A significant chunk of the audience bolted for the door before the final act of four of this Antonio Marras performance–meets–fashion presentation: The Camera Della Moda had left a mere 45-minute window between this and Etro, and Marras is never a quick show.
Sadly, those who took the Etro exit (a) didn’t need to (we made Etro by metro) and (b) missed a wonderful climax to this dreamy, intensely layered and typically Marras-ian meditation. This season, his starting point was a Marras-invented fairy tale about a 17-year-old princess from Japan named Shiro (swan) who flies from an arranged marriage with an unattractive 84-year-old hermit and—thanks to an unexplained magical inter-island teleport between Japan and Sardinia—encounters a hot shepherd named Baingio. They fall in love, but happenstance pulls them apart, before they eventually meet in the ever after thanks to the intervention of some Sardinian sprites.
We were in the seats of the Teatro Puccini, where the photographers clustered stage right. From stage left came a group of willowy, shrouded performers moving gingerly on high geta beneath their heaped parasols to eventually pause and create a tableau vivant. These theater actors (Marras said they reference both traditional Japanese and Sardinian theater) would return beneath each of the three sections of the fashion show, sometimes with more parasols, sometimes with masks, sometimes with cushions on which were painted faces. Baingio did not really feature onstage, but what we saw emerge from stage left before winding its way around the auditorium was a long and densely packed procession of wearable Marras frescoes.
Embroidery and sequins and pins were layered over brocade, and patched bouclé over jersey and denim and silk. It was a layer cake of Japanese references—the photographic geisha prints of artist Lucia Pescador, a closing section of antique kimonos Marras had collected over several years and then patched and cut for this show, yankii postwar collegiate sportswear, and much more—mixed against typically compelling Marras fare. Some models wore flip-flops over pink tights, which made their toes look like fish tongues, which was really quite strange. Many of them accessorized their artfully scrambled attire with side-pocket, weathered, cotton-duck suit bags, which was vaguely strange.
But strangeness and Marras are happy bedfellows. And while this in-theater format didn’t really service close-up appreciation of the considered chaos theory of his clothes, the wide angle at which they were presented allowed us to enjoy the full panorama of his vision—and get to Etro just about on time.
