Antonio Marras made a woodland glade in his showroom, filled it with mutant musicians, and quoted Ovid's Metamorphoses in his show notes: "I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms." Marras will never play the fashion game, walk the fashion walk. Instead, he has carved his own peculiar niche, populated with renegades and gorgeous hybrid life-forms. His sensibility is that of the couturier: I make these clothes for the people who get me. On the evidence of today's presentation, that tribe is growing by the season, so it was gratifying that the collection Marras showed was a perfect encapsulation of his otherworldly fashion sensibility. It was most obvious in the couture shapes, techniques, and fabrics: trapezes, bubbles, duchesse, dentelle lace, brocade silvered or over-embroidered, hand-painted flowers appliquéd on tulle—all of that. But then there were perverse home-decor details like the jacket with a rose-printed cape back that was ruched like a curtain, or the print of an ornamental garden. It was easy to imagine an artistic, free-spirited, slightly deranged woman tearing her world apart for inspiration. And when the models walked out with their heads wreathed in green leaves, the idea of pagan communion became much clearer. The musicians were playing something stringy and pretty when a deep, sonorous sound weighed in on their performance. A hunter's horn? The winds of change blowing though Marras' enchanted forest? Is there any other designer who could compel you to such unusual flights of fancy?
