Antonio Marras (Q2692)
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Antonio Marras is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Antonio Marras |
Antonio Marras is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
1999
fashion designer
Every season for many seasons Antonio Marras has unearthed a compelling story from his home island of Sardinia, then spun a collection around it. This time was no different, but the story was even better than usual. It concerned Anna Maria Pierangeli, a Cagliari born actor who was “discovered” and went to Hollywood in the 1950s, where she met and fell in love with James Dean. The story is much better toldhere, but the short take is that there was no happily ever after.Marras put us in a club, complete with in-house doo-wop band on a glittery stage and an energetic bunch of guys and dolls jiving enthusiastically during a typically overlong introductory section. The collection blended all of Marras’s highly appealing standard techniques and modalities with a this-season layering of 1950s teen fashion and tropicana (a vibe justified by references to Pierangeli's apparent love for vacationing in Acapulco).Pompadoured boys wore handsome South Pacific khaki fatigues with articulated sleeves and prints or patches of orchids and pearls. There were jacquard organza animalia short-and-shirt sets, print-patchwork short-and-shirt sets, embroidered Sardinian postcard motif shirts (for Pierangeli’s imagined postcards from home) and some great tropical print sets featuring rolling surf and rumbling red motorcycles.The womenswear featured rattan parasol hats, multicolored many-tiered fringe dresses, and cinch-waisted and bodiced swing dresses in a Marras-typical multitude of pattern and texture. The knee-high, mid-denier stocking-socks worn by most models featured a back seam that morphed into the designer’s name midcalf: clever. Shaggy fringe feather-wrap dresses and car coats came in soft rainbow tones. Leathers in eggplant purple or olive green, and a cool swing skirt and bomber in incongruously fluoro green—a pleasant jolt—were among the many other highlights in this highly evocative show.Fashion currently lacks great runway storytellers: Many houses with wonderful histories seem barely aware of them, let alone how to articulate them via shows and clothes. Marras is an absolute maestro at spinning yarns through garments—even if he could sometimes use an editor.
18 September 2024
“I flee from myself—I fear the encounter with who I truly am,” said Antonio Marras. But fashion allows him to make tangible the contrasts within and give space to everything that is both tempestuous and calm. Marras loves to tell stories, and with the resort 2025 collection, he became the narrator of a fairy tale set in an enchanted garden where nature overtakes the human hand that designed it. “Where perfection creates dissonance, the impulse of nature creates harmony,” said the designer.The Hanbury Botanical Gardens, on the promontory of Capo Mortola, set the scene for the collection: Thomas Hanbury—an English philanthropist, businessman, and navigator—chose Liguria in 1869 to acclimatize plants from around the world, creating a cosmopolitan oasis where diversity intertwines freely. Fior di Sardegna was the title of Marras’s collection because—as Emily Dickinson wrote—being a flower is a profound responsibility. Poetry is a constant in Marras’s aesthetics and philosophy, and this time he imagined dressing Eva Mameli Calvino, the first woman in Italy to obtain a degree in botany and the mother of the famous writer Italo Calvino. Prints born from the scanning of herbaria were interrupted and expanded by solid colors, blurring the line between masculine and feminine. Contrasts took shape in clean lines and 1970s references, in refined embroidery and check patterns, between stripes and damask fabrics, in parkas broken up by pink. Romanticism, at times androgynous, became a tool for palpable lightness and innate delicacy. From chiffon dresses to military fabrics, tulle details to menswear tailoring to sequins, knitwear to couture techniques (where sneakers were the new addition), Marras reflected that sought-after inconsistency that has always defined his identity.
25 June 2024
For 25 years, Antonio Marras’s greatest inspirational protagonist has been his home island of Sardinia. This morning we were transported there again, this time in a retelling of the story of 14th century Sardinian noblewoman Eleanor of Arborea. This tale’s relationship with the truth, you suspected, was about as loose as the designer’s magnificently swooshy double breasted coat-cum-mantle in look seven, but it was no less compelling for that.The timber runway was set around a beautifully ramshackle “tower” made of upcycled wooden doors. A fellow wearing big boots and an Aran sweater kirtle hybrid came out and exhibited powerful vocal projection in his entertainingly histrionic quest to track down the missing heroine. Entirely understandably, his head was turned by La Repubblica’s fashion editor Serena Tibaldi—he spent some time beseeching in her direction—before the “real” Eleanor revealed herself in a magnificent yarn-fringed patched brocade gown.There was much bombastic declaration as Marras’s eclectic cast of late medieval-touched looks emerged from his tower. Rose print silk damasks and sheer organzas were worn alongside abstract chainmail sleeves and collars. A gentleman in a pressed white wool hemmed notch collar overcoat wore a vaguely armor-like metal-embroidered coif, jerkin and underwear. A cracked shearling coat was coated in a glintingly metallic coating, and there was a golden suit, also with coif. The tree heraldic insignia of Arborea was redrawn to be growing from a broken heart on hoodies. We saw some darkly jewel colored intarsia adaptations of Chaucer-style knightly pilgrimage illustrations on a bomber and skirt, as well as in knitwear.Beneath the escoffions, wimples, and otherGame of Thrones-y whatnot, it gradually became apparent that Marras was using his runway quill to trace a more contemporary tale. A black leather biker and zippered skirt look plus some really interesting lurex striped folded sleeve suiting with panelling at the bag suggested he was conjuring the radical spirit of Eleanor and channeling it to fashion updated forms of feminine power dressing. As Chaucer’sThe Wife of Bath’s Taleso sagely observed around the same time Eleanor was doing her thing: “There’s never new fashion but it’s old.” Marras told his ancient story beautifully today.
21 February 2024
In Antonio Marras’s far-reaching imagination, there’s no space for boundaries; he believes in a common ground connecting disparate and apparently divergent cultures. For pre-fall he drew a visual parallel between the traditions of Sardinian and Native American communities. The narrative was inspired by Martin Scorsese’sKillers of the Flower Moonand an ’80s album by the Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André, in which he celebrated Sardinia’s fierce sense of independence from the continent, as well as the Native Americans’ fight for their land.The theme translated into a quintessential Marras collection, where references to both worlds were intertwined; patchworks, intarsia, jacquards, and embroideries reprised and reinterpreted traditional Sardinian imagery and Native American graphics. “Animism, mysticism, legends, and symbologies were shared dimensions between these two indomitable populations that fought hard to protect their diversity,” said the designer.Protective garments such as capes, shawls, and blankets were treated imaginatively and rendered into pieces boasting abundant embroideries and appliqués. Opera coats in textured floral jacquard and oversized outerwear hinted at a sense of safety and refuge. Playing with contrasting textures, sequined tulle was layered over tartan on masculine blazers, while macramé lace was lined with dry gabardine wool in feminine apron dresses. Elsewhere, denim was given the softness of dévoré velvet, leather had a vintage, lived-in feel, and brocade in dark tones was used for trench coats with plissé inserts at the back. Marras definitely cannot be mistaken for a minimalist.
14 December 2023
Boom!, directed by Joseph Losey, was filmed in Sardinia in 1967 when Antonio Marras was six years old. He still recalls the glamorous chaos of Hollywood’s arrival in Alghero, from the stars’ yacht lying offshore to the gossip and attempted kidnappings that marked the production. Marras did not, however, mention the standout detail, claimed on Wikipedia, that “during filming [Elizabeth] Taylor’s pet monkey stole a $1,600 jewel case and was missing for a year.”Today’s show was set up as if on a soundstage for a movie, where a cast led by the fabulous Marisa Berenson punctuated the runway action by performing for various cameras: They were riffing on a docu-film namedA Summer With Joe, Liz and Richardby Sergio Naitza that looked back atBoom!’s explosive creation. That chaos was faithfully re-created, somewhat to the detriment of the fashion-show element of the proceedings: There was a long section that oddly centered around the arrangement of some grapes on a living-room table, and after the entertaining opening scene, the drama tailed off. Having various photographers, videographers, and actors milling here and there around the runway, seemingly at random, as the models walked through the stage all served to drag the onlooker’s eye from the real star of this show: Marras’s clothes.Storytelling, however, has always been central to Marras’s process: Now that he has his well-deserved investment from Calzedonia, he is giving that process free rein. Satisfyingly, the garments that impulse served—when you were watching them—also seemed magnified. All the core elements of this designer’s work were present and correct, with an unsurprising emphasis on hosiery. The vintage military spliced with formal tailoring and overlaid with embroidery; the plethora of mid-century shapes in mousseline and tulle layered with paillettes or Marras watercolors and other illustrations; the occasional diversion into contemporary jersey; and the closing lace dress embroidered with an illustration of the Sardinian cliffs from the original Losey film: all well in his wheelhouse. What seemed newer was an emphasis on slouchy-cut leather separates and a significant cast of bags.Not unlike KidSuper’s show for Louis Vuitton menswear back in January, this valiantly ambitious presentation attempted to break too many walls to work as a fashion show: It was something else. The collection, however, was excellent.
20 September 2023
Caprera is a minuscule island off the northern coast of Sardinia. Rocky, windy, sparsely populated, and rather inhospitable, it’s famous not only for its untouched wild beauty, but also for being home to Centro Velico Caprera, one of the oldest Italian sailing schools. The Centro Velico has learning methods as spartan as its surroundings; regardless of who you are or where you come from, its iron discipline applies to everyone.Antonio Marras, a Sardinian through and through, knows Caprera well, and for resort he wanted to pay a sort of homage to the educational inclusivity of the sailing school. “It’s a place where so many different people meet,” he said. “The common ground is the strong passion they all have for life at sea. I believe fashion is a sort of common ground as well; it’s an amalgam of people from different worlds, who recognize each other through a system of shared meanings.”The collection played on sailing’s stereotypes, reinterpreted by Marras in his freewheeling style of assemblage. Blue was obviously the color that tied it together, offered in a plethora of shades. The strong winds that sweep Caprera’s landscape and the rippling of waves were rendered through airy, lightweight fabrications and billowy shapes, suggesting movement and fluidity. Stripes, polka dots, and florals were variously patchworked together, denim was trimmed with feathers and embellished with sequins or with lace intarsia, and mannish pantsuits came with floral appliqués at the front, while long flowy dresses were treated to fan-shaped overlays of plissé lace.Unconcerned by trends, Marras pursues his own creative journeys. Now that his company has a new owner, expansion of his fashion line and of his artistic practice is in the cards. “Fashion travels by land and by sea,” he said. “It travels to learn, and never stops.”
14 June 2023
This was same Antonio Marras but different Antonio Marras: Both the sameness and the difference were positive signs indeed for this most deserving of Italian designers. Since 1999 he has presented his distinct, sustainable, and deeply artistic maximalist vision on the Milan runways—always independent, always family run. When COVID hit you worried for this house.And then—like a real-life version of the benevolent spirits that have long inhabited Marras’s shows—came a stroke of great but deserved fortune: Sandro Veronesi’s Calzedonia stepped in with a significant investment and committed to a majority stake, 80%, in the Marras universe. Suddenly, from a team of five, the Marras unit has another family company—but one vastly more scaled up—behind it. There is talk of some 10 stores opening in Italy this year and next year retail moves into other territories, including the US.A newcomer to this show might have suspected that its significant span—all 104 looks—was due to that Veronesi boost. But Marras has always presented extremely long, richly theatrical shows that articulate stories to encapsulate his Sardinian aesthetic. This one was loosely based around Grazia Deledda, who in 1927 became the first (and still only) Italian to win a Nobel Prize for literature—and who was of course Sardinian. Marras and his wife, Patrizia, conjured the story of a mysterious midnight tryst, somewhere in the forest, between a character inspired by Deledda’s writing and a lovelorn hunter.Carmen Kass opened, all in black with a heart memento hanging from her neck, in Marras’s packed home runway space. There were, as ever here, pauses in the walks for the models, mostly enthralled males, to act as amorous supplicants. A wolf howled over the sound system, and leaves rustled underfoot.What was heartening to discover was that new investment had not stimulated a synthetic direction. Marras’s intensely wrought surplus pieces, his feather-trimmed and crystal-heaped knits, his late-19th-century and early-20th-century intellectual femme-fatale dresses, his self-illustrated embroidered patches, his brocade and tulle-edged tailoring, and his dark florals were all present and correct. There was a suggestion of diffusion ahead in two dog-print jersey hoodies that echoed an endearing dog-portrait print used in silk dresses. Tartans and blood-red oversized suiting suggested a very loose consideration of English country dressing.Same venue, same soul, same Marras—but different too.
This show marked the punctuation mark from which Marras will be able to spread his always Sardinian story to a vastly increased audience.
22 February 2023
Benjamin Piercy was a Welsh civil engineer who in the 19th century decamped with his family to Sardinia to build the island’s railway lines. To make the expat life easier for his wife and children, he built a sumptuous villa in the middle of the Sardinian nowhere, a vast, underpopulated countryside whose nature at the time was wild and intact. The villa and its famed garden, full of exotic natural specimens imported by the adventurous engineer from his travels in faraway places, elicited the curiosity of Antonio Marras. His great storyteller’s imagination was put to work, and he came up with a pre-fall offering inspired by Piercy’s wandering daughters.Romantic and whimsical, the collection was full of patchworked pieces that Marras concocted in endless variations. Bouquets of dry flowers, branches of autumnal foliage, rambling ivy, and feathery ferns were appliquéd on repurposed surplus parkas, ballerina dresses, and knitted jumpers. Colors were faded and misty like autumn in the woods. “I imagined the engineer’s daughters taking long walks in the garden, gathering flowers, keeping them to dry between the pages of a book, and then sewing or embroidering them onto their blouses, kimonos, or on their small blazers and pleated mini kilts.”Marras’s exuberance cannot be tamed, and the collection overflowed with multiple, often contrasting propositions—mini and maxi, fitted and loose, lean and puffy, masculine and feminine. Opposites attract and coexist in Marras’s romantic universe. That’s his well-honed formula, ever regenerated by the power of his flamboyant imagination.
