Marni’s pixilated eroticism

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Feb 25, 2018

A tour de force show by Francesco Risso for Marni, where the detritus of our technological age combined with fabulous fashion for a poetic moment.  Marni, under Risso, is one of Milan’s fastest growing houses.
 

What this young Italian designer called a Siamese process, where different garments are assembled into a surprising new eclectic chic. A bat-wing sleeve faille top over a strict wool bodice on top of a patent leather skirt, all nipped at the waist by a wide cord belt and mini bronze shield buckles.
 
Risso showed bold, Cricket blazer stripes used in mannish coats; great satin dresses, split down into three vertical columns of tobacco, beige and crimson; fantastic sequins and mesh party frocks; and, above all, great plasticized coats in primary paint colors of lime and metallic blue. Though his most beautiful material was a crowd print of hundreds of young people at a rock concert or political rally, seen in winter coats. Everything finished with raw saddle stitches.

“We live in a world with an obsession for technology and innovation. So, this is a plurality of women and ideas. Women screaming with colors, and bringing a vital message into the streets,” said Risso in a packed backstage.
 
All anchored by sensational platform shoes, again in an amalgam of rubber; denim and leather; though the key look was a high-tech sneaker finished with tractor tire soles.
 
This assemblage, jumbled up style was mirrored in a remarkable set: bundles of mattresses; stacks of bicycle tubes, and a wall of car tires. “Putting a chaotic order into chaos,” smiled Risso.
 
The audience perched on benches composed of bundles of blankets compressed into plastic bags, just like the one where Anna Wintour and American Vogue sat.
 
“Looking at nature’s beauty and its simplicity, that brings us into primitivism, a primitivism actually done with human kindness. That’s what Jean-Jacques Rousseau teaches us. No? The Noble Savage. So, I wanted to pack and repack things to create a noble armor for women,” added the intellectual designer, who revealed that he plans to use to compressed packages as material “for a sort of living room.”
 
A mélange on the soundtrack with opera, industrial noises, church bells and the legendary Klaus Nomi singing his baroque lament Death. Even the sound of meow, meow – a technique opera singers use to warm up before a performance.
 
“A Siamese union of clothes and ideas; a pixilated eroticism,” concluded Risso.
 
Meanwhile, his almost namesake, Renzo Rosso, the Italian entrepreneur who controls Marni, sat front row beaming.
 
“Francesco’s ideas are very experimental, but commercial too, and beautiful. We could not be any happier,” said Rosso. He revealed that Marni company turnover grew by almost 30% last year to 230 million euros. Meaning an experiment that is working very well.