Francesco Risso’s vision at Marni exists as a material subconscious: fascinating, full of energy, and beyond comprehension. How else to explain the wayward monkeys and chairs screen-printed onto tailoring and robe coats; the push and pull of shrunken and puddling shapes; the wilderness leg warmers and neon-inflected sandals? To hear him account for it, such feisty textures, graphics, and layers reconnect with the inner child that so many of us neglect in favor of reason or logic. “The seriousness of a child at play,” he said, in a variation on the message he offered up with his first collection.
This time, however, Risso seemed even more eager to take us deeper—perhaps even darker; because for all the artsy, craft aspects, including the illustrations by Frank Navin, they were put to use in ways that felt more mature, if not also more established in the vernacular of Raf Simons. This will likely work in Risso’s favor; by jostling between manic naïveté—all those blanket layers and mismatched proportions—and a comparatively sedate take on Italian sportswear, he seemingly established a greater number of entry points into Marni circa 2018. Remember, these looks can easily get disassembled into combinations that feel more familiar.
But the designer’s approach probably continues to generate interest among fashion’s directional set because it feels disassociated from reality in the right way. The runway was staged with seating consisting of obsolete televisions and abandoned bumper cars snaking together as found objects turned into land art. Before arriving inside, guests had to wait a solid 10 minutes while local antifur protesters targeted the brand based on Marni’s outdated connection to the fur industry. Risso used none of the real stuff, for the record. “It was part of the experience,” he mused. And it’s worth closing with his own interpretation of that experience: “Is it euphoria? Is it intuition? Or is it a spoonful of sabayon?” The secret’s always in the sauce.