16 January 2023
A new chapter is beginning for Antonio Marras, whose company recently entered into a partnership with Italian manufacturing group Calzedonia. It will give an obvious boost to Marras’s financial resources, triggering a consequent retail rollout and allowing more creative range and flexibility for the designer. Backstage before the show, he was clearly delighted at the prospect. The first outing of the new deal was presented today in his whimsical Circolo Marras headquarters, made into a lush hothouse for the occasion.Restraint is a concept not in the least associated with Marras’s aesthetic, yet spring felt less inflected with his usual pyrotechnics. That said, true to his often dramatic vision, this season he dedicated the collection to his love of opera and its diva par excellence, Maria Callas, who was paid an emphatic homage at the end of the show with a few hyperbolic concoctions, custom-made by a theatrical tailor.That was the high-drama note of an otherwise rather focused and rhythmic collection, which comprised both a men’s and women’s offer. There were still plenty of elaborate patchwork hybrids, like a masculine pinstriped blazer appliquéd with golden macramé, cut in half and attached to a floral circle skirt, or a sporty varsity jacket in luscious satin heavily encrusted along the sleeves with an inflorescence of lace blooms. It was worn with a contrasting pair of stretchy high-waist briefs introducing a sexy note, which was a first for Marras and a refreshingly up-to-date one at that.A sleek black satin skirt suit looked particularly attractive—the jacket tight-fitting, the midi pencil skirt hip-hugging, the open back revealing an intriguing lace-up play. Marras also embraced the ubiquitous silhouette of the season, the figure-hugging midiskirt with matching midriff-baring brassiere; bodysuits, bralettes, and corsets were also abundantly represented throughout. It was an indication of the wider style range Marras is opening up to and hinted at a new direction that that he should pursue with confidence.
21 September 2022
Antonio Marras and his wife Patrizia are among fashion’s great storytellers. If they published their press notes in a book, they’d be a literary sensation. For resort they added another chapter to their entertaining narration. The tale was called “The Story of Orlando: Confessions of an Apprentice Greengrocer,” and what follows is a synopsis.“Once upon a time, in a day of intense restlessness, Orlando asked: could it be true that tending to a vegetable garden can improve your moods? So Orlando took to the kitchen garden and started working on tomatoes, pumpkins, and cabbages. They pruned the peach trees, They fed the hens who were hungry. Orlando’s bad mood disappeared. The plants reciprocated their love. They said: “Orlando, you’re one of us; it doesn’t matter from where you come, who you are, what’s your sex, from now on your name will be Neptune.”Neptune was the actual name of the collection’s model, a transgender boy of ethereal charm, who looked ravishing in Marras’s extravagant creations—more extravagant than usual, it must be said. He provided Neptune with a sweet diva-esque wardrobe, crazily patchworked from upcycled scraps of fabrics; assembled from brocades, paisleys and broderie anglaise; and embellished with abundant sequins. Cotton sundresses were printed with watercolor drawings made by Antonio of beetroots, turnips, and cherries; military parkas were transformed into bejeweled specimens and appliquéd with intarsia of silk foulards. Humongous tailored blazers looked as vast as capes; aprons originally fit for watering the vegetation were encrusted with animalier panels, embroidered patches, and baroque trimmings, and made into evening wear.“Dressing up is a joy, it’s fun, it’s a game,” mused Antonio. Neptune goes to the vegetable garden dressed as he would for a Hollywood party. Patrizia chimed in: “Going to a party, peeling tomatoes. It doesn’t matter who you are, a farmer or an actress, or a sensitive soul like Neptune. The garden puts you at peace with the universe.”
25 June 2022
Hybridization is a concept Antonio Marras has explored since his label’s inception. His restless nature has always found a sort of solace in the practice of artistic assemblages, which gives him the room to experiment he needs to express his creative exuberance. The maximalist mash-ups so popular today? He was there before they went mainstream.For spring he walked that familiar route with even bolder conviction. He built the collection from a vintage foulard belonging to his mother, printed with baroque curlicue motifs, “which of course bring to mind a certain blonde designer,” he joked, referring to Donatella Versace. But regardless of obvious references, that square of printed silk carried personal memories.Field jackets, parkas, peacoats and bombers with a vintage surplus flavor were submitted to an intensive patchwork treatment. Floral and animalier patches, sequins, paisleys, and the said curlicued silk foulards were appliquéd, embroidered, “invaded and disrupted,” as per Marras’s description, reincarnated into new decorative entities, a crazy camouflage of sorts made from fabric leftovers and shreds of discarded trimmings. A hybrid shirt-bomber made from slices of clashing prints had huge batwing sleeves and was cropped at the waist, bringing to memory the ’80s shapes favored by the influential Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto. It was part of an offer of one-of-a-kind pieces which, together with a variety of everyday unisex options, added further range to the collection.“It’s all about harmony and madness,” said Marras. “But there’s always a method in Antonio’s madness,” joked his wife Patrizia. “ For him, it’s just about the love of being free, letting his creativity fly with no boundaries.”
24 June 2022
Antonio Marras designed much of this collection in quarantine after he and his wife, Patrizia, returned home to Sardinia from a visit to New York last year and tested positive upon arrival. Despite their shared anxieties about what the brand should do for its womenswear main-line presentation next month—throw an expensive show and risk too few buyers/deliveries coming through or play it safe and risk missing momentum—this main-line menswear and pre-fall womenswear appeared on the surface serene.Both were gently influenced by a mythical hidden Sardinian city Barax, which reputedly lurks beneath the lake where this was shot; as ever, Marras was cutting and sewing the identity of his homeland into garments. In menswear, highlights included Fair Isle roll-necks patched with fabric collaged to resemble a wolf; gamekeeper moleskin shooting suits with inlaid suiting patches; and fleeced check shirting and some excellent loose check jackets with matching drawstring pants. New for Marras were the boilersuits, given the same double-face fabrication.For women, Marras muddied the waters still further, matching totemic-mask grunge cardigans overlaid with embroidered floral patches and split-print pleated skirts. Precise overcheck suiting and outerwear lapped against long tulle dresses, again patched, matched with crafty rainbow knits. Marras has been stretched badly by the rigors of the last few seasons but continues to battle to sustain his special corner of the Italian fashion universe.
26 January 2022
Antonio Marras designed much of this collection in quarantine after he and his wife, Patrizia, returned home to Sardinia from a visit to New York last year and tested positive upon arrival. Despite their shared anxieties about what the brand should do for its womenswear main-line presentation next month—throw an expensive show and risk too few buyers/deliveries coming through or play it safe and risk missing momentum—this main-line menswear and pre-fall womenswear appeared on the surface serene.Both were gently influenced by a mythical hidden Sardinian city Barax, which reputedly lurks beneath the lake where this was shot; as ever, Marras was cutting and sewing the identity of his homeland into garments. In menswear, highlights included Fair Isle roll-necks patched with fabric collaged to resemble a wolf; gamekeeper moleskin shooting suits with inlaid suiting patches; and fleeced check shirting and some excellent loose check jackets with matching drawstring pants. New for Marras were the boilersuits, given the same double-face fabrication.For women, Marras muddied the waters still further, matching totemic-mask grunge cardigans overlaid with embroidered floral patches and split-print pleated skirts. Precise overcheck suiting and outerwear lapped against long tulle dresses, again patched, matched with crafty rainbow knits. Marras has been stretched badly by the rigors of the last few seasons but continues to battle to sustain his special corner of the Italian fashion universe.
26 January 2022
“A disaster without precedent” was how Sardinia’s governor Christian Solinas described the fires that ravaged parts of that beautiful island late this July. Just one of many extraordinary summer conflagrations across Europe and beyond this year, the Sardinian blaze razed 20,000 football fields’ worth of wilderness; one especially notable recorded loss was a long-venerated olive tree believed to have lived for a millennium.This calamity deeply affected Antonio Marras and his family, whose life is on Sardinia. “There has been nothing even nearly like it since 1954,” he said this week, shortly after returning to his showroom in Milan. So for this collection, Marras and his cast of Sardinia-cast models travelled into the charred aftermath to shoot this collection’s video in an area namedSantu Lussurgiu, where only 100 of 750 hectares escaped the flames.To observe Marras’s cast pick gingerly over the parched earth and duck beneath blackened branches was a pretty sad watch. The more-than-usual blooming rose prints that adorn many of the looks seemed an almost cruel reminder of what was lost, but Marras said these were amplified on purpose pre-presentation in order to anticipate a hoped for regeneration—and indeed if you look carefully there were, even at the time of shooting this video, the smallest of green shoots battling to reemerge.In this context, it seems a bit fatuous to delve into collection details: It was the characteristic Marras pot-purri, heaped artful layerings fashioned form a mix of vintage and local, featuring details including a washed out botanical print ironically inspired by the burn-marks of an iron. The closing mountaintop commune of all-whitish looks starred pieces that cut cotton, lacy embroideries into celebrants’ robes, all gently stained with tea.Clashing current affairs against fashion can often seem to trivialize the former and render the latter absurd, but here the proximity of the designer’s creativity to the blasted hills of his homeland worked as a reminder of a news story that, like so many, quickly fades from the agenda. The only consolation I could offer Marras was that in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia—where I grew up and where there were similarly apocalyptic scenes nearly two years ago—the waratahs are now blooming again. If only we allow it, nature fights back.
22 September 2021
When Antonio Marras rolled up at La Conchiglia—a popular local weekend picnic and swim spot close to his Sardinian base of Alghero—the plan was clear: shoot the collection cleanly, focusing on the line and surface of the clothes against a backdrop of model, shimmering sun, glittering sea, and vibrant pine forest.Marras, though, is a compulsive collagist, so the richness of La Conchiglia’s local life proved irresistible. Hence the Martin Parr-ish cameos from courtly Picassos (looks 1, 25), parasol-shelterers (13), barefoot promenaders (39), and callow youth (42, 43). All of these human accessories (plus Babette the hound) added extra texture to the imagery of a collection that was, naturally, intensely textured to start with.Hand-embroidered suiting; floral jacquard Jackie O. dresses and separates; upcycled bouclé jackets, some backless, that were overlaid with more upcycled Marras deadstock; kimono style jackets made from gorgeous scraps of deadstock lining over colorblocked silks; lace-cut viscose beach-sweepers; intricately imperfect organza fluff skirts—the pieces on offer were as various as La Conchiglia’s locals, yet equally distinctly of their place. Other upcycled delights included menswear jackets slashed at the armpit and overlaid with patched pattern, and similarly patched olive military pants. There was a sophisticatedly co-ordinated denim capsule—from head pieces to quirk-enstocks, via jean and jacket—patterned with pink floral that would make the perfect subject for a Sardinian Slim Aarons.Unseen here, but lurking on Marras’s rail in his wonderful Milan studio was a new sequence of Marras-inated revived deadstock Aloha shirting—ideal for any gender— that were marvels of controlled complication and should be hitting his e-store soon. By the time I rolled out of the Milan outpost of the Marras universe the designer and his crew were crooning Giuni Russo’s cheesy 1980s Italo-banger “Alghero,” and I was left dazedly convinced that a Marras show on his home turf is a fashion event that must surely happen. We all deserve a weekend at La Conchiglia.
17 June 2021
While Coach delivered the funniest fashion film of this season, Antonio Marras appears to have come up with the dreamiest. The 15-minute, 57-model-and-actor-cast mini movie was a set-in-Sardinia riff on the flight described by Boccaccio inThe Decameronabout seeking sanctuary in nature from sickness. Here, that sanctuary was represented by Barumini, a UNESCO-protected Nuragic-fortified village dating from the second millennium B.C.: “It’s Sardinia’s Stonehenge,” as Marras noted. Even without understanding the detail—the pilgrims are seeking the protection of a mythical queen figure named Nuraxamanna, played with magisterial strangeness by Lia Careddu—the landscape, cast, and clothes make for a beguiling lockdown escape. The Barrittas-soundtracked denouement punctures any possible pomposity.Marras’s idiosyncratic Sardinian mix of folklore and fantasy consistently conjures collections that are specifically distinct yet happily translatable beyond his shores.De Innui Ses, or “Where do you come from?” in the Sard language, was this collection’s motto and a quote from the local archaeologist, Giovanni Lilliu, uttered on his discovery of Barumini. In this collection Marras excavated his own roots by unearthing afresh the multiple structures of design that have long served him.These included overlaying vintage black velvet shepherd’s jackets with upcycled swatches from his womenswear stash, or piecing together women’s tailoring from multiple source fabrics and sprinkling them with embroidery. Climbing roses clustered in more embroidery over pinstripe suiting or on croc-pressed bikers, and knitwear included an agglomeration of upcycled elements from collections past (on sale, buy-now style, shortly).To dig deeply into all of it would represent a long-term expedition beyond these means. Yet even when seen fleetingly from afar—as per Barumini itself on a hoodie showing its mapped contours—this was a compellingly dreamy collection that evoked the ancient and eternal through Marras’s authentically rooted and finely calibrated mixology. With that dreamy film attached.
