Along with the emotional choreography at Gucci, the secessionist significance of Prada, and the Lewis Carroll collage at Marni, this was the standout collection of the Milan season so far. Antonio Marras confesses that he has problems. Luckily, he said preshow today, “my sewing machine is my therapist,” before adding, “or perhaps my madness.” Oh, well, it all makes for good material.
This collection led to London but via a circuitous route (you would expect nothing less here). Marras spoke of his fellow Sardinian and close friend, the late artist Maria Lai: “She once said something to me that changed my life, which was, ‘I met you when you were a child, and now I see that you are an artist.’” Lai’s signature was the ribbon, which she saw as an intensely meaningful signifier of connection. For Marras, the artist/clothes maker, the ribbon is the thread. Here, the course of his intense and various trains of thought took him to London in the 1980s (he and his wife, Patrizia, used to club at Heaven) and the punks, the goths, and the new romantics who once haunted it. As ever he linked his theme to his home isle via a fairy tale in his show notes.
That was played out in a soundtrack that pitted “London Calling” and “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” against the urgent baa-ing and bells of a flock of mountain sheep. The clothes combined mélanged obvious youth culture staples such as bikers, tartan, military surplus, and fishnets with the disassembled tailoring and embroidery-heaped dresses this house so reliably manufactures.
Everything was extra, from the menswear sneakers coated in thread-filled transparent gloss to the lace-edged, embroidered detachable womenswear collars. It is typical of Marras that, at a time when almost every designer is angling to establish sustainability credentials, he did not concede until prompted that a large proportion of this collection was made of reassembled vintage, something long done here. Interesting clothes for interested people by a highly interesting designer who marches to the urgent rat-a-tat issued by his therapist.
