ANTONIO MARRAS SPRING SUMMER 2013 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – MILANO FASHION WEEK

THE VIVIAN GIRLS HAVE WON!
The monsters are defeated! Giants, spectres, fears, weaknesses, doubts, dangers within and without ourselves. Elsie is vindicated and Simonetta triumphs.
She marries in white. There’ll be a grand celebration.
Starting at dawn, a joyous ding-dong of bells summons everyone. There’s something new, the air is sweet, an air of other places and other times. The breeze sways red, yellow, purple flowers; silvery spines shimmer. The table sparkles: crystal, platinum, silver, silk, flowers, cakes. Everything’s a bit heaped together, but in a good way, with elegance and harmony. They’ve decided that today the world must be made romantic. That’s the only way it will regain its original meaning.
So a poet says. And he’s right. Today they celebrate!
One of them is a young bride and they all dress up in her honour. They’re all here, they’ve come from faraway places and times, very faraway. Daisy, Elsie, Anna, Joyce, Jenny, Catherine, Anna, Vera not forgetting Sailor Moon, lively Teresa as well as Andrée, Rosemonde, Albertine and Cate and Luna… They are young women in the bloom of youth, bellas mariposas, multicoloured butterflies that love flowers and a little shade, too. They want to play some more; they dress in their finery to say that the world can change, become sunny, enchanted, unreal.
Bouclé fabrics, textural tweeds, damasks in various thicknesses and colours, pink, milky-white, peach-pink, apricot, lilac, pale green, pastel shades, ceremonial colours, golden threads. Long-forgotten Chanel jackets, military jackets taken apart and reassembled. They project con- trasts, ambivalence, dreams, illusions, hopes, darkness and light the stuff of life. This is why jackets, duster coats and dresses have duality, they become “others”. At the back, black, white, ecru cotton in geometric, floral, dotted patterns; in front, hand-executed decorations and embroidery, extravaganzas of flowers, branches, buds, butterflies, storms, joins, showers of pearls and Swarovski crystals. In a passionate urge to see clearly, emerge from the shadows, from the darkness and, amidst songs and silence, go towards a shining horizon.

TINY VARIATIONS IN SPARKLES
Swarovski crystals speak of other things, they take us by the hand and lead us elsewhere.
They take us to roads covered in light, they tell us that sun-dust will always filter through even the tiniest chink.
The road is covered in pebbles and stones, dark and radiant presences, as sweet as oboes, green as pastures or seabeds, as white as ice lances melting in the sun. Precious, intense light chases the shadows away and gives courage, energy and joie de vivre.
It emits from every fragment, from every thread, it radiates intense rainbows, small, large, endless luminous labyrinths in a thousand directions.
Flooded with light, objects, fabrics and people are transformed, they become something else, magic narrations with vaster, more universal meanings.
And so Swarovski crystals live and speak;
simple, sophisticated, elegant atoms that send luminous messages, they invite us to look for hidden beauty and light.
They remind us that real things are enlivened and ordered according to a logic that defies reason, dictated by pure wonder, to illuminate and colour the journey of our present.

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Tags: ANTONIO MARRAS, ANTONIO MARRAS SS 2013, SPRING SUMMER WOMEN 2013

I’M ISOLA MARRAS FALL WINTER COLLECTION 2012-13 – MILANO FASHION WEEK

The winter sea

Always the sea, free man, you will always love / as the sea is your mirror …
when it is not just a colorful frame for new adventures and lit nightclubs full of lies;

when his voice is not covered by banal music and shouts of agitated crowds;
when it is a fascinating film in black and white … and under the mistral / it screams and pales …

Wild waves chase each other, rolling, crashing on the rocks, they cancel them self, under the cold wind like a sharp blade the sea growls the rocks, reacts with anger, gnashing, writhing, darkening, dropping his fury on the beach, it crosses the dunes, hits the wall.

Let’s go to the sea to listen to his loud, violent, impetuous voice, or to let you hear (or to be heard)?

In the white fury of huge waves, mesmerized (drunk), you surrender, lunges, Resurface, floats.

You like the sea in winter and the stormy days when, as an angry, mad animal, growls and shows his terrible strength, fighting with indomitable energy with the wind that lifts mountains of water and foam and immediately downs under the weight of dense clouds that darken the sky.

You love him, even though it can sometimes be cruel and indifferent, love him as you love life.

And in the breath of the wind and waves you marge your breath and find yourself.