26 February 2021
While Coach delivered the funniest fashion film of this season, Antonio Marras appears to have come up with the dreamiest. The 15-minute, 57-model-and-actor-cast mini movie was a set-in-Sardinia riff on the flight described by Boccaccio inThe Decameronabout seeking sanctuary in nature from sickness. Here, that sanctuary was represented by Barumini, a UNESCO-protected Nuragic-fortified village dating from the second millennium B.C.: “It’s Sardinia’s Stonehenge,” as Marras noted. Even without understanding the detail—the pilgrims are seeking the protection of a mythical queen figure named Nuraxamanna, played with magisterial strangeness by Lia Careddu—the landscape, cast, and clothes make for a beguiling lockdown escape. The Barrittas-soundtracked denouement punctures any possible pomposity.Marras’s idiosyncratic Sardinian mix of folklore and fantasy consistently conjures collections that are specifically distinct yet happily translatable beyond his shores.De Innui Ses, or “Where do you come from?” in the Sard language, was this collection’s motto and a quote from the local archaeologist, Giovanni Lilliu, uttered on his discovery of Barumini. In this collection Marras excavated his own roots by unearthing afresh the multiple structures of design that have long served him.These included overlaying vintage black velvet shepherd’s jackets with upcycled swatches from his womenswear stash, or piecing together women’s tailoring from multiple source fabrics and sprinkling them with embroidery. Climbing roses clustered in more embroidery over pinstripe suiting or on croc-pressed bikers, and knitwear included an agglomeration of upcycled elements from collections past (on sale, buy-now style, shortly).To dig deeply into all of it would represent a long-term expedition beyond these means. Yet even when seen fleetingly from afar—as per Barumini itself on a hoodie showing its mapped contours—this was a compellingly dreamy collection that evoked the ancient and eternal through Marras’s authentically rooted and finely calibrated mixology. With that dreamy film attached.
27 February 2021
“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.
17 January 2021
“I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, I don’t go around having sex—so let me make clothes.” So said Antonio Marras, via not Zoom (for a change) but the translation of his elder son, Efisio. As with the season’s womenswear collection, this menswear offering was conceived and crafted in Sardinia with 100% Sardinian-sourced materials—a physical articulation of the designer’s always Sardinian-sourced inspiration.There was the sense of an artist working variations of the same canvas over and over again—seeking some unobtainable standard of perfection—in Marras’s mighty offering of patchwork flannel jackets, hunting jackets, lining jackets, combat pants, and military shirting and jackets. Each piece in the showroom was unique and hand-fashioned, featuring attractive ornamental idiosyncrasies that cried out to be assessed, then possessed, before becoming a pleasurable highlight in the act of getting dressed. Archival fabrics we saw in past collections were layered between deadstock surplus and hand-stitched tapestry.To say Marras’s only compulsion is clothes making, however, isn’t quite the full story. Later in the appointment Efisio mentioned that his father's “Instagram addiction” led them to make contact with a photojournalist in Palermo, Sicily, who has inspired an interesting—and unusually un-Sardinian—Marras project to come. For now though there was content and contentment to be found in rifling through these spring rails, checking out the endless variations of patchwork, fabrication, and embroidery. Efisio observed: “It’s kind of compulsive—Antonio Marras therapy.”
14 October 2020
Along with his wife, Patrizia, son Leo, and dog Pierivo, Antonio Marras spent the months between March and September at his home in southern Sardinia, at first locked down under law and afterward hunkered down by choice. During that time, Marras fashioned this womenswear collection and a menswear equivalent that was all-Sardinian, nose-to-tail. All of the fabrics were from his archives or produced by local artisans; the work to fashion them was all done chez Marras, and this beautiful look book featuring two sets of Alghero-cast twins (including his local pharmacists) and the daughters of a neighbor were all shot within a kilometer of the family house.By looking inward Marras expanded his vision, mixing tapestry, floral jacquard, reworked military pieces, and hand-drawn and embroidered shirting, plus romantically faded velvets into a siren song ode to home. There was a story line in the background about different islands, and different points of departure, encounter, and return, but this was just scene setting for a collection that didn’t demand it. It was sad to make an impromptu visit to Marras’s Milan store and showroom during the July menswear week and discover the gates closed and the lights dimmed. But to know that Marras and his crew were sequestered offshore enjoying a high tide moment of creativity as they span these yarns made for a happy postscript.
14 October 2020
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.
21 February 2020
Being one of fashion’s great raconteurs, Antonio Marras has often focused his layered storytelling on passionate female figures who can provide the sort of turbulent plots he likes—women who possibly survived an intense life of art and all-consuming drama. For pre-fall, Dora Maar was his perfect muse.Best known for being Picasso’s lover, Maar, like many other women artists, didn’t get much recognition for her talent. Hers was overshadowed by the prodigious genius of her Spanish flame. But, beyond being very beautiful (green eyes, fine features, auburn hair) and very stylish, Maar was great in her own right. A retrospective at London’s Tate Modern (until March 15) finally gives her oeuvre the credit it’s due.Marras called his collection “Dora Maar Despite Picasso,” imagining for her a wardrobe of eccentric whimsy and poetic excess. Oversize jackets in a patchwork of masculine textures were encrusted with a jumble of sequins and macramé; poplin shirts were decorated with glamorous feather fringes; and vintage military parkas were reassembled with askew proportions then embroidered and intarsia-ed with tapisserie. In a similar vein, knitwear swirled with geometric jacquard motifs in black and white, and grisaille tailoring was teamed with cargo pants. It made for an extravagant mash-up. Romantic maximalism is Marras’s favorite visual philosophy—and probably would’ve been Dora Maar’s too.
17 January 2020
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,yankiipostwar 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.
20 September 2019
His native Sardinia is usually at the heart of Antonio Marras’s layered storytelling, but this time he took a metaphorical trip to Harlem. He looked at the work of the influential African American painter William H. Johnson, active during the ’30s and ’40s, and of photographer Gordon Parks, who was prominent in documentary photojournalism from the ’40s through the ’70s. Their imagery sparked the narrative background for Marras’s Resort collection, a fictional tale of two girlfriends working as tailors in Harlem, patching together an extravagant wardrobe using whatever was on hand.The designer played with blown-up volumes, bright colors, and the patchwork techniques he favors, whipping up imaginative pieces that often exude the lived-in flair that suits his sentimental approach. Sequined arabesques and Gobelin-inspired brocades decorated knits, abstract florals were printed on corsets bonded on poplin shirts, and sweaters featuring geometric motifs were split open and stitched onto tiered tulle dresses. Lace was lacquered and paired with damask, Prince of Wales checkered wool was splattered with black ink drops, and humongous peonies bloomed improbably on Klein-blue velvet. The quirky mash-up coalesced rather spiritedly via a kaleidoscopic color-block palette of yellow, turquoise, pink, periwinkle, and Tiffany green.Such imaginative ebullience was counterbalanced by more sedate tailored pieces: Shapely cut suits with batwing jackets had a seductive vintage ’40s flair; little coats were streamlined and, by Marras’s standards, rather unfussy; sequined pencil skirts paired with matching polo shirts had a neat silhouette. Yet the collection’s sweetest note was the figurines inspired by William H. Johnson’s drawing. Patched or knitted on oversize sweaters and tees, they were a loving homage to a major artist, whose work celebrated African American culture.
11 June 2019
“I will never forget her. Her huge curious and velvety eyes.” Amedeo Modigliani—yes,thatModigliani—was the scion of a Tuscan family that became wealthy through mining and that brought the young artist-to-be to Sardinia, where they operated their business. While he was there, he painted a portrait of Medea Taci, a local hotel owner’s daughter, for whom it is believed he developed a youthful crush.This fantastic Antonio Marras collection was built around an imagined letter—imagined by Patrizia, Antonio’s wife—sent from Modigliani later in life to an old friend who had shared that time in Sardinia. The idea was that it mixed memories of the Sardinian coal miners and their partners taking their passeggiata with a sense of nostalgic longing for Taci (who in real life died early).A quick Google search shows that Modigliani’s juvenile portrait of Taci—while excellently executed—was conventional in style and nothing like the proto-modernist technique through which the artist found controversy and fame. Marras re-created Taci in that style on an illustration on knee-high socks and reflected the look of Taci herself in the short bangs worn by the female models.All this background was the creative context for a collection that beautifully showcased the virtuosity of Marras’s jackdaw maximalism. The menswear looks mingled vintage finds with new garments and even ties that were originally the property of Marras’s father: The idea was to give a sense of clothes nurtured, patched, passed down, and cherished afresh. Camo was mixed with corduroy. Quilted arms were stitched onto tweed jackets. The men wore German army trainers—the greatest surplus sneaker—and Vibram-soled work boots.The womenswear was less reliant on vintage—a long section of olive drill army jackets and liners tricked out with frogging and embroidery apart—but it was just as intensely various. Lace, embroidery, crystals, and tulle were arranged in apparent disharmony to make intensely attractive wholes. We were in the studio space next to Marras’s gorgeous south-of-town store, and it was a tight fit. The models came down from the store, then crossed one another’s path again and again as they made their way around the studio. At first the photographers howled at each obscured shot, but after five minutes or so, they gave up. To cap this, a troupe of actors was reading Modigliani’s “letter” in increasingly melodramatic tones as the show went on.
By the end of it they were running around clutching coupes of Prosecco and roaring with memories of the imagined good old days. As well as a tolerance for histrionics, one needs both patience and a pre-Instagram attention span to get into Marras, but the clothes that emerge from his and Patrizia’s huge and curious conceptual spin cycle of Sardinia-seeped bohemian mythologizing are well worth that price of entry.
24 February 2019
Antonio Marras’s art practice goes hand in hand with his work as a fashion designer in a sort of circular process where one creative side nurtures the other. He recently collaborated with a historic Italian publishing company for an exhibition where he transformed 16 Zanichelli dictionaries (the Italian version of Merriam-Webster) into one-of-a-kind artworks, each dedicated to a famous woman. It was obviously a metaphorical take on the role played by culture in the definition of female identity, which in Marras’s elliptical narrative became the subtext for his Pre-Fall collection, hyperbolically called Well-Read Women Are Scary.To add further layers of meaning, Marras worked around the idea of double identities for the collection’s lookbook, enlisting as models two professional dancer-actresses with whom he collaborated on a theatrical piece he wrote that premiered in 2017. “The shooting session was actually more like a spontaneous performance; it was truly exhilarating,” said the designer.A rich tapestry found in a decadent old British country house was the decorative thread that held together imaginative patchworks and mash-ups made from multiple fabrications and textures. Some of them—masculine pin-striped wools, floral jacquard brocades, wool chenilles, tartans, and lacquered lace—were upcycled from previous collections. They were translated into classic masculine shapes, a tad strict and severe but inventive, or otherwise into more generous, sporty volumes. To counterbalance that restraint, elongated velvet tunics and floral-appliqué tulle dresses with plissé inserts were charming alternatives. The subtle palette of grays and beiges, gently lit by touches of lamé, had a romantic, almost pensive flair, well-suited, it would seem, to cultivated, bookish types. “I dress women who love to read,” mused Marras. Definitely.
16 January 2019
The restless mind of Antonio Marras this season alighted on the sad story of Princess Romanework, the eldest daughter of Haile Selassie. After her husband was killed fighting the Italians during their occupation of Abyssinia, in 1937, the Princess and her four children were captured and exiled to Asinara, a small island off of Sardinia whose name literally translates to “inhabited by donkeys.” As a counterpoint to the story of the princess, Marras also considered the 1880 self-exile of Arthur Rimbaud to Harar in Ethiopia as a refuge from his tempestuous relationship with Paul Verlaine and the strictures of conservative France. This led Marras to also consider Bruce Chatwin—the title of his final book,What Am I Doing Here, was taken from a Rimbaud line, and he wrote a libretto about Rimbaud’s time in Harar.Phew, huh? Yet, to appreciate the full fabric of the Marras experience, you must also consider whatever cultural flotsam has washed into his consciousness for the season. His feathered and embellished deconstructed military parkas; his riotous mélange of lace, python print, ostrich feather, and brocade layered in languorously long plissé dresses; and his oversize jersey sportswear pieces decorated with botanical reliefs in pins were all drawn from his mental voyages between Asinara and Harar. Some of those spectacular headpieces, decorated as busily as you imagine Marras’s internal dialogue to sound, were literal hat tips to Chatwin. The cacophonous pentimento of patched apparent offcuts on ruffle-armed shirts was a wearable scrapbook of sometimes counterintuitive decorative twists. The sheer busyness of Marras can sometimes overwhelm: Keep looking, and you see a method in the apparent madness.
