Antonio Marras is a storyteller just as much as a fashion designer. He builds collections around a detailed narrative, creating clothes that fit a theme and a plot while defining a character, without forgetting they should also be wearable, not theatrical costumes. This peculiar approach makes Marras' work coherent: From the fabrics to the show's setup, everything glues together. In this sense, he is a unique figure in the Milanese scene—a true outsider, at times very charming in his enthusiastic naivety.
This season Marras envisioned a metropolitan epic and staged his show in a shabby-looking car park, complete with a vintage yellow cab. A collection of reconfigured militaria and decadent refinement arose from the unlikely encounter between Costantino Nivola, a Sardinian artist who landed in the U.S. and befriended the local intelligentsia in the ’50s, and Travis Bickle, the unhinged taxi driver played by Robert De Niro in the seminal Scorsese movie of the same name. Everything looked ready for, and worthy of, an urban jungle expedition, from the sturdy parkas to the pragmatic suits worn with lug-soled boots.
Since he returned to showing his men's collection on the catwalk last year after a several-season hiatus, Antonio Marras has kept perfecting his own take on the contemporary man's wardrobe: Cropped lines, sartorial hybrids, and raw elegance are his forte. His work often features many different materials put together in one item, and it tends toward the intricate and tactile. This collection was another chapter in that ongoing design process. It felt quintessentially Marras, if not particularly new.
