There’s no shortage of experimentation in Milan this season, at least when it comes to finding alternatives to the quite tired fashion show format. Enjoying the chaotic anything-goes mood without being too judgmental comes easier when an unconventional approach is served with a side order of poetic verve and childlike enthusiasm, qualities that Antonio Marras has always possessed in spades.
The designer has a histrionic personality; he’s larger than life, with a real urge to convey his torrential flow of creativity. Fashion is clearly not enough, and art has become another medium for his self-expression. Marras has amassed vast quantities of paintings, scribbles, ready-mades, and installations, enough to fill a sizable space at La Triennale di Milano, which celebrated his work with an exhibition called “Antonio Marras: Nulla Dies Sine Linea” (roughly translated as “Not One Day Without a Line”)—meaning that he can’t abide creative idleness.
He animated the exhibition, a maze of dreamlike ready-mades, with a medley from his fashion collections, mixing men’s Fall, women’s Pre-Fall, and the more affordable I'M Isola Marras line, staging a theatrical performance of such grand proportions that it required not only a substantial casting of models, but also of dancers, mimes, actors, and other performers. Fashion people, expecting the usual show with models parading back and forth, meandered instead through bizarre arrangements of artistic assemblages, each becoming the set for vignettes of disparate narratives. The blasé audience couldn’t help but be charmed.
To set the tone, a chorus line of towering dancers dressed in Scottish kilts and embroidered mohair sweaters greeted guests at the entrance. Once inside the exhibition’s dark space, the visuals were equally forceful. “I was thinking of a haunted castle in the rainy, foggy Scottish Highlands, full of ghosts and arcane presences swirling around as in a nightmare, or in a dream, as you prefer!” enthused Marras. Tableaux vivants of all sorts inhabited the space; some looked particularly quirky, like a couple of demoiselles clad in flowing floral dresses lounging on tables where dentures-shaped edibles (yes, you’ve read correctly) were offered in ornate trays. Elsewhere, a quite risqué ménage à trois was enacted within a tiny boudoir-like room, perhaps reminiscent of Louise Bourgeois’s ritualistic installations of doors and windows framing closeted spaces. The quirk culminated with a towering bearded woman whose monumental gown was made of layered pleated skirts; she knitted a huge cascading plait while reciting a poem.
Fashion was clearly not the focus; yet the men’s Fall collection, while showing Marras’s over-the-top flair, somehow managed to retain a believable quality. Military- or vintage-inspired coats, peacoats, and knits were lavishly embroidered, patchworked, hybridized, and decorated with appliqués and intarsias of all kinds. An array of punch-needled wools, tapestries, animal prints, floral brocades, denims, and tartans gave shape to voluminous parkas, duffle coats, and kimono-inspired coats in a freestyle tour de force. Definitely, it was as entertaining as a fashion show can be.