21 September 2018
Storytelling is apparently one of the keys to fashion success today, a magic word invoked by everyone, from retailers eager to make the shopping experience memorable (actually not so much for customers as for their bottom line) to designers sometimes struggling to give credible meaning to bland collections. On Instagram, if you’re not good at storytelling, you’re quickly confined to oblivion. There are even personal coaches and online courses designed to help improve this skill. It’s one lesson for which Antonio Marras need not apply; he has built a long career on his talent for producing narrative collections and elaborate, theatrical stage presentations.So what’s the story he had in mind for Resort? “Cho-Cho-San meets Sailor Moon,” the designer explained, referring to the female protagonists of Puccini’s famous operaMadame Butterflyand of the Japanese anime seriesPretty Guardian Sailor Moon. “They are metaphors of the yin-yang dynamic that is in every woman’s nature, fragility and force.” Somehow they met halfway to give the collection a stylish, cacophonous spin.Mixing and matching with gusto is inherent to Marras’s stylistic vocabulary; here, he gave his penchant free rein, blending everything from a sailor theme to military references, from floral brocade textures fit for opulent interiors to classic tartans straight from the Highlands. Cases in point were hoodies and sweatshirts heavily embroidered or decorated with lace intarsia. Kimono jackets assembled from hand-stitched patches of denim and cotton florals were paired with sequined skirts, while humongous knitted sweaters were emblazoned with the famous HokusaiWavemotif. Marras didn’t restrain himself, really. Adding to the already heady medley, his beloved Jack Russell terrier, Pierivo, was cast as a model; embroidered on a yellow and blue T-shirt dress, he looked the part, supercute in a sailor beret.
14 June 2018
There are few more compelling storytellers in fashion than Antonio Marras, and this morning he spun another richly tapestried tale. The once upon a time began with John—originally Jean—Marras, who was born in France in 1772. Very much a peripheral figure in history, records show that he emigrated to the U.S. and worked as a miniaturist in New York before eventually moving on to ply his trade in Constantinople.That’s where fact and fiction diverge. For this collection Patrizia Marras, wife and co-creative dynamo within the Marras family, penned an imaginary life of John. A copy of this was placed on our benches—it was quite long—and backstage, Antonio summarized.The story had John as the 18th-century paterfamilias of Antonio’s Marrases. Before leaving Europe, he’d headed to Sardinia for a passionate affair with a local beauty.Their farewell was the first of three theatrical interludes that punctuated this show. Couples clad in patchwork jackets belted in twine and pants in wool (the hims) or pleated pink lace skirts (the hers), came out and danced tortured tearful tableaux of farewell.This show was titanic—not in that it sunk, but in that it was very, very big—so to describe more than a sliver of its looks would require a book as lengthy as Patrizia’s. However, the first section of around 30 looks prior to Interlude One opened with a red silk twill topcoat and some fine rose-heaped dresses underpinned with piled layers of asymmetrically draped tulle. Men’s looks featured bomber jackets with black pin embellishments running down their arms and rose-printed silk sleeves. There was a hint of the destination to come in a rose-embroidered semi-sheer dress worn over a scarlet and black buffalo check shirt and the at-full-sail schooners depicted on brooches pinned to the lapel of a full black coat.After Interlude One (with those sadly parting lovers), there was a greater emphasis on tailoring both for women and men. This came spliced into panels of different fabrics and heaped with clusters of embellishment. Sometimes it was roughly torn at the shoulder. There was a great mixed-material men’s parka and sweatshirts for men and women fronted with a collage of swatches and collegiate lettering—Americana on the horizon.Interlude Two was a literal(ish) expression of John’s emigration to the U.S. The same dancers came out in a group, this time wearing Marras collegiate sweats and tighty-whities (the hims) or black underwear (the hers). They were discombobulated.
Drunk? No, rocking side to side with the pitch of the ocean as they crossed the Atlantic. The runway was their deck and, quite amusingly, they fell into the front row as they were thrown side to side by the imagined swell.Part Three of the collection as the alternative Marras founding father story rolled on: Topcoats in mixed materials were matched with wide pleated pants, down coats came in dévoré velvet strafed by abstract pattern and accessorized with matching scarves. More buffalo check was layered under tulle and over fishnets. There was a tulle-encased fur sweater with integrated paste diamonds flashing from within. Macs for men and women came with cut-and-pasted arms, velvet duster jackets were gently inlaid with mountain scenes, peasant dresses in monochrome with flashes of red featured shivering layers of fringing, and a series of lovely evening dresses near the end jiggled with bibs from which hung grids of pearl beading.John Marras may have been a miniaturist, but his perhaps-descendant Antonio is most definitely a maximalist for whom clothes in shows are props in stories told in a unique and immersively romantic voice. As for today’s epilogue, those dancers emerged for one last joyful turn around the floor as Marras and his mob of models—plus a dog—rushed out en masse to declare the final page turned.
23 February 2018
Antonio Marras was inspired for Pre-Fall by the life of Joyce Salvadori, an Anglo-Sardinian poet and artist who was married to Sardinian intellectual and politician Emilio Lussu, to whom Marras dedicated his men’s Fall collection. Here, he put Salvadori at the center of his narrative, celebrating her multifaceted personality and building the collection around her unconventional style.“She had an exceptional, adventurous life,” said Marras. “She was a woman of extraordinary beauty and noble birth; on top of being a gifted poet and historian, she was a political activist and fought the Fascist regime during World War II. She lived in exile most of her life. To survive, she worked as a cleaning lady or a governess in Benghazi, as a laborer in Africa; she went into hiding in France.” Salvadori was obviously the embodiment of the kind of wildfire spirit of rebellion that appeals to Marras’s romantic sensibility. “She didn’t get the credit she deserved,” said the designer; with the Pre-fall collection he intended to pay homage.Salvadori’s British background was a fitting canvas for the eccentric country-style flair that Marras infused into whimsical, romantic combinations. Outerwear and knitwear took pride of place, giving a feel of outdoorsy coziness and vintage flea market–style assemblages. Case in point was a hand-knitted wool maxi cardigan-coat in a patchwork of different yarns and textures, worn with a huge matching scarf. Also notable was a bohemian hand-knitted vest with geometric patterns, paired with a silk shirt and a striped full skirt. A nod to British tailoring was twisted the Marras way; masculine tartan coats were decorated with embroidered patches and jacquard intarsias or worn inside out over ’50s-inspired silk printed dresses. The imaginative treatment didn’t spare trenchcoats, with plissé inserts sprouting from the sides, or languid long dresses in crazy whirlwinds of lace, prints, jacquards, and Lurex. They looked charming.
23 January 2018
Sardinia is the enduring subtext to Antonio Marras’s work. Born and bred in Alghero, a picturesque city on the island’s northwest coast, Marras still lives there with his family most of the time. Sardinia’s culture has an archaic, mythological quality; its indigenous language (don’t call it a dialect!) is a blend of Pre-Latin, Nuragic, Byzantine Greek, Catalan, Spanish, and Punic idiomatic elements, protected by UNESCO as one of Italy’s historical language minorities. No surprise that Sardinian sense of pride is quite pronounced.“Lately, I’ve been reading Emilio Lussu,” said Marras, explaining the inspiration behind his men’s Fall collection. A Sardinian intellectual and political activist, Lussu was exiled in Paris during the Fascist regime with his wife Joyce Salvadori, an aristocrat and poet. Nostalgia for his homeland was a recurrent theme in his writings, in which he evoked the life of migrating Sardinian shepherds, a community of exceptional horseback hunters with acrobatic skills. “They were seen as magical semi-gods,” explained the designer.And so for Fall, Marras imagined a British-Sardinian gentleman, fond of hunting with hounds in the wild countryside, but driven by nostalgia and a sense of home. “His style is a mash-up of memories.” A feel of rustic elegance was threaded through the collection, which was focused on outerwear. Peacoats and parkas were patchworked from an array of tweeds, jacquards, corduroy velvets, tartans, and felted wools. Worn inside-out exposing soigné linings, they had oversize, protective proportions; and though they looked sporty and functional, they conveyed the typical Marras flair for eccentric practicality. The British-Sardinian nobleman in question was obviously fond of a dapper touch of tailoring. Indulging in thick, knittedrobe de chambreand parading sumptuous brocade tuxedo jackets, he didn't look much like a Sardinian shepherd, but semi-god? Definitely.
23 January 2018
This immersively anarchic, chaotic, and extremely long show came with some challenges. To get into the 20-years-closed Teatro Lirico, you had to undulate through a crowd of folks who share the perverse recreational pleasure of just standing around in front of fashion shows to which they have not been invited. Once through the clot, it was down a dusty gantry and into the bowels of this five-story, cracked, and scaffolded husk of a performance space.Having already checked in withfamigliaMarras backstage, I knew this was a collection inspired by Fellini’s 1965 movieJuliet of the Spirits, which starred Fellini’s real-life wife Giulietta Masina as a woman who turns to spiritualism to discover her husband’s philandering. Real life and inspiration blurred in a Fellini-esque moving tableau of air-kissing and posturing as the local crowd was delighted to see—and be seen in—this precious, famous place.A spotlight revealed a trapeze artist poised above us in a white top hat, a bodice, and pantyhose. Released, she arced—slightly shakily—aloft. A red curtain raised to reveal a huge, Marras-clad cast on more zigzagging scaffolding gantries. Hyper-real housewives in check housecoats and devastating ingenues in plissé and lace-strafed party gowns wafted down the yellow-stained wooden runway. Models were mixed with friends and performers, some of whom received generous whooping from pals in the crowd. A chap in a blazer and shorts waved a silk scarf at the crowd, as if disturbed. A mature and buxom woman in an olive palm-print pajamas-and-robe ensemble was serenely attractive. A fellow in an embroidered suit and T-shirt walked as he read a book, while a woman in a net fascinator and a long, pale lace dress studded with blue and green baubles twitched and started as if plagued by spirits only she could sense. Embroidered jean jackets with cut-in panels of jacquard; micro-check full, asymmetric dresses; and a great long knit dress in stripes of red, blue, and beige were a few of the many highlights that raced by. The clothes competed with the performers for your attention—it was easy to relate to the male model/performer who kept pausing to put earplugs in and squint in confusion—and there were a great many to digest, all orbited by some notably great shoes and a profusion of bags and hats to boot.At the end—or nearly the end—couples from the cast (men and women, women and women, men and men) danced out onto the runway to kiss and canoodle. We whooped.
The curtain had quietly come down and was lifted again to reveal a uniformed brass band that started up with gusto as all 99 looks came out and around us again. This was a great show, packed with a whimsical multiplicity of characters, all united by Marras multitudinousness.
23 September 2017
Growing up in the small seaside town of Alghero, in Sardinia, Antonio Marras spent many afternoons at the local movie theater. He became an obsessive film lover, and movies have subsequently fueled his prolific imagination and nurtured a fascination for visual narrative. Being a tailor’s son with an ingrained fondness for fashion, it came naturally to him to turn frocks and fineries into cinematic tales, the more epic and romantic the better.One of the stories that left a strong impression on the young Marras wasThe Beguiled,the 1971 gothic drama directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page. Sofia Coppola just remade that quite perverse story, scoring a best director’s award at the Cannes Film Festival along the way. Yet Marras referred only to the original version, which for him held a sentimental flavor: “Clint Eastwood was at his handsomest self; at that time I was just transfixed,” he said. So for Spring he decided to eat his madeleine and tell the adventures of a soldier at war somewhere far from his beloved Sardinia and his mamma (he’s clearly an Italian soldier), and longing for his fiancée, who, by the way, just happens to be the nostalgic girl already depicted in Marras’s women’s Resort collection.Marras’s soldier has a more fashion-conscious streak than Eastwood did in that movie. “He drags about a large travel bag with lots of memorabilia, scraps of cloth, passementeries, trimmings, old buttons. He sits and waits and remembers; to fend off melancholia, he starts making clothes for himself, haphazardly patching decorations and embroideries on sweaters, jackets, and pants made of crinkled fabrics,” narrated Marras. For a DIY soldier, he actually looked quite handsomely turned out.The Spring collection had a retro feel, with slightly oversize suits; worn with waistcoats and ruched shirts, they exuded a nostalgic elegance. Denim single-breasted jackets with 3-D appliqués were tucked into roomy trousers, and allover floral prints had a feminine flair, in evidence on generous silk shirts or ensembles. Macramé patches were scattered on zippered bombers, fitted formal blazers, and safari jackets. As single pieces, they could add a poetic, gentle flair to the most streamlined masculine wardrobe—which is, of course, the antithesis of everything Antonio Marras stands for.
27 June 2017
It’s no secret that Italian society revolves around the concept offamiglia, a close-knit system of parental rules and regulations. The concept perfectly applies to the Marrases, a vast tribe of artistic personalities whose interaction produces an endless creative flow, punctuated by equally endless affectionate bickering. The Resort collection’s lookbook was shot by Efisio Rocco, Antonio and Patrizia Marras’s son and a budding fashion photographer (he cut his teeth chez Mario Sorrenti—talking about Italian tribes here), and the atmosphere on set was that of an exhilarating Italian commedia dell’arte of comic proportions. The family banter on every possible creative topic was relentless.Antonio Marras was a storyteller way before the word became a mantra for exhausted fashion brands desperately trying to reposition, or a marketing tool for corporate CEOs concealing a lack of ideas or weak heritages. Resort’s title, “Scarlett O’Hara in the Sardinian Countryside,�” could’ve been fit for an Italian B movie from the ’70s. “I just think she was the absolute best,” enthused the designer, referring to the headstrong, capricious heroine ofGone with the Wind. He translated the Southern flair of her dramatic dresses, made with thick velvet curtains and abundance of flounces and draping, into concoctions of embroidered brocade, silver lace, magenta macramé, ruffled pink and blue tulle, and bejeweled silk velvet. The array of fabrics and textures was head-spinning, fit for the trousseau of a Southern belle on her way to marry a Sardinian dignitary.For the long and treacherous journey, Marras provided her with plenty of trenchcoats, eccentric enough in their askew tailoring, full skirts, and contrasting balloon sleeves. The luscious gardens of Twelve Oaks were printed postcard-style on opera coats with matching occasion dresses; crochet doilies were appliquéd on T-shirts for a DIY look that was mercurial, unconventional, and a bit bizarre. Yet a happy ending had to be around the corner, even for a brooding, rebellious spirit like Scarlett, in the form of a wedding. Marras concocted a full range of flimsy off-white wedding dresses, breezy and romantic, complete with huge straw hats and veils, fit for an irresistible, insufferable star.
