Sitting with Marni’s Francesco Risso while discussing the inspiration behind his collections is like boarding a full-speed merry-go-round from which you get off with a slight sense of vertigo. For Marni Pre-Fall, the conversation spanned children’s cognitive behavior to Dada and primitivism; it would’ve even sent Dr. Spock’s and Marcel Duchamp’s heads spinning.
“In this collection, I wanted to confront the idea of elementary shapes created through intuition and immediacy, a spontaneous process almost unaffected by logic. That’s why I was so taken by the Dada movement and its irrational, disruptive approach, a rejection of bourgeois conventions which led to an appreciation of the primal and unfiltered energy so well expressed by a child’s formidable and effective intuitive approach,” mused Risso.
Dada’s tools of the trade were instinct, nonsense, absurdity, and irrationality, together with a consequent fascination with primitive art. In 1930, when Dada founding member Tristan Tzara opened the Exposition d’Art Africain et d’art d’Océanien in Paris, people were stunned. “Primitivism is a metaphor, a quest for innocence and the essence of human nature; it is deconstructing a shape until its archetypal non-structure is laid bare,” speculated the designer.
Risso’s obsession with children’s intuitive way of learning is constant in his work; it’s the fuel that always ignites his creative mindset. Logic is often overturned, in favor of a sort of childlike stream-of-consciousness process, as cryptic as it is efficient in bringing his vision to life. Pre-Fall’s silhouettes somehow looked as if out of a kid’s drawing of archetypal shapes; proportions were blown up and inflated, sometimes askew; details were magnified: big, pointy collars; exaggerated buttons; unfinished trailing threads; irregular contrasting stitches as if made by an apprentice tailor or by a little girl sewing her doll’s dresses.
Patches of primary colors were put together as if playing the board game Mastermind, assembled almost haphazardly, while scribbled marigolds by Frank Navin were exploded into humongous patterns. The American artist also contributed to the creativity-through-the-eyes-of-a-child feel with his bijoux, charms made with replicas of the little plastic doodads found in Cracker Jack packages. Even the low-tech, flat-form Big Foot sneakers looked chubby and cartoonish, “like a kid wearing his dad’s shoes,” as the designer explained. It all sounds bonkers, but don’t get fooled: The results actually looked quite ravishing.
