How can fashion go forward in these dissonant days of overproduction? At Marni, Francesco Risso arranged his guests in a set that posed questions about the philosophical face-off between technology and nature. Technoprimitivism, he called his collection. “The contrast between our irresistible love of innovation and technology,” he said, “and the other side, the movements of the soul that you cannot bring to a technological meaning.”
To watch, we were seated on bales of wadded-up, discarded fabric and piles of old carpets, sandbags, and sleeping bags. Old clocks were stacked in one corner. Vintage shoes were poked between vacuum-packed lumps of sheets. As an installation, it felt like the artfully arranged contents of a hoarder’s garage. Backstage, Risso said that it was “about collecting, obsessively putting things in order” and also “to express human waste, in some way.”
Somehow, what evolved posited Marni as a halfway house between polished, high-styled fashion and a possible future where the use of recycled fabrics could—should—be considered beautiful. High-shine, brilliant Yves Klein–blue and toxic-green belted coats were raw cut, trailing threads. They were followed by collages of blanket wraps, nylon raincoats, and hooded duffle coats, and brightly colored layerings of knitted tunics over superwide pants.
Then it got more interesting. As all fans of Marni know, this is a label that specializes in dresses and vintage-flavored prints. Risso served them up. His ’30s/’40s dresses had the spontaneous air of sampling toiles, perhaps put together from scraps of leftover fabrics lying around the studio—a theme that culminated in two ruched, glittery sequined numbers.
Further questioning in the postshow melee turned up the fact that those materials weren’t pieces of reused fabrics but had been sourced through the normal channels, via Italian mills. But there was one moment in this show where Risso did push the aesthetic further along the sustainable route. Check out the flecked, felted coat at number 25 in the sequence. It was made from compressed, recycled textiles: a repurposing of carpet underlay or utilitarian insulation material. High fashion needs more of this ethical creativity.