Citations from

Charles Baudelaire, The Man and the Sea Carducci. San Martino

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Tags: ANTONIO MARRAS, FALL WINTER WOMEN 2012-13, I'M ISOLA MARRAS, I'M ISOLA MARRAS FW 2012-13

ANTONIO MARRAS FALL WINTER WOMEN’S COLLECTION 2012-13 – MILANO FASHION WEEK

To Milly
A letter. A sentence.
” I know you, madam. I repeat, I know you but only by sight.
I have followed you, sometimes I have observed you at length, never daring to approach you.
I know your outward form, a few moments of your life and, above all, the little knowledge of a soul which a face may reveal to a careful observer.
But it is very little, madam, compared to the immensity of what I should like to know about you “.
A bolt from the blue. And a strong, instinctive, tormenting desire to know more.
Her husky, alluring voice – hard and gentle, harsh and melodic – surprised me, won me over, forced me to stop.
In just a few days I read, saw and listened avidly, intensely, passionately to everything about her.
She doesn’t know me and perhaps this letter will surprise her, but I know her!
I see her in Turin, Milan, France, America and the back, with new success, to Italy, theatre, films, television, recitals, songs.
The relentless passing of time does not take her slowly away from us, like ships we see from the shore. Indeed, it brigs her closer.
Simple and elegant in her sophisticated little sheath dresses, wrapped in voluminous stoles as if to shield herself from human vulgarity. Fascinating and mysterious, discreet and nonchalant, slender and strong, shy and bold.
I immediately saw her as the ideal figure through which notes may introduce themselves to people.
Her ever-present trench coat, her jackets and clothes are pages, books and diaries that tell a story, describe a legend.
Through the layers, the unexpected juxtapositions, the inserts hoarded in her overcoats we can read her memories, interpret the experiences of a real life.
She sings and through her voice Milan rises and take shape. With its thick fog, the smoke, the silence illuminated by the street lights and lights navigating the Naviglio.
“It’s difficult to describe Milan if you were born in the city. Hard to know where to begin, to find a clear, precise image, or a smell, to start with.
The fog, perhaps: the kind that doesn’t exist any more, in town I mean, on its central streets, as it did when I was a little girl and used to go to school enveloped in a kind of off-white cocoon, a glass of Pernod, I’d find years later in a song.
The city belong to me, a desert I know well “.
And she was the interpreter, embodiment, living metaphor of Milan.
Both of them indecipherable, enigmatic, secret, closes within their mysteries and open through sudden smiles which light up the soul.
I will continue to love her and seek her out in dark corners, in the old-style houses of Milan, in the courtyards and roads, in the theatres loved above all else.
Will she read these confused thoughts, these rushed notes, these feelings evoked by a real letter that touched my heart?

Quoten taken from:
Lettera a Milly, Cesare Pavese, Via attraverso le lettere, Einaudi
Lella Costa, La sindrome di Gertrude, Rizzoli

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Tags: ANTONIO MARRAS, ANTONIO MARRAS FALL WINTER 2012-2013, ANTONIO MARRAS FW 2012-13, BACKSTAGE, FALL WINTER WOMEN 2012-13

ANTONIO MARRAS SPRING SUMMER 2012 WOMEN – MILANO FASHION WEEK

CAR JE EST UN AUTRE
The ritual of Claire and Solange, Genet’s Maids, takes place each night in a small, stuffy room that is their stage. The two sisters, who love and hate their mistress, play Madame when she is away. They take turns dressing in her clothes, imitating and mimicking her. They pretend to be a part of her vie en rose, and at the end of each daily ritual, they attempt to kill her but fail. lllusion and reality, truth and fantasy, true and false overlap and blend in a cruel game taken to the extreme.
Car je est an autre, Rimbaud would say. Each person is what she is, but above all, what she can and would like to be: a peasant or a grand dame, a lady or a servant. Each invents her own transformations. Claire and Solange always switch roles: they transform themselves and briefly live a life denied them, where life is theater and theater is life. Dualism, transformation, change, multiplication, excess, and derailment of the final destination of an object are at basis of this work. Two paths are followed, inspired by Madame, Claire, and Solange.
On one hand, the elegance and figure of the femme fatale Madame – the seductive idol with dazzling beauty and allure, adored and destroyed – are exasperated and emphasized. Fine fabrics, brilliant colors ranging from emerald green to magenta, white, ecru and black, and exquisite details evoke and emphasize a world that is often denied but lives on in one’s imagination.
On the other hand, a rejected frock that wants to escape its destiny is bedazzled, dressed in colors and covered with contrasts of light, sophisticated asymmetric details, unusual combinations of fabrics, original appliqués, intarsia and ornaments to claim its right to exist and to live and dream. The humble garment is embellished, embroidered, and enhanced.
Unusual shapes and decorations transform it into something else: a dress, skirt, jacket, or trousers. The Maids sneak up to their mistress’s wardrobe. Rummaging through it with curiosity and awe, they blend, restyle, cut, sew, embroider, and apply details of elegant party dresses on their simple frocks.
The poor, modest, plain work uniform vibrantly comes to life and expresses new energy, revealing unexpected elegance, bursting with myriad colors and shapes that create another image and life that was denied until now. lt is a new, sumptuous,
magnificent, dazzling evening gown: Madame’s dress that we can all be, for an entire lifetime or for just a game.
…it’s my turn to be MADAME!

Jean Genet

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Tags: ANTONIO MARRAS, ANTONIO MARRAS SS 2012, ANTONIO MARRAS SS 2012 WOMEN, BACKSTAGE, SPRING SUMMER WOMEN 2012