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ANTONIO MARRAS SPRING SUMMER 2015 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – MILANO FASHION WEEK
CAROLINA MY CAROLINA
A passionate dedication to Carol Rama
The first time I met Carolina I was terrified … I admit that it does not happen very often, I would say that it happens rarely to be so terrified that I could not think of anything else.
Yes, it was decided: First, we’d go to the gallery to see her artworks, afterwords in the afternoon we’ d go home to Carol’s, just by food as she’s living just round the corner in front of Mollino’s house.
Carol welcomed us in the hallway, crowned by her braid and took us to the bedroom. She was sitting in her armchair and told us where to go: “You here, she there and you, Antonio, come here on the floor just beside me.”
Carol attracts you and she catches you. She was telling us about Man Ray, Warhol, Orson Wells, Carlo Mollino, the frogs, …and the asylum and the french kisses…
She started playing with my rags and at that point I was hoping that time would never pass by. We talked again on the phone, we screamed that we were already missing each other.
She is beautiful, inappropriate, provocative, disturbing and generous. A character from all over the top whose art is incomprehensible, obscene and crazy, just like her. I’ve always loved, she says, things and situations that were used to be rejected with.
There is so much to fall in love with, deeply in love – and I did… From that point on, our first meeting, our never-ending story started. A story of handcraft and silks, embroideries and prints, flowers and colors. The warm colors of the sunset in the mornings and dreams of the night.
Shame and transgression, hands and roses, frogs and hands, hands and … “a rose is a rose is a rose” …from dream to nightmare to extravagance, the extravagance of the avant-garde, powerful and front, poetic, languid and crazy and impredictabel as a magma, as an encounter of love, as a memory … dresses and sweaters and shirts as hugs, sometimes reassuring, sometimes too sensual … silks and pleats and prints and secrets … an extension that hides and exalts for an intimate private vision, for a meeting with yourself … for those who have to deal with the follies and deceptions.
Bold colors such as the turquoise of a sky without disorder but filled with flowers and sensual imaginations of antique roses, an orange, warm, hot, bright, direct, so shameless.
Transparent organza, voile and tulle like secrets we do not want to hide, appearing polka dots and bicycle tyres which turn soft, just like surrealist dreams combined with texture sometimes taken from Carol’s pieces of art, some other time freely inspired by her. And hands that hug or tighten or warm or stop …
The jewelry/sculpture born from the meeting of Monica Castiglioni (artist, photographer and designer) and Antonio Marras. Each piece is unique and each element appears to be the fragment of a dictionary which is made up revealing a language.
Objects, rings and necklaces and bracelets, such as prosthesis, present and powerful, visible in their being timeless, enhanced by the luster of bronze.
Pieces conceived for a project which is based on some fundamental connections of the body, Connection between organ and organ, between inside and outside, between full and empty, between visible and invisible, between shyness and arrogance.
Forms that arise from a reference and a definite icon: Carol Rama
Francesca Alfano Miglietti
Thu, September 25 2014 » Fashion Blog
ANTONIO MARRAS SPRING SUMMER 2015 MEN’S COLLECTION – MILANO FASHION WEEK
11 REASONS TO DEDICATE THE COLLECTION TO GIGI RIVA
1) Because Gigi Riva played 442 matches on 446 with No. 11 on his shirt.
2) Because Gigi Riva is the champion that all the children would have liked to emulate.
3) Because Gianni Brera renamed him “rumble of thunder” and no nickname was more appropriate and I love it.
4) Because Gigi Riva is the revenge of a ‘childhood made of anguish, poverty, denial and bitterness.
5) Because, thanks to Gigi Riva, Cagliari was said to be the prodigy of a team winning in the scirocco area…. isn’t it beautiful?
6) Because Gigi Riva had a shot that drills through nets, an extraordinary overhead kick, a skillful and dangerous header, and when he kicked diagonally from the left he found the lower corner with his eyes closed.
7) Because even the old women from Orgosolo, shrouded in their dark brown shawls with long and waving fringes who go to church at five in the evening and who know little about football, know Gigi Riva.
8) Because on April 12, 1970 in an interview Gigi Riva said … I like Sardinia. I think it is good for me, especially to my health ….. humidity does not exist here, there is no snow, there is no fog. I think that .. one day for me and for my children .. Sardinia could be the ideal place.
