“It rained so much in Sardinia this winter that the land, which is usually dry and windy, turned green and lush as in Ireland,” said Antonio Marras over a Zoom call from his Circolo Marras headquarters in Milan. The bizarre weather triggered his raconteur talent, so for pre-fall he came up with an idiosyncratic literary plot. It entailed a moody mixture of Thomas Hardy, Lewis Carroll and Virginia Wolf, all entangled in a surreal bookish narration, with a sort of Sardinian version of Bloomsbury thrown in for good measure.
The story goes that there was this woman called Jana, who lived in a remote house deep in a wild wood by the sea. Jana is a common first name in Sardinia; Janas were also magical creatures imagined by the local artist Maria Lai (her work being a frequent source of inspiration for Marras): sort of island fairies, laborious and mysterious but also quite despondent and unnerving. Marras’ Jana seemed to be more on the laborious side. Crafty and resourceful, her household was a place for painting, knitting, embroidering, sewing, reading, writing poems. She was also a romantic nature buff: during long walks in the wilderness of the Irish-Sardinian surroundings she gathered flowers, leaves, driftwood and other specimens, which she then scattered on the clothes she made for herself and her community of kindred spirits. Jana’s artisanal tour de force inspired the feel of domestic ingenuity in Marras’ collection.
Marras addressed the need for comfort, warmth and protection dictated by the stay-at-home situation with his typical ebullience. The collection offered plenty of embellished cozy options: Padded blanket coats were enveloping and voluminous; the proportions of animalier patched sporty parkas were almost magnified; oversized cozy, snug sweaters were hand-knitted from upcycled yarns and appliquéd with herbarium motifs.
Although he admitted that the pandemic has forced him to consider a more pragmatic approach than usual, Marras’ penchant for buoyant optics got the better of him. Ruches sprouted from embroidered fleece sweatshirts; patches and patterns in various fabrications were pieced together in magpie mixes. A whirlwind of floral appliqués, Lurex brocade, macramé and large-scale sequins swirled on long, vintage-flavored tiered dresses, military cargo pants paired with retro tailored blazers, and patchworked circle skirts worn under cocoon-ish padded ponchos. In Marras’ world, practicality rhymes with unbridled whimsy and poetry—no pandemic will be able to corner him into efficient minimalism.
