MARNI SPRING SUMMER 2018 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – MILAN FASHION WEEK

Treasure hunt. Bits and pieces collected on an endless search, put together like strings of DNA, or charms dangling from a bracelet. Lovingly.

A multitude of women, surfing through a multitude of worlds. They scavenge into trunks full of objects, finding items that belong to different individuals and carry different stories: Fifties bathing suits and dressing gowns, humongous polo shirts and sumptuous skirts, outscaled pants and impalpable slip dresses.

They play, dissect, adopt, adapt. Joyfully. They magnify, distort, distress, glorify. Spontaneously. Their idea of beauty is a bizarre cocktail: shaken, not stirred. The ingredients range wide: couture nods and Twenties languors, balloon poises and skaters’ slouch, ravers and flappers.

The spirit is inquisitive. Nothing is taken for granted, or as it is. Insides and constructions peek a boo as through X rays. Seams and toiles are exposed, hems cut raw and frayed.

New balances arise from the flipping of an angle, or a grand-angle. Masculine pieces morph to the womanly shape. Volumes get reconfigured. Micro turns into macro, and viceversa. Harmony emanates from clashes and cacophonies: demure furry shoes and sturdy Wellingtons, fragile silks and compact knits, utilitarian checks and elitist flowers.

Surprise. Objects lost, objects trouvé, knotted into jewels. A lucid accumulation of accidents, like the female figures in David Salle’s early drawings, seductive in pose, scribbled over in hastened gestures.

The humanity of touch, expressed by women who do and do not pose. Their urge to make things their own, to assemble, disassemble and reassemble is playfully childish. Dada, perhaps. Spontaneous, always. Beauty as a playful act. And as such, as a subversive one.