9) Because Gigi Riva used to received 100 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.
10) Because even if Gigi Riva used to have an island exploding for him every Sunday, even though he was courted by every team, he always had a shadow of melancholy in his eyes, on his lips, in the timbre of his voice.
11) Because Gigi Riva can be summed up in one sentence by Gozzano: I don’t like things that could have been but were not.
And 11+1 reason because in 1970 the “red-blue team” won the championship.
CAGLIARI ITALIAN CHAMPION.
A revenge for an island abused by men and by nature.
A revenge for all those who continue to live on the island and especially for those who had to go away and that from a distance feel even more connected to their land.
Today, frustrations, sufferings and disappointments are cancelled.
A revenge: to be the first and to be the champions of Italy.
THE BEST.
Ps: And still, above all, a reason:
Because …….. we still need heroes and Gigi Riva is a hero.
Mon, August 4 2014 » Fashion Blog
ANTONIO MARRAS FALL WINTER 2014 MEN’S COLLECTION – MILANO FASHION WEEK
I had a father, I am a father. My father, like me, was Sardinian from Alghero, an outpost of Sardinia right in front of Spain. He used to have a fabric store, fabrics meant for every occasion. Occasions when it was important not to look but give respect.
Dresses for parties, for engagements and weddings. Baptisms and confirmations. Funerals and processions. The store was in the center of the ancient part of Alghero, Via Roma 56.
In the long and deep workshop, the fabrics were carefully rolled on wooden shelves. For every person there was a fabric , just waiting for the right time to be chosen, to be sewn and take shape and life.
I’ve always poked around in my father’s shop, played with combinations of colors and materials, observed attentively the skirts and shawls of those silent and determined women who came to Alghero from the country to buy good clothes for special occasions and for the work, stuff that would last for decades, wear- resistant and weatherproof.
I miss the boxes of handkerchiefs for men that were then embroidered with the initials for the lucky ones, perfectly ironed into four equal parts by patient wives. My father always put the handkerchief in his breast pocket, right next to the heart…
I have always rummaged among the collection of ties of my father, fascinated by the same form that was repeated in endless patterns no one equal to another. I think of my father always with a cigarette dangling from his lips, like an actor or a sailor.
I kept the pieces of fabric from the workshop of my father. I kept his precious meters of wood that were used to measure the length of the fabric purchased. The length of a meter as the notches carved into the wooden counter.
Four feet for a pair of trousers with turn-ups and ten more gifted for soft spots, for possible errors of little expert hands. One meter and 70 for a double-breasted jacket and a one and 80 for a coat…
When everything changed, when the fabrics have given space to tayloring, when thought and slowness have been replaced by everything- ready-immediately, rush, speed and urgency, the shop has been replaced by clothes boutique.
I have chosen some of the fabrics among my fabrics preserved as relics and works of art. I have reviewed and reworked them.
Blue and doubled cloths, polka dot corduroy, technical cotton, jacquard jersey necktie fabrics, tartan wool, micropiedepoule, felted gabardine, double jersey, multiflower printed cotton drill, neoprene, chevron wool combined with melange jersey, necktie printed micro-canvas wool, canvas microcashemere print wool, liberty printed poplin, Oxford.
Sweaters with necktie printed jacquard, English stitiches with saylor stripes, Ireland tufted stitches, panels punched with men’s fabrics and fur. Traditional colors of blue and gray, cord and aviation. Aubergine, oil.
Volumes: oversized pea- coat, carrot pants, jogging with drawstring. Sailor‘s coats, jacket with quilted sleeves. Reversible jackets, traditional vests and cocoon sweaters.
Wed, March 5 2014 » Fashion Blog
ANTONIO MARRAS SPRING SUMMER 2014 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – MILANO FASHION WEEK
Antonio Marras © Copyright 2013
Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world, what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place.
Ovid, The Metamorphoses I 5,9
Balanced chaos, perfect disorder. Matter that changes and plays with shapes and volumes. Rules overturned, unstably solid balances. Imperfect, discordant, excessive. Complete, limpid, regular.
Rules respected yet broken. Clothes like leaves on which the times of change and mutation leave their mark. Caban jackets, jackets and blouses, only seemingly austere, reveal excrescences as if plates of armor had grown on the back as protection and a shield.
Tops, tunics, and skirts with apparently different shapes are similar and contiguous. Sisters. Daughters. Each born from the modification of the other. Colors reflect and evoke the dawn, fog, and glistening dew drops.
