obviously the territories owned by Gosha Rubchinskiy and Raf Simons. Which brings us exactly to Giorgetti's point of weakness: he has a wonderful sensibility for the zeitgeist, but he sometimes lacks the guts to follow his own route, reverting to popular fashion references instead. It's a pity. Swimming against the stream might be a peril move, but a rewarding one. We know Giorgetti can do it.