11 June 2017
If there was ever a fashion show with enough life to merit its live stream—and even repeated viewing—it was this humdinger from Antonio Marras. First, the clothes were extremely good, and (as is this designer is wont to do) they were also heaving with layered complication, splice, and sly insertion. Plus the casting—young, less young, fashion, and non-fashion alike—and the direction he decided to take resulted in what was as much a highly entertaining performance as it was a fashion show.Marras’s starting point was with two women. His first was Eva Mameli, the Sardinian botanist, trailblazing academic, and mother of Italo Calvino. The second was Pina Bausch, the German dancer and choreographer. “But it is also a way for us to say that fashion should have no borders between ages, colors, genders, anything,” Marras added.The clothes for men and women shared the same fabrications, prints, and brocades. Both men and women wore new-condition vintage tailored herringbone and tweed jackets that Marras said he had sourced from Prato and then Marras-ized by cutting them up and rebuilding them again with extra panels of fabric and added bolsters of embroidery. There was a little bit of contemporary streetwear—parkas and tracksuits—and some wonderfully ruched yet angular velvet dresses in yellow and teal (in which one could imagine Katharine Hepburn leaning on a piano and singing bewitchingly). Out on the runway, the looks unfolded as usual—until a couple started dramatically throwing each other this way and that. Throughout the show, performers from Milan’s Teatro della Danza exercised anguished and passionate articulations of human emotion and desire. One dancer was not a professional, gallerist Pasquale Leccese, who (along with critic Cristina Morozzi) was one of the more mature members of this inspiring ensemble. At the finale, the cast, designer, and the designer’s dog, Pierivo, raced around the runway—great, joyful stuff.
25 February 2017
There’s no shortage of experimentation in Milan this season, at least when it comes to finding alternatives to the quite tired fashion show format. Enjoying the chaotic anything-goes mood without being too judgmental comes easier when an unconventional approach is served with a side order of poetic verve and childlike enthusiasm, qualities that Antonio Marras has always possessed in spades.The designer has a histrionic personality; he’s larger than life, with a real urge to convey his torrential flow of creativity. Fashion is clearly not enough, and art has become another medium for his self-expression. Marras has amassed vast quantities of paintings, scribbles, ready-mades, and installations, enough to fill a sizable space at La Triennale di Milano, which celebrated his work with an exhibition called “Antonio Marras: Nulla Dies Sine Linea” (roughly translated as “Not One Day Without a Line”)—meaning that he can’t abide creative idleness.He animated the exhibition, a maze of dreamlike ready-mades, with a medley from his fashion collections, mixing men’s Fall, women’s Pre-Fall, and the more affordable I'M Isola Marras line, staging a theatrical performance of such grand proportions that it required not only a substantial casting of models, but also of dancers, mimes, actors, and other performers. Fashion people, expecting the usual show with models parading back and forth, meandered instead through bizarre arrangements of artistic assemblages, each becoming the set for vignettes of disparate narratives. The blasé audience couldn’t help but be charmed.To set the tone, a chorus line of towering dancers dressed in Scottish kilts and embroidered mohair sweaters greeted guests at the entrance. Once inside the exhibition’s dark space, the visuals were equally forceful. “I was thinking of a haunted castle in the rainy, foggy Scottish Highlands, full of ghosts and arcane presences swirling around as in a nightmare, or in a dream, as you prefer!” enthused Marras. Tableaux vivants of all sorts inhabited the space; some looked particularly quirky, like a couple of demoiselles clad in flowing floral dresses lounging on tables where dentures-shaped edibles (yes, you’ve read correctly) were offered in ornate trays. Elsewhere, a quite risqué ménage à trois was enacted within a tiny boudoir-like room, perhaps reminiscent of Louise Bourgeois’s ritualistic installations of doors and windows framing closeted spaces.
The quirk culminated with a towering bearded woman whose monumental gown was made of layered pleated skirts; she knitted a huge cascading plait while reciting a poem.Fashion was clearly not the focus; yet the men’s Fall collection, while showing Marras’s over-the-top flair, somehow managed to retain a believable quality. Military- or vintage-inspired coats, peacoats, and knits were lavishly embroidered, patchworked, hybridized, and decorated with appliqués and intarsias of all kinds. An array of punch-needled wools, tapestries, animal prints, floral brocades, denims, and tartans gave shape to voluminous parkas, duffle coats, and kimono-inspired coats in a freestyle tour de force. Definitely, it was as entertaining as a fashion show can be.
15 January 2017
Antonio Marrashas something of a fashion polymath about him; he’s moved by a restless curiosity. It feeds his effusive, almost urgent flux of artistic self-expression, which, combined with a penchant for poetic irreverence and a theatrical talent for storytelling, gives shape to his singular aesthetic. Marras is a whirlwind of creative energy; clearly, fashion alone isn’t able to encompass his interests. This is where art comes to the rescue. He’s an accomplished painter, sketching and sculpting with almost obsessive verve. He has amassed a huge body of work, which is now being celebrated in an exhibition at Milan’s Triennale. Its erudite title quotes the ancient Roman naturalist and philosopher Pliny the Elder: “Nulla dies sine linea,” which, translated from Latin, reads “Not a day without a line.” Pliny the Elder attributes it to the Hellenistic Greek painter Apelles, who worked every single day of his life with unrelenting dedication; Marras could easily be one of his favorite disciples.Every collection adds another chapter to the designer’s narrative, and Pre-Fall was no exception. He took inspiration fromLady Chatterley’s Lover, the erotic novel by D. H. Lawrence published in 1928, whose unexpurgated version was not available in the U.K. until the ’60s. “At that time the book sounded as a political manifesto and was shrouded in a fog of scandal,” explained the designer, introducing the collection in his atelier. “When I read it, I was completely bewitched by its subversive subject, that inescapable, devastating attraction between an aristocratic woman and a working-class man.” To translate this spirit of doomed, provocative romanticism, Marras added a surreal twist of cinematic glamour, referencing David Lynch’sTwin Peaks, whose arcane and spooky atmosphere was captured in the lighting and set design of the lookbook, shot by his son Efisio. As if all those references weren’t enough, images of Vita Sackville-West strolling in the lush Sissinghurst Castle Garden and of the late actress Sylvia Kristel languidly reclining in the ’70s soft-porn movieEmmanuellewere thrown into the already quite congested mix.The collection was a medley of fabrics, textures, and embroideries, played against each other with gusto.
Country-inspired tapestry jacquards were mixed with leopard prints; tartan wools were first oxidized and then almost perversely twinned with delicate floral prints; macramé lace was cut into stripes and then re-assembled and encrusted with velvet appliqués. Sumptuous brocades and velvets, fitting for a lady to the manor born, set off masculine pinstriped wools or thick shearlings with slashed edges, suggesting the rough sex appeal of Oliver Mellors, Lady Chatterley’s handsome gamekeeper. The high-low riffing found a modern edge in the sportswear vibe, which infused shapes and volumes for a lineup of eccentric yet wearable hybrids. Case in point was a voluminous coat/parka number, whose zippered front was made of checkered wool, while the sleeves were padded in black techno nylon, the back an explosion of cinched floral silk brocade, its hood lined with leopard-print velvet. It looked like a charming, crazy blend of a luxe opera coat, a practical puffa jacket, and a costume fit for a fairy-tale character. Very Marras, indeed.
19 December 2016
“This is endless,” observed my seatmate. And that wasbeforethe 40-look finale—featuring some excellent disassembled American sportswear and much, much more of the multi-layered Marras-mixed orgy of montage and mélange we had just witnessed—walked around a galvanizing group of couples jiving and twisting.So let’s start at the beginning. The collection was inspired by Malick Sidibé’s photos of nightlife in Bamako, Mali, in the '50s and '60s. They are captivating snapshots of a generation whose looks were shaped both by local tradition and the rock 'n' roll fever then sweeping the globe. The set was a stylized shanty of corrugated iron within which were seated some young black women reading vintage magazines under hooded beauty parlor hair dryers.“Is this very politically incorrect?” justifiably wondered my seatmate. Marras had a pre-prepared answer of sorts via a Yinka Shonibare quote in his notes: “Today, no one is just one thing. No one can deny the unflagging continuity of long traditions, national languages, and cultural geographies. There are no reasons for insisting on their separation and diversity other than fear and prejudice.” The casting, largely made up of white models, did, however, include many black and Asian faces—far more than Milan usually offers. My unqualified verdict—because it was not my culture Marras was appropriating—is this show did not transgress the border between creative inspiration and cynical exploitation. And achieving diversity on the runway can only be aided when designers of whatever color, even white, are free torespectfullyexamine the full diversity of human cultural code when assembling their work.Privilege apart, there's so much to check here. On menswear and womenswear—this had both—gingham was blown up or sized down and mixed with, well, lots and lots and lots: silk prints of flowers and torn netting; a blue and pink floral print on cotton; rose embroideries; raffia flowers; batik prints; opaque Prince of Wales paillette; jigsaws of floral; recycled metal pellets; matte and slick bouclé (which was tufted pale lilac strips of ribbon); bolts of silver knife-pleat fabric with fans of silver pin; thick fishnet mesh; and wispy whiskers of black marabou. To try and take it all in was a recipe for an aneurysm.With so much detail for the eye to feast on, it was a challenge to digest all the structures within which it was used.
Marras patched denim with floral licks of dévoré lace in full-skirted, nipped-waist dresses layered with soft indigo knitwear above cute ankle-strapped slingbacks with slick twists of lurex on the toe. A strapped full dress of red lace came with floral embroidered garland at its empire line. Twists of cutesy rose print, soft pink duchesse silk were provided on the bust and right half of a skirt in a dress otherwise assembled of metal-treated lace. Surplus Italian army parkas were cut apart and inserted with silk panels and sewn with more embroidery. Duster jackets and fantastic hybrids of tailored jacket and varsity bombers were points of contact with the menswear collection that passed alongside the women's. This featured painted knitwear, more patchwork embroidered denim, printed bowling shirts, and shorts: more, more, more.The last 40 looks—not shot for the dropdown here—were all, Marras said, unique pieces fashioned from surplus offcuts and prototypes created while preparing this collection. They rushed passed as those women enjoying blow dries put down their magazines and started twisting and jiving with partners who had emerged from backstage.You could argue that Marras could do with some hard-nosed editing. Yet that would suppress the exuberance that makes him such a particularly joyful and spiritually abundant designer. If not quite endless—just 115 looks or so—what of it? I’ve got a lot time for Antonio Marras.
24 September 2016
Antonio Marrasditched the catwalk this season, choosing to show his Spring men’s collection in September during Milan Fashion Week, alongside his women’s. He opted for a small preview instead, held at Circolo Marras, his poetic showroom hidden in a leafy Milanese courtyard. The space also serves as a store, selling not only Marras’s collections, but also an offbeat array of objects dear to the designer: mementos, souvenirs, knick-knacks of every possible sort collected during trips, or created in collaboration with artist friends. Marras loves creative collaborations as much as he loves travel. “For me feeding on different artistic disciplines is vital,” he said. “I'm a bit of a vampire.”The voyager theme has been ubiquitous on the men's catwalks this season, but for Marras it’s a longstanding fascination. He recently explored it in his women’s Resort collection, so it seemed natural that he return to it here. Biarritz and the French Riviera were the romantic destinations of choice; from there, the collection took flight, departing for Amsterdam, followed by an exotic leap to East Asia, finally coming to rest in the vast rural places of China. It read like some sort of a stylistic Lonely Planet, translated Marras-style in a compelling and slightly madcap medley of floral prints and patterns in bright colors, embroideries, and chinoiserie motifs camouflaged with macramé appliqués, sailor stripes, and patchworks. Balancing the decorative overload, shapes were kept simple and functional; oversize sweaters; military parkas, jackets and pants; classic T-shirts, and bombers all had roomy, slightly baggy proportions.Speaking of collaborations, the designer worked with the Italian artist and performer Franko B on a small line of cotton T-shirts, for which he restyled four images drawn by the artist, filtering them through his creative lenses in appropriation mode. Elaborating on the subject, a grinning Marras loosely paraphrased Picasso: “Stupid people imitate, real geniuses steal.”