Powder pink, penicillin yellow, ash gray, dusty blue, swamp green, and fairytale pink. Luxurious embroidery, wild threads, transparencies, layering, perforated patent leather motifs, butterfly wings of cloth and chiffon, precious stones and grosgrain ribbon, lace, dentelle lace, Chantilly lace, and ruching alternate on different materials.
Radzimir organza with oversized motifs of flowers embedded in stripes and dots (that recall dreamy and familiar worlds). Olympian landscapes bursting with vibrant shapes and colors. Ecru and black intertwining, blending and clashing.
A blend of mesh, silver leather, fil coupe, satin, floral brocade, striped tapestry fabric, silk duchesse, cotton jacquard, and tulle on tulle.
I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms. You, gods, since you are the ones who alter these, and all other things, inspire my attempt, and spin out a continuous thread of words, from the world’s first origins to my own time.
Ovid, The Metamorphoses I 1-4
Fri, October 18 2013 » Fashion Blog
ANTONIO MARRAS FALL WINTER 2013-14 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – MILANO FASHION WEEK
Imagine home with sofas, rugs, pillows, and walls painted as if in a harem. There are paintings and books all over. Amidst the voices, noises, and laughter, someone is reading or painting, while another sews, embroiders, draws, takes photographs, writes, or rummages through left-over yarn.
In the country, they bring back to life old abandoned buildings. They build furniture and objects and decorate fabrics, ceramic objects and bowls. They dig in the soil, water plants, trim trees, pick fruit, and take the dogs out for a walk.
Lea observes, smiles, and records the scene. She presented them to me in… Un altro tempo [the “another time” exhibit] … They have returned – Vanessa, Virginia, Edith, Violet, Vita, Hilda, Dora, Helen, Jessica, and Dorothy – and it’s as if they have never left.
They are always near yet far, continuously searching for another place, another island where they can stop awhile. They are friends, these insolent women, who have caused scandal and triggered fierce disagreements.
Bold and unconventional, polemical and provocative, and blessed with irony and sarcasm, they seek to define what is beautiful and true beyond convention, in complete freedom and with irreverence.
They are eccentric and cosmopolitan. They are not simply extravagant because “eccentricity is not just extravagance: it is primarily nobility of spirit and manner.” I think of their clothes in… Another time …
They shun fads and prefer wearing clothes that express their spirit and faithfully reflect their complex personality. They blend materials, shapes, and prints, luxurious jacquard wallpaper motifs in crimson and ecru devoré velvet and rough masculine tweed, windowpane check wool, pinstripes, and mélange Prince of Wales check.
Gray and brown fabrics borrowed from Saville Row tailor shops are brightened with unexpected splashes of color such as dazzling yellow, deep fuchsia, intense white, and bright red.
Fil coupé jacquard, silk twill, cavalry with Lurex threads, and thick Chanel and silk organza fabric, heavy cotton satin with trailing decoupé flowers in vibrant shades or black and white stripes are featured.
Fragments are extrapolated from their work. Small details are reworked and recreated on prints, organza, and traditional British plaid combined with Chantilly lace. Fabrics that are seemingly very different are, due to an absurd alchemy, combined and blended to tell a story about city life.
They are then rearranged and used with country elements to narrate tales about the country. Vintage menswear jackets in tweed and Prince of Wales checks are brought back to life in a fresher, new version, assembled together and embellished with rustic embroidery.
Army blankets that once covered old sofas or humble beds are turned into oversized greatcoats with an exuberant mixture of inserts made of luxurious fabrics alternating with velvet and nubby tweed. Rose covered fabric inserts, floral elements, macramé lace, and striking traditional embroidery.
They enjoy playfully separating, rearranging and combining roses, beading, and lace. They create chaos, a hodgepodge of vibrant fragments, and yet they seek symmetry through these endless contrasts.
They recreate new figures through contrasts of dark and light, kaleidoscopic rainbows of SWAROVSKI ELEMENT crystals, luminous effects, and a combination of merging elements which are used to express themselves and their fascinating dichotomy and oxymorons that exist within and finally emerge.
That’s how I see them dressed, surrounded by art, literature, travel, the city, country, trees, gardening, past and present, each in her own world.
Mon, April 22 2013 » Fashion Blog
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