This season’s muse—Adèle Hugo—made for great grist for the maximalist mill of Antonio Marras. As Patrizia Marras explained before the show, in 1855 the youngest daughter of Victor Hugo rejected the marriage proposal of a British Army officer named Albert Pinson. She then had a change of heart. He, however, was over it. Vinson was stationed to Nova Scotia, then Barbados—and driven by an infatuation that eventually descended into erotomania and schizophrenia; Adèle followed him. He was a cad, she was quite mad, and there was no happy ending.
Marras discovered this yarn via Isabelle Adjani’s role in Truffaut’s “The Story of Adele H,” and he mined it thoroughly. Atop leopard-print, buckled creepers worn with fishnet socks, Marras’s fabric portrayals of Adele’s unraveling started with a few relatively quiet, darker looks—a black coat with black frogging and a pinstripe dress with a palm-print puff sleeve and fur gloves. Pre-show the designer had said that the collection followed her descent into madness through a slow acceleration of heaped abundance. Really, though, she clearly had a few screws loose from the get-go. Hair, sometimes netted or topped with fur-fringed inserts, was wrapped and twisted around its owners’ heads like some fruitless attempt at insulation from internal tumult. Wide double-strapped leopard belts were used as restraints at the waist. Among the many standouts (pretty much every look demands at least a paragraph to describe in full) included a black biker over a patch brocade dress cut with velvet florals; a jacket and skirt of faded check lined with two frills of ruffle hemmed with coins; a silk dress, quilt-backed, with patches of fur that matched the wearers gauntlets; and a layered skirt incorporating fringe and strip worn with a coat fronted with more fur patches studded with pins.
The expression of Adèle’s ultimate unhinging—when she was found wandering Barbados insensible—was a look that would work very nicely for the street style lensman outside: a pair of pale green floral pajamas swathed with a scarlet carpet-design blanket and accessorized with a little headpiece featuring two drooping tails. Backstage Marras said, “From madness you come to situations that are much more interesting than the normality of life. Because when you are crazy you don’t have limits and you don’t have barriers and you can go anywhere.” Adèle’s father once memorably described compliments as “a kiss through a veil.” This collection, if more pell-mell than it could have been, was highly kissable—sans veil.