20 June 2016
What in the world does a book of black-and-white pictures by the French master lensman Jacques Henri Lartigue have to do with a pair of vintage 19th-century Chinese papier-mâché vases found in a Shanghai flea market? Besides the fact that they’re both great finds snatched up by an eager vintage lover, apparently nothing. Yet together they made perfect sense in the Antonio Marras sphere, a wondrous place where the Sardinian designer’s flair can turn even the most bizarre riot of references into a movie-worthy tale. His new Resort collection was no exception to the rule; the colliding, poles-apart inspirations came together in a lineup replete with wit and charm.“Fusions, contrasts, synergies, culture clashes, warped clusters—I love all of that,” Marras said from his Wunderkammer of a Milanese shop-cum-gallery. He was surrounded by temporary aerial geometries of suspended ropes that he created ad hoc as a backdrop for the Resort lookbook. The installation had a rough yet poetic quality that was mirrored in the clothes, where a Biarritz-inspired, French Riviera esprit blended with an exotic, fin de siècle Orient Express vibe. Whimsical prints of birds and peonies were mixed with nautical stripes or Provençal florals—often living happily side by side in the same outfit. A trompe l’oeil camouflage was actually a reworked antique pattern of a Chinese rural landscape. A nod to the Mao era was gently handled on military-inspired jackets and utility parkas encrusted with macramé appliqués and embroideries; they had a graceful attitude with a hint of nostalgia. Dresses paid a languid homage to the traditional cheongsam tunic shape. Volumes were soft; asymmetries abounded; fabrics were light and airy or more substantial and textured. The collection had an imaginative, hyper-layered quality. “I think of women as diamonds,” Marras said, “but a diamond is not as multifaceted as they are.”
3 June 2016
This season’s muse—Adèle Hugo—made for great grist for the maximalist mill ofAntonio Marras. As Patrizia Marras explained before the show, in 1855 the youngest daughter of Victor Hugo rejected the marriage proposal of a British Army officer named Albert Pinson. She then had a change of heart. He, however, was over it. Vinson was stationed to Nova Scotia, then Barbados—and driven by an infatuation that eventually descended into erotomania and schizophrenia; Adèle followed him. He was a cad, she was quite mad, and there was no happy ending.Marras discovered this yarn via Isabelle Adjani’s role in Truffaut’s “The Story of Adele H,” and he mined it thoroughly. Atop leopard-print, buckled creepers worn with fishnet socks, Marras’s fabric portrayals of Adele’s unraveling started with a few relatively quiet, darker looks—a black coat with black frogging and a pinstripe dress with a palm-print puff sleeve and fur gloves. Pre-show the designer had said that the collection followed her descent into madness through a slow acceleration of heaped abundance. Really, though, she clearly had a few screws loose from the get-go. Hair, sometimes netted or topped with fur-fringed inserts, was wrapped and twisted around its owners’ heads like some fruitless attempt at insulation from internal tumult. Wide double-strapped leopard belts were used as restraints at the waist. Among the many standouts (pretty much every look demands at least a paragraph to describe in full) included a black biker over a patch brocade dress cut with velvet florals; a jacket and skirt of faded check lined with two frills of ruffle hemmed with coins; a silk dress, quilt-backed, with patches of fur that matched the wearers gauntlets; and a layered skirt incorporating fringe and strip worn with a coat fronted with more fur patches studded with pins.The expression of Adèle’s ultimate unhinging—when she was found wandering Barbados insensible—was a look that would work very nicely for the street style lensman outside: a pair of pale green floral pajamas swathed with a scarlet carpet-design blanket and accessorized with a little headpiece featuring two drooping tails. Backstage Marras said, “From madness you come to situations that are much more interesting than the normality of life. Because when you are crazy you don’t have limits and you don’t have barriers and you can go anywhere.” Adèle’s father once memorably described compliments as “a kiss through a veil.
” This collection, if more pell-mell than it could have been, was highly kissable—sans veil.
27 February 2016
Antonio Marrasis a talented storyteller. He would probably make a good movie director or set designer—he’s well versed in various forms of artistic expression. He roams free in the creative stratosphere, but always comes back to Sardinia, his place of birth and a constant source of regeneration. For Fall Marras’s journey took a bizarre detour to Texas—a destination that seems to be on the map for quite a few designers this season. Yet Marras’s Texas was not of the sophisticated Richard Prince–inspired variety. This was Texas in its raucous, Italianate version: that is, the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns of the ’70s that were hilarious, loud, almost cartoonish affairs—yet so believable that they inspired Quentin Tarantino several times. Marras found out that quite a few of those tacky B-movies had been filmed in a desolate village in remote, rural Sardinia.This inspiration had the designer staging a rustic set for his show, so realistic it was replete with real bales of hay as seats for the audience. The show also featured a musical performance by a good-looking gang of young cowboys, who danced and sang with wild abandon. “I have always been drawn to the freedom of open, endless spaces; coming from an island, the insular sense of remoteness could at times be affecting,” said Marras. “I always wanted to reach out as far as possible, longing for breaking barriers and limitations, at least with my imagination, and being open to what is unknown and different.” His collection reflected this free spirit, and it crossed genders and cultures. The mise-en-scène had a cast of charming characters: Sardinian bandits in Scottish kilts; rustic nomads from the prairies in rough tweed jackets; travelers in hoods and fur, with layers of padded camouflage jackets; adventurers in heavy, oily cotton garments. Embellishments were scattered everywhere, adding to a feminine vibe that trickled down to the parade of beautiful long dresses from the women’s Pre-Fall collection. They were worn with furs for a touch of regal whimsy. The overall effect was fun, uplifting yet bordering on the bizarre. It was good entertainment though, and the collection never felt out of control.
18 January 2016
What if things had worked out differently for Wendy Torrance? For Pre-Fall,Antonio Marrasreimagined the conclusion of Kubrick’sThe Shiningwith an alternate path for Jack’s highly strung better half (an interpretation that Stephen King vocally hated), in which it was all just a bad dream. The designer’s redux finds Wendy opening the door to infamous Room 237 and reinventing herself with some help from the well-stocked wardrobe of the globe-trotting woman residing therein.It’s a premise that is well served by Marras’s taste for cornucopian references. Here, his mood board brimmed over with images of the saucer-eyed, dollish Shelley Duvall, and there were some sweet touches that harked back to the actress’s early-’70s heyday: wide-leg jumpsuits, boyish plaid suiting, and graphic multihued stripes. Exotic-looking prints seemed to nod to the far-flung destinations visited by the guest in 237, echoing Moroccan tiles or lush wallpapers. Even the fictional Overlook Hotel’s location atop a Native American burial ground came into play through touches like the generous leather fringe that trimmed a black wool coat, a standout piece among the collection. Still skeptical that Wendy has indeed found a new lease on life? Look no further than the badass shrunken biker jacket Marras kitted her out with.
15 December 2015
After pausing to give his wife, Patrizia, a fervently Italian squeeze (you’d get slapped for that anywhere else),Antonio Marrascontemplated his board and said: “I start with the simple lines and the simple shapes. But in the end I think normality is too boring. I prefer eccentricity.” As do the Marras-ophiles who flocked backstage after this well-received show. You can see why. Season in, season out, he delivers variations on a template, though with Marras, sameness is a virtue that reflects a depth of imagination, not its absence. His vision is dense, delightful, and particular to him.The Spring ’16 collection was touched by the work of the state-imprisoned Soviet-era Armenian director Sergei Parajanov. The fruit left on the front row was a nod to Parajanov’s 1969 film,The Color of Pomegranates; the broken-plate print on the first three looks reflected his work, while the richly dun palette, ornamented headpieces, and occasionally literal swerves into a broad-belted, full-skirted, folk-dress silhouette nodded to the culture Parajanov was persecuted for propagating. As was a carpet-backed set of 14 Styrofoam boulders twined to the ceiling, two of which were mysteriously elevated for a rush-to-the-cameras finale of models in refashioned vintage white shirts and dresses studded with stones and layered with embroidery.The mass of the collection was Marras’s signature dervish concatenation of tiered apron dresses, full skirts, wide pants, and frock-coats splattered with broderie anglaise, embroidered patchwork, printed panels, beading, tweed, and sequined appliqués. There was a lovely fil coupe stamped with plated-print circles of tarnished gold, silver, and bronze. The shoes ran a gamut from fabulous wood-soled platform sandals to bullet-toed embellished sneakers. With very few exceptions, this was a collection that looked easy to wear but was hard not to stare at. As Marras put it: “I like a lot of things, together.”
26 September 2015
Antonio Marras took to the sea for Spring and came back to dry land with the best collection he's showed for years. Maybe it was the discipline of the color scheme, maybe it was the personal resonance of the theme…ours was not to reason why, ours was simply to enjoy the passing parade, and the music provided by a surf/mariachi quartet, each of them playing in his own little boat floating on a sea of books. A drowned library—a poetic, cinematic image that was one of Marras' most memorable (and he's created some doozies).The collection combined memories of the fishermen in Alghero in Sardinia, where Marras grew up, with his fanboy feeling for Montgomery Clift as the sailor Prew, adrift on a naval base inFrom Here to Eternity. Breton stripes, kerchiefs, and berets covered the Alghero waterfront, a boxy linen-weave suit and bird-of-paradise prints evoked Honolulu in the 1940s, the world ofFrom Here…A T-shirt graphic depicted Clift's face surreally encaged in a lighthouse, which was perhaps Marras' way of acknowledging that the actor was notoriously trapped in his own personal torment. (You can jump to conclusions like this with Marras. Promise, you can.)Literal references dispensed with, the designer used his bottomless appetite for embellishment with admirable restraint this time round. The showiest pieces were cut from Japanese cotton printed with squirming tentacles and overlaid with patches of lace for depth and texture. Overlaid but not overworked, which is where Marras can sometimes go. Otherwise, there was a crispness, an almost military precision, to the navy tailoring and a series of blousons, peacoats, and field jackets. Marras mixed in some womenswear to show how his proposal jumped genders. It looked pretty good, too. And worth more than a footnote were Alberto Fasciani's shoes.
22 June 2015
It's a wonder Antonio Marras has never chosen Peggy Guggenheim as his muse-of-the-moment before this season. But it was breakfast on the terrace of Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Guggenheim's home in Venice, that caused him to make her his own. In turn, Marras chose to "play with Venice," designing a sweater sequined with a scene on the canal, a Calder-inspired floral mobile print cut into bell-sleeve dresses and rounded-shoulder toppers, and plenty of other confidently complementary separates. Most notable were a trapeze swing coat made out of a non-sticky neoprene, and a trompe l'oeil tassel print done up as a blazer and wrap skirt.Many of the pieces—including a brooch-encrusted collarless jacket in geometric brocade—were designed and manufactured at Marras'laboratorioin Sardinia, where he and his wife live and work when they're not in Milan. There's something utterly romantic about Marras' vision, yet it's not wistful. He is the chemist of fashion: He's able to balance colors and ideas as deftly as one balances equations.
11 June 2015
"She's my friend, and a collection is the most precious thing I have to give her." That was Antonio Marras' heartfelt rationale for the show he dedicated to Italian style icon Benedetta Barzini. She posed for Avedon and Penn, hung out at Warhol's Factory, befriended Salvador Dalí. She was always in fashion, but never in fashion, and now, in her 70s, Barzini wears her years fearlessly on her face. In other words, she wasmadeto be a Marras muse.The air in the venue was thick with tuberose; the clothes were scarcely less heady—this was a typical Marras synthesis of history, fantasy, and craftsmanship. There were aristocratic details—tapestry prints, embossed roses, bullion-embroidered fur, inspirations from Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon—because, Marras wrote in his love letter to Barzini, "You are a Queen." But the lexicon of vintage dressing that he has made his own was also present in the lace, the jet embroidery, dévoré-ed velvets, silk fringing, cloque, and a palette of dusty pink, pale blue, and maroon. There was something intoxicating about it all, but it was the numbing intoxication of an opium dream.Perhaps that was why Marras compared Barzini to the Marquise de Merteuil, the manipulative seducer fromDangerous Liaisons.Except, said the designer, "Benedetta won." Left to mull over that cryptic statement, we fell gratefully upon the knitwear, literal light relief. And then the electric charge of Siouxsie's "Hong Kong Garden" blasted through the shadows as Benedetta herself walked out onto the catwalk, everything Marras had said, and more.
28 February 2015
Antonio Marras is a storyteller just as much as a fashion designer. He builds collections around a detailed narrative, creating clothes that fit a theme and a plot while defining a character, without forgetting they should also be wearable, not theatrical costumes. This peculiar approach makes Marras' work coherent: From the fabrics to the show's setup, everything glues together. In this sense, he is a unique figure in the Milanese scene—a true outsider, at times very charming in his enthusiastic naivety.This season Marras envisioned a metropolitan epic and staged his show in a shabby-looking car park, complete with a vintage yellow cab. A collection of reconfigured militaria and decadent refinement arose from the unlikely encounter between Costantino Nivola, a Sardinian artist who landed in the U.S. and befriended the local intelligentsia in the ’50s, and Travis Bickle, the unhinged taxi driver played by Robert De Niro in the seminal Scorsese movie of the same name. Everything looked ready for, and worthy of, an urban jungle expedition, from the sturdy parkas to the pragmatic suits worn with lug-soled boots.Since he returned to showing his men's collection on the catwalk last year after a several-season hiatus, Antonio Marras has kept perfecting his own take on the contemporary man's wardrobe: Cropped lines, sartorial hybrids, and raw elegance are his forte. His work often features many different materials put together in one item, and it tends toward the intricate and tactile. This collection was another chapter in that ongoing design process. It felt quintessentially Marras, if not particularly new.
