When it comes to giving collections some sort of meaning and a believable inspiration, personal memories are designers’ best friends; the remembrance process is a vast land of opportunities. If you’re lucky enough to belong to a big family—definitely an Italian national trait—you can search with gusto in old drawers, dusty attics, and forgotten trunks amassed with the stuff of generations, coming up with mementos of the most intimately abstruse kind.
In the family department, Efisio Marras, Isola Marras’s creative director, is quite well equipped. As the scion of the ample Marras clan, he doesn’t lack for traditions or memories. “I found a stack of old photos I took with my first 35mm camera 10 years ago, which were forgotten in one of my grandma’s chest of drawers,” he said when asked about the black-and-white prints that were the only visible decoration in a pristine, all-white collection made mostly in crisp cotton poplin. It looked so very un–Isolo Marras, with its lack of overgrown embellishments and embroideries. “Of course,” said Marras, looking pleased.
The pictures had indeed very personal subjects: his uncle lazily sunbathing on rocks near his summer home; Marras’s first pony; his mother’s dog sleeping in the kitchen underneath the sink; the dusty, quite desolate road leading to the village of Santa Teresa di Gallura. Domestic, affectionate Sardinian landscapes. Yet Marras is not sentimental; he’s more of a cultivated rebel. The pictures have a stark, dark vibe, with a sharp use of contrasting black and white that make them abstract and powerful. The designer is an accomplished photographer, having cut his teeth assisting Mario Sorrenti.
Marras started from the simplest of shapes: the white masculine shirt in starched poplin. It was reinterpreted in many iterations, all trimmed with black stitching and punctuated with small round buttons and eyelet, which highlighted the graphic play. “I tried to master the shirting techniques the best I could. Functional details are the only decoration,” he said. Shapes were kept linear yet inventive, with a handmade feel (raw edges, unfinished hems) and a techno touch (black safety belts keeping together loose panels). A feminine flair was always counterpointed by stronger, sportswear-inspired, slightly provocative elements; a long sundress had pleated, rigid asymmetrical volants and was printed with the picture of derelict Sardinian mines; a kimono had a patched image of thorny leaves on the back. A linear slip dress worn over a black tunic in net tulle looked almost romantic, if not for the picture of two placid mammals printed on its front. “They were my grandma’s fat, sweet, beloved cows,” said Marras.