19 January 2015
Antonio Marras was unable to make it to New York to present his latest collection, so he sent his wife, Patrizia, instead. There was a certain poetry to that—one Marras muse presenting another. Or, others. The designer's inspirations are always myriad, a cultural mishmash the exuberance of which rivals only the clothes themselves. For Pre-Fall he looked to Russia and found Irene Galitzine (the aristocratic designer and Jackie O favorite credited with inventing the palazzo pant), poet Anna Akhmatova, andAnna Karenina. All colorful figures, but none so literally as Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, the czar-sponsored pioneer of color photography who documented Russian life with his luridly hued pictures.From those starting points, Marras spun a lush collection in folkloric florals, shimmering fil coupe, and textural damasks. There were empire-waisted maxi dresses that would make Biba's Barbara Hulanicki proud, but also quieter pieces, like a terrific 3-D-knit sweater or a swingy camel-and-black-striped jacket. Designers as fiercely idiosyncratic as Marras are few; his clothes disregard time, trend, and, to a certain degree, commercial viability. Sometimes it's difficult to imagine who the Marras woman is amid the sea of print and color. The upside to all that glorious profusion, though? As Patrizia tells it, "You can find what you want!"
8 January 2015
Despite the fact that she first showed in 1945, it was not until the 1990s that the eccentric, radical Italian artist Carol Rama achieved much international recognition. And now, at nearly 100 years old, she finds herself a late-blooming designer muse, the inspiration for the Spring collection from Antonio Marras, who stretched his own artistry to the limit to evoke Rama's life and work. The set was a conglomeration of suitcases and bicycle bits and pieces, from old wheels whirling (Rama's father made bicycles) to tight elasticized belts designed to evoke the restraint of a straitjacket (Rama's mother was institutionalized). There were also spindly fabric fingers with blood red talons that wrapped a model's neck (hands were a recurring Rama motif, and she sometimes used nail polish for paint).The extravagant peculiarity of Rama's work suited Marras' flair for drama. His shows play out almost like performance pieces, and his clothes are not for shrinking violets. Roses or chrysanthemums, maybe. The collection divided neatly into two parts: the first a Mediterranean riot of bright stripes, and naive florals with the vintage feel that is a Marras signature (such as a pinafore dress with a ruffled front). Prettiest were the pieces strewn with blossoming branches. The work was beautiful, even if the effect felt a little too familiar.Then, a tip into a darker mood—an injection of chaos, asymmetric collages of plissé, embroideries on knitwear that looked like the inner workings of strange machines, sweeping organza printed with inner tubes. Odd, but better for it. It felt like maybe Marras himself was most deeply engaged by this bit of the show. Given that he is one of the most autobiographical of designers, that could only be a good thing, surely. So why did this collection feel a little more abstract, a little less poignant than the usual Marras tug at the heartstrings? Carol Rama was apparently unafraid to reject anyone and anything. Maybe that's the answer.
20 September 2014
Antonio Marras scored big with his soccer-themed Spring collection (there's a World Cup going on, don't you know?), for which he brought in a samba-sounding live band and an endless cast of models, some of them kicking a ball around the outdoor basketball court. A colorful, joyous tribute to Gigi Riva, the show came with a printed list of reasons why it was dedicated to the Italian football legend, who seems to be rather reclusive in his retirement but remains the country's highest-scoring and most celebrated player."Because he used to received one hundred love letters a day and the poor postman distressed by his labor problems was to unload all those letters at his hotel in Via Sanna Randaccio," read one of the reasons. Marras himself could have sent some of those letters, since he was clearly very smitten. Never mind that he doesn't know the first thing about soccer and, come to think of it, has never played it. He said so after the show, laughing at the very thought.That small detail didn't seem to matter much. Animated and charismatic, Marras had more than enough ideas to pull off his raucous homage. Sport-inspired and street-influenced, the show opened with a large image in Riva's likeness and gushed to the very end. Complicated floral or striped jacquards were piped and paired with athletic materials, mostly mesh and nylon. Bright team colors and a particularly gleaming shade of silver were used boldly yet judiciously, and for the most part baggy shorts hit the mark, meaning they weren't so short as to reveal tan lines. Chunky, color-blocked high-tops and stylized gym bags completed the sportif motif. A couple of double-breasted short jackets with no discernible twist could probably have been edited out, but otherwise the collection was a bona fide hit.When all the models re-emerged for the finale with a burst of footballs that nearly took out a few in the front row, Marras joined in the fun and attempted a maneuver, his awkward fail eliciting good-natured giggles from the audience.
21 June 2014
Antonio Marras' collections are often born of densely multilayered concepts, but for Resort 2015 he streamlined. At a presentation of his latest offering, the designer showed a Johnny Moncada photo of Veruschka on Sardinia's Costa Smeralda, cutting a svelte line against her scrubby, wild surroundings. It's a stark, strong image (not unlike the model herself; Marras was quick to note that she refused to cut her hair in an era when shorn tresses were de rigueur), but that's where the austerity ended here.On offer were a riot of color and a fracas of richly embellished fabrics that sang—and at points screamed, albeit joyously. The palette took cues from the Sardinian landscape and sent them into overdrive; foliage became a brilliant emerald, the water a pale aqua, sunsets a powder pink and an electric fuchsia. Prints leaned toward pop florals. Particularly strong were a graphic rose jacquard fil coupe and Deco-y Lurex knits. Under the Laboratoria umbrella, where Marras' more couture proclivities run free, fuchsia lace topped brocade, and pink cloque was scattered with paillette details. The designer also debuted a capsule of coated denim pieces ("I love a challenge!" he remarked), embellished with macramé lace and chunky crystals.If this all sounds like a lot…it was. But the saving grace: the silhouettes. Swingy mod-tinged shapes and easy fits did wonders to stave off a sense of heaviness, and the overall effect was flirty rather than fussy. Marras' second footwear collection, complete with pink pony-hair creepers, helped, too.
8 June 2014
A full, silvery moon hung over Antonio Marras' show space. The room was studded with screens playing videos of wolves, howling at their own moons or just being their irresistibly beautiful selves. The effect was artfully poignant. In other words, the ideal cue for a Marras collection. The set also offered valuable clarity, given that this particular outing was an even more head-spinning stew of references than usual. Marras managed to draw a line from Annemarie Schwarzenbach, lesbian siren of the Weimar Republic, to Little Red Riding Hood to Joseph Beuys to Herman Hesse'sSteppenwolf.A final touch: The models were done up like Rachael, the replicant inBlade Runner.A night on Google could scarcely fill in the gaps. And yet the common threads were always the wolf and the moon, masculine and feminine.Familiarity with Marras' work leads to the inevitable conviction that he is a frustrated movie director, today's show being a case in point. Each outfit was like a piece of an expanding narrative, light, dark, then light again. Inevitably, there was too much. Marras spills—he can fill a sketchbook with drawings over the course of a single lunch—so a judicious edit is anathema. Here, for instance, the sweet floral embroideries and appliqués that closed the show diffused the impact of the handful of stunning needle-punched outfits that preceded them, particularly the military hybrids.On the other hand, Marras has been making an earnest effort to keep things more accessible. His favorite silhouette was an A-line. There was charming knitwear and even his own graphic remodel of a track suit. And the shoes were some of the best flats you'll see in a season where flat shoes dominate.
21 February 2014
Antonio Marras' shop is a vine-covered oasis in a weather-beaten stone building secreted away from the Via Cola di Rienzo by a long entryway. But for the air of glamorous decay, it might as well be a gated community. It houses his showroom and, as of this season, his men's show, too. It's trite to call Marras an insider's secret, but it's fair to say that his world, off the beaten trail, is a reward for those who find it—it certainly was for those who attended his first men's showing in years.Marras' collection was conceived as an homage to his father, who owned a fabric shop with Antonio's uncle and namesake. Marras the younger learned or inherited his father's passion for cloth. "I started looking into his archive to find fabrics I like," Marras explained, "and then remade them." The bounty was so great that there was hardly a piece that didn't include at least a handful of different fabrics: stitched or needle-punched together, bonded or lined. The most complex was a double-breasted coat that morphed from felt to wool to shearling in a seemingly impossible gradient, but that was only the most overt example. Japanese nylon jackets reversed to jersey; leather biker jackets ended in suit-jacket sleeves. Marras' father, in an image taken from an old photograph, presided over the whole, printed or collaged onto shirts.The collection, multifaceted as it was, could've been taken for a fabric shop's guerrilla marketing campaign, a sort of latter-day plumping for father by son. (The shop is no more, but the elder Marras has turned his cataloging instinct toward his tie collection; according to Antonio, he has more than 300.) But the steadfastly casual shapes, all the breezy drawstring trousers, T-shirts, and sweats, kept it from feeling overwrought. It made for a welcome reintroduction to Marras, a designer neither especially young nor especially buzzy at a time when those qualities are often seen as tantamount to achievement or prerequisites for success. His remains an out-of-the-way world. But it was a charming surprise for those who found it, and it would be cheering to think that others might now pay it a visit.
13 January 2014
Antonio Marras' references are always quite layered, much like the collages he creates in his sketchbook each season. For Pre-Fall, he began with the late Swiss artist Gret Lutz Stemmler, whom he met in Gallura, a region of northern Sardinia where she settled in 1963. "A slice of paradise surrounded by nature," is how Marras described it in the show notes. To honor his friend Stemmler, who passed away in 2012, Marras brought together the artist's Swiss heritage and Italian life. The storybook heroine Heidi, as well as her nemesis, Fräulein Rottenmeier, became characters in his collection.The work was mostly grounded in mid-century silhouettes, with ornate embroideries and prints layered on to give the collection a rich feeling. Panels of carpetbag tapestry formed the sleeves of a rounded-shoulder coat in loden wool, which was finished off with vintage leather buttons in that same distinctive green. Neutral tweed pieces were embroidered with vibrant pink rosettes. A digital floral print in dusty pink was used on scuba fabric that had been sculpted into waist-cinching day dresses. (Marras is not one to use technical fabrics, but he felt that, in this circumstance, scuba was a modern way to add volume.)Those pieces were decidedly made for Fräulein Rottenmeier, while the girlish baby-doll and trapeze dresses were designed with Heidi in mind. Edelweiss—that distinctly alpine flower—appeared on a range of pink-and-blue frocks, most notably a tented number pleated from top to bottom. Marras did another version of that same dress in red tartan, layering black lace over the front. Styled with patent leather Dr. Martens sandals, there was certainly a nod to grunge. But the lace was too pretty and the pleats too sharp to truly compare it with tattered relics. Everything was pretty and, in a way, magical. Even the collection images felt like a storybook: The set was painted with scenes of the Alps, and a live goat was brought in to accompany the model.
7 January 2014
Antonio Marras made a woodland glade in his showroom, filled it with mutant musicians, and quoted Ovid'sMetamorphosesin his show notes: "I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms." Marras will never play the fashion game, walk the fashion walk. Instead, he has carved his own peculiar niche, populated with renegades and gorgeous hybrid life-forms. His sensibility is that of the couturier:I make these clothes for the people who get me. On the evidence of today's presentation, that tribe is growing by the season, so it was gratifying that the collection Marras showed was a perfect encapsulation of his otherworldly fashion sensibility. It was most obvious in the couture shapes, techniques, and fabrics: trapezes, bubbles, duchesse, dentelle lace, brocade silvered or over-embroidered, hand-painted flowers appliquéd on tulle—all of that. But then there were perverse home-decor details like the jacket with a rose-printed cape back that was ruched like a curtain, or the print of an ornamental garden. It was easy to imagine an artistic, free-spirited, slightly deranged woman tearing her world apart for inspiration. And when the models walked out with their heads wreathed in green leaves, the idea of pagan communion became much clearer. The musicians were playing something stringy and pretty when a deep, sonorous sound weighed in on their performance. A hunter's horn? The winds of change blowing though Marras' enchanted forest? Is there any other designer who could compel you to such unusual flights of fancy?
19 September 2013
In early June, Antonio Marras was recognized as an Honorary Member of the Accademico d'Italia by the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, following in the footsteps of such earlier honorees as Verdi, Wagner, and Rodin. It seems there'll always be debate about whether fashion is an art form, but such recognition reaffirms that there's little doubt Marras is an artist. Anyway, he's proved it time and again with the way he presents his designs, the collaged lookbook he created specially for Style.com for his new Resort collection being a case in point.But as well as being a designer and an artist, Marras is also a director, like Miuccia Prada, making movies with fashion. Each collection revolves around a film-worthy conceit. Here, it was the romance of Chilean poet-in-exile Pablo Neruda's seven-month sojourn on Capri in 1952 with his lover, the singer Matilde Urrutia. The story has, in fact, already been told onscreen in 1994'sIl Postino,but Marras teased out his own thread of visual drama: Brittle sophisticate Matilde arrives on Capri with her little dog and her white fur coat, and slowly a more natural sensuality blossoms under the influence of the island.It was an easy story to follow through the clothes that Marras had created, starting with outfits that were stylized and structured in the collaged, complex demi-couture style that is his signature (the trapeze coat, for instance), gradually shifting to simpler, summery silhouettes and fabrics, even some one-of-a-kind customized vintage denim pieces. Matilde used a gold-green-and-black stripe that is special to Capri for her wedding dress. Marras re-created it for a sweetheart-neckline sundress. The flowers that Neruda and Matilde's housekeeper bought every day were freely splashed as embroideries and prints by Ratti, the legendary Italian silk-maker.Marras's inspiration was most graphic when he used the same shapes for Matilde's before and after—on one side of the room, a cape in black duchesse satin; on the other, the same cape in a clear Mediterranean sky blue. The juxtaposition also clarified the collection's strongest selling point. It was as if Capri had the same kind of liberating, relaxing effect on Marras' design that it had on Matilde sixty years ago. It was invigorating to see him so at ease with simplicity.
21 June 2013
That Antonio Marras has a poetic instinct for the romance and drama of fashion scarcely bears repeating one more time. Every collection is an obsessively detailed production, from the invitations (worthy of an exhibition at some future point) to the no-expense-spared mise-en-scène and, of course, the clothes, which are usually in the service of defining the Marras muse(s) of the season. This time, for instance, it was the women of the Bloomsbury Group, the gaggle of artists and writers who dominated cultural life in the UK in the early twentieth century. Marras helped his friend Lea Vergine curateAnother Time, an exhibition about Bloomsbury, and he came away obsessed with translating its essence into fashion for a modern woman.It was a subject made for him. The Bloomsbury lot were freethinkers, obsessed with aesthetics, careless with convention. Watching the way Marras played with print, collaged fabrics and textures, mixed genders, he was poet, painter,andphilosopher today. The women (and men) of Bloomsbury would have eaten him on toast. And his new muses liked their gardens, so Marras' floral tributes would have helped to win their hearts. His flowers made some of the most appealing pieces in the show: a print of pinks collaged with painterly graphics, a blooming angora, intarsia-ed tulips, tapestry roses.Marras' models walked throughtableaux vivantsof performers doing Bloomsbury-ish things—reading, reading in bed, painting, posing, making music. That established a clear historical context. In the past, overt historicism has been both blessing and curse for this designer, but here it served to emphasize a newish mood of modernity in Marras' clothes. If they were complex in conception, they were relatively simple in shape. He liked a big slouchy silhouette with rounded shoulders and a zip. He also liked the slouch of a mannish suit, paired with platform trainers. Given the inspiration (and Marras' own inclinations), some element of another time was inevitable. But when a vintage mood insinuated itself, it had the flair of the glamorous women in the seventies who alchemized their style from old clothes. Or maybe that impression was induced by Marras going for the glam gold.
20 February 2013
Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.
17 January 2013
His wife, Patrizia, says Antonio Marras is "schizofrenico." If there was ever any doubt about that, his latest collection managed to shoehorn Queen Elizabeth II and the Vivian Girls into a wedding reception in the Italian countryside. The world should know about the Vivian Girls, the mythical family of warrior princesses dreamed up by the peculiar genius of outsider artist Henry Darger, so Marras deserves a pat on the back for citing them as an inspiration. He liked the idea of these tough female cookies insinuating themselves into a world that was the complete opposite of their own. Bad girls attempting elegance, in other words. Pop culture has guaranteed that the Queen and the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." will always be linked. But it was perhaps a little more backstory than this confusing collection of clothes could carry.Marras imagined a mutation of the Vivian Girls' combat garb and the Queen's signature sugary pastels, a kind of front-and-back proposition. Picture a dress that presented itself as a rich, hand-embroidered floral and revolved to offer a khaki gabardine with jean stitching. The model Querelle stepped out in a beaded camo jacket over a silk organza shift with a big, beautiful, blurry watercolor of flowers. A combat jacket was hemmed in sequins and crystals, lined in silk. There was something so outré about such a notion that it seemed like the very embodiment of the Marras design ethos, which has always infused an almost couture level of execution with some kind of personal history. (The show was dedicated to Pier Ivo, Antonio and Patrizia's Jack Russell. "He's the real anarchist," she said.)As far as that execution went, the proficiency of a new manufacturer means that Marras now has the capacity to execute his most elaborate designs. He re-created Darger's motifs in Swarovski crystals (12,000 in one top alone) on bouclés and brocades in sickly sweet shades. Silhouettes echoed the fifties, when the archetype of the Bad Girl first wormed itself into pop culture via Hollywood. A bandeau and a pencil skirt? Gloria Grahame was born to play the woman who would wear such clothes. Which is ultimately always the curse of Marras. So much beauty, so much workmanship, so much off-the-charts creativity—but what does it have to say to today? The question wasn't answered by the retro perfection of the final model march-past.
21 September 2012
Anjelica Huston in her 1970's modeling heyday was the rarest bird in fashion. Her haughty angularity was fashion geometry made flesh, and designers loved her for it. Trust Antonio Marras to pluck her from the mists of model-time as the inspiration for his Resort collection. His muses are always strong, wayward women. And Huston made perfect sense with the edge of the clothes.Marras was also looking at design group Memphis this season. (They're bubbling up as an inspiration—Donatella dipped her toe in the Memphis pool as well). That meant sharp prints but also a striking collaged approach to fabrics, as in Antonio's own favorite in the collection, a shift that combined lace, jacquard, and a panel of silicon pleats. And maybe there was some Memphis iconoclasm in the mutant sportswear of an A-line baseball jacket and oversized polo.But the collection's odd couture inflections were purest Marras. A three-quarter-sleeved trapeze coat in jacquard and lamé had plastic detailing. So did a coat in bubble gum pink lace. A marine group striped in navy and white was refreshingly simple by comparison.
17 June 2012
Antonio Marras should shelve this fashion malarkey and devote himself to moviemaking. Since John Galliano's retreat, there isn't another designer who paints cinematic pictures as vividly as he does. And that's Marras' challenge—costume is character, but is it fashion?His latest inspiration was Milly, a singer who, throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century, was a living metaphor for Milan, like Piaf for Paris or Lotte Lenya for Berlin. She was an emotions-larger-than-life character, lover of, among others, the king of Italy, and a perfect candidate for Marras' signature collage technique. He imagined her clothes as souvenirs of everywhere she'd been, everyone she'd loved. A piece of tapestry, a fragment of a man's suit, a dissected fur coat, a swatch of red velvet theater curtain—these were the kinds of elements Marras stitched together for his collection. There were 45 unique bags, and shoes to match.Milly's signature trenchcoat was reinvented with fur sleeves and tapestry inserts. Her equally signature blouse with the ruffled neckline was duplicated for evening. But, to return to Marras' challenge for a moment, none of this was mere fashion necrophilia or plain costume. He is too in love with his craft. So a funnel-neck jacket collaged from classic menswear fabrics, or a skirt with a red-lined obi fold at its waist, both stood out as ingenious fashion pieces. That said, Marras is really a connoisseur's proposition. True, this collection had the forties line—tailored jacket, severe pencil skirt—that has been seen elsewhere (and, it should be said, Marras' pencil skirts generate major heat), but his use of print and color had a melancholic romance that bordered on the theatrical. At show's end, dark roses flowered across the scrim while Milly's voice crackled down the decades. It was the sort of haunting chord that Marras can strike in his sleep. But sadly it ain't for everyone.
24 February 2012
Antonio Marras loves a woman on the brink. His last pre-collection was inspired by Elizabeth Taylor, spiraling into madness inSuddenly Last Summer. His latest started with Monica Vitti, also headed for emotional storms inL'Avventura, the game-changing Italian classic from 1960. There's something about extreme emotion that agrees with Marras' designs, with their clashing prints, patterns, colors, and textures. At their most straightforward, that can mean a mash-up of masculine and feminine, tweed colliding with brocade in a cropped jacket. At their most unsettling, though, his clothes crossbreed matronly Milanese propriety with an edge of dressed-in-the-dark madness. That quality was very present in his latest collection, with collages and layers that one minute teetered toward bizarre and the next, had all the controlled chic of late-fifties couture—and some of its luxe, too, especially in a tripartite coat banded in silk, sheep, and wolf. There's a whole movie waiting to happen right there in that one item.In fact, Marras' vision is peerlessly cinematic. He created a special capsule range in hot pink and emerald duchesse to match the moment inL'Avventurawhen Vitti finally freaks out. But that highlighted a problem with his new collection. There were too many times when it was too close to the cinematic source to look or feel contemporary. On a more upbeat note, the inspiration for Marras' next celluloid-inspired extravaganza is right under his nose in the form of his adorable 4-month-old Jack Russell puppy, Pier Ivo. AfterThe ArtistandBeginners, the world can't get enough of feisty little Jacks.
15 January 2012
There was a time when French petty criminal-turned-writer Jean Genet was a hero of the global avant-garde. Such was his impact at his career peak that it seems almost inconceivable the parade would eventually, inevitably pass him by. So kudos to Antonio Marras for resuscitating Genet, by using his playThe Maidsas the foundation of his new collection. Or, more specifically, the film version, where Glenda Jackson and Susannah York played the maids who took turns at playing their mistress when she was out of town. "It'smyturn to be Madame," Jackson's voice honked throughout the show.A fascinating story? Absolutely. A smart way to make a comment on the role-playing foundation of fashion? For sure. But it was an intimidatingly complicated concept for a fashion show, especially without the luxury of access to the designer's pre-show explanation of the significance of the two different wardrobes.One was clearly Madame's: elegant, draped plissé; strapless floral cocktail dresses; precise little cardigans with ruffled collars; ruched bathing suits for sun-lounging in Portofino. Plus Madame's preferred color scheme—patrician jade and fuchsia. The other wardrobe was the "poor cotton" of the maids' uniforms transformed by their proximity to Madame's finery. They had appliquéd, ornamented, and intarsia-ed their clothes in the manner to which Marras has accustomed us over the seasons with his romantic collaging of different times and places.Maybe it was the stage origins of the inspiration, but there was something inescapably costumey about many of the looks. A Marras show often strikes a retro chord, but there is usually some emotional, personal counterbalance, as with the collection he based on his mother's wardrobe. That is precisely what this show lacked. It felt like a performance, which isn't to say there weren't some beautiful clothes: The laminated blue cardigan paired with a green pencil skirt, as well as the same outfit in pink and purple, were louche, chic. And Marras is an effortless master of a very particular style of dressing up.Alta moda? His fabrics and techniques are awfully close to that. But there was no heat in this show, and Marras without heat is like Burton without Taylor, Brad without Angie.
22 September 2011
Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.
23 June 2011
The relationship between an Italian man and his mother is the stuff of legend. In Sardinia, where Antonio Marras was born and still lives, it's at its most intense. Beyond blood, Mamma is roots—where you belong. In basing his new collection on his mother Nannina, Marras won himself a whole lot of creative brownie points. Passion, commitment, and memory provided three powerful cornerstones.Marras is the middle child of five. Maybe the fact that he looked up to his mother so much accounted for the lean, elongated silhouette, with the models perched on high, thick heels. The shape also chimed with the forties feel, the era when Nannina was at her most beautiful. So skirts fell to mid-calf, there was a strong emphasis on the waist, and the models wore seamed silk stockings. The bright red lips and hair pulled back into a loose bun were also borrowed from Nannina's look. And the floral dress she wore the day she took her son to the movies for the first time was refracted through the roses and poppies that were printed on silk skirts and tops.But her influence on the collection was even more fundamental. Nannina used to work with a seamstress to remodel vintage menswear for herself. That's a habit her son has turned into a career. Here, a man's jacket in houndstooth or herringbone had been dissected and put back together again on the base of another jacket, its pockets trimmed with marabou, its torso decorated with jet embroidery. This is the esoteric luxury of Antonio Marras, and in that same spirit a peacoat sported an astrakhan collar, while a full-length double-breasted officer's coat was turned into a floor-sweeping gown. The designer has his own kind of alchemy—he turned a pair of sailor pants into a floor-length skirt.At the end of the show, the huge backdrop of Nannina's image splintered to reveal 38 models in deconstructed and reconstructed black slips with a man's white collar at their throats. Mamma and Pappa Marras reunited on their son's catwalk—it was yet another fashion moment, courtesy of Milan's hidden treasure.
24 February 2011
Our review will be posted shortly; in the meantime, please enjoy these pictures.
18 January 2011
Antonio Marras is Milan fashion's romantic poet, so there was a perfect synchronicity in his latest inspiration:Bright Star, Jane Campion's movie about the doomed romance between John Keats and Fanny Brawne. As limpidly gorgeous as that film was, Marras saw it and raised it 20. One of his favorite scenes shows Fanny and her sister releasing a butterfly, so his invitation was a box of butterflies. And 40 models walked through clouds of paper butterflies for his finale, wearing outfits reconfigured from old aprons with lace and embroidery. They were unique pieces from Laboratorio, Marras' "couture" studio, but it looked like just as much work had gone into everything else on the runway.That's because Marras is such a great collagist, stitching together not just fabrics but times and places. And with fashion taking a turn for the romantic, his magpie vision has rarely looked better. Case in point: Keats being English and male (however intensely consumptive), Marras took a cue or two from British menswear traditions, in particular the trenchcoat. But he sliced off sleeves, added floral inserts, and tacked on a lace hem, so the trench became an entirely personal statement. It was the same with his prints. Gardens are blooming all over Milan's catwalks, but Marras layered roses, wrapped a floral apron over a flowing white dress, shirred a vintage bathing suit from blooms…and then paraded a chiffon shift of poppies that was surely the ravishing last word on the trend.Marras gets the past in an instinctive way that few other designers can match. But he is much too canny for simple historicism. This collection also included silver flip-flops, a graphic black-and-white cropped jacket over one of those shirred bathing suits, and a pleated black waistcoat decorated with handfuls of coq feathers. They were just some of the stand-alone pieces that attested to this designer's grasp of an easy, modern glamour.
23 September 2010