Tue, February 25 2020 » Fashion Blog
MARNI FALL WINTER 2020 MEN’S COLLECTION – MILAN FASHION WEEK
A repertoire of clothing archetypes: objects treated as persistence of memory, assembled together as leftovers creating unsettling hybrids.
Stop, cut, rewind, paste. Bisected coats. Antithetical marshes. Juxtaposed jackets. Fragmented outerwear. Neat shirts and shirts. Dilated trousers. Right and left don’t match. In front and behind less than ever, not to mention above and below.
Everything is too wide, or too narrow, or still too long. Time has left its mark, evident and palpable, on everything: abrasions, cuts, discolourations, shortcomings. Uniforms with hypnotic, or single-color graphics, go under everything. Distorted sneakers and boots complete.
Flashback and fastforward, of styles and movements, united in a choral flow of gestures from the choreography of Michele Rizzo.
Tue, January 21 2020 » Fashion Blog
MARNI SPRING SUMMER 2020 MEN’S COLLECTION – MILAN FASHION WEEK
MARNI SPRING/SUMMER 2020 | ACT I
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce myself first. I am here, but I am also there. Today I am woman, tomorrow I don’t know. I live by the words “Everything was forever until it was no more”*. I am MC Magma, the vocal spirit of transformation, and I am very happy to have you all here, standing up on this field of dots, oblivious of the cloud of waste that hoovers over our heads – it won’t escape transformation, too, so there is no need to fear – to celebrate the marriage between our beloved friends Truman Capote and Ernesto Che Guevara.
Truman embarked in such a long trip to charm Ernesto, leaving his world of swans and lost beauties behind to embrace the jungle of radicalism. We have to admire and celebrate his endurance and suaveness, just as we have to rejoice for Ernesto’s urge to give it all up in the name of mutation.
The rite we are celebrating is a union between two souls, and the respective liveries of course, but it is also a way for us, each one of us, to reconsider our presence in this world, what we stand for, what we strive for. Let’s act up, dear friends. Let’s rebel. Let’s be vocal about are beliefs, or lets’s just wear them. Lets’s ignite a tropical guerrilla, suited or camouflaged, like fauves in the favela, jazzing in the garage and madly hatted. Let’s do it, pleasurably. Rebellion is beautiful and beauty is rebellious. Let the rite commence, and never end.
A study in clashes, and the uneven harmony that ensues by mixing opposite worlds, jumbling it all together. The extreme graphic properness and formality of suits. The radical rebelliousness of field jackets and militaria, with a tropical slant. The immediacy of landscapes – lyrical views of mother nature, complete with the waste that thrashes it nowadays – painted onto shirts, turned into a jacquard.
Little objects of beauty, to front a tropical expedition: stripy polos, little shirts, compact knits. Camouflage is everywhere, never proper and hardly literal: slashed onto jackets and fatigues, turned into a chiné motif, getting a little fauve. Blazers and trousers as sum of fabrics.
Ritual hats, made of garbage, by the artist Shalva Nikvashvili. A bestiary of bizarre animals, on charms and jewelry. Silver brooches by the artist Kazuma Nagai. Slippers assembled from remnants and cut offs, plimsolls dipped in oil, bags that are harvest big.
Thu, June 20 2019 » Fashion Blog
MARNI FALL WINTER 2019 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – MILAN FASHION WEEK
NEUROEROTIK – fantaerotic escape game.
It is time to play, no holds barred, with a free body and free thoughts. This game is all in the head. Will you be able to escape? You have twenty-four hours of time. Being here, reading these instructions makes you all participants to the game, no matter what. The strip game consists of cheerful and solicitous counter-censorship exercises: the more you avoid and deploy it, the easier it will be to run away from the borderless escape room.
Watch out for the women who walk around the space: they are wardens – hand-welded, wrapped in chains and fornicating scarves, in crazy kilts, diamonds like chastity belts and men’s jackets affected by acute femininity.
Engage with them a neuronal hand-to-hand match, activate the erogenous zones and map the new pleasurescapes: the scattered folds will open like curtains, indicating the way. Move. Do not let yourself be deceived: what appears from a distance, is something else up close. Follow what the hormones suggest to you, sabotage every behavior and misdirect respectability. The most frivolous of them all wins. Time to start.
The meeting between two imponderables: the eroticism of body language and the mysterious plan of neuroconnections. An exploration of sensuality, looking, doing away with respectability and censorship. Nothing is as it appears, everything keeps moving. Folds and pleats twist and open on dresses and skirts, or run along scarves that are cutouts of dresses, wrapped around the neck.
Men’s jackets and coats get broken. Engagement rings hold liquid tunics together, while pixelated prints create hypnotic patterns. Fluid languors alternate with martial steadfastness: work uniforms, draping. Endless chains like composite necklaces. Stovepipe boots. Lace-up booties with high plateaus. Capacious bags or small wallets.
Tue, February 26 2019 » Fashion Blog
MARNI FALL WINTER 2019 MEN’S COLLECTION – MILAN FASHION WEEK
OMG, here they are.
We have set them on fire so far.
A tangle of neurons, antiphons, emotions.
They protest for everything and wear notions.
One becomes the other, the other becomes one, nobody is ever alone under the sun.
The extravagant non-diagnosable are unbreakable heroes, the indefinable aliens mingle with the indefensible weirdos.
Ephebic fauns are not left standing like huns.
Dangerous goonies are also a little gluttonous.
In the index, they are certainly not typical.
They are kids, with something criminal.
They are terrible, but incredible.
Never following the tide, they want to explore the other side.
In sync, they enchant and think.
They hug you, then they curse you.
Here is the tribe of the ruthless early life.
It never stops, so it is prompt.
They are fierce, but they do not pierce.
They only pierce the farce of arrogance and intolerance.
A metamorphic exploration of the new youth through three-dimensionality.
Like elephants in the room, items are magnified. Like frames of Allegro non troppo, the animated movie (1976) by Bruno Bozzetto from which the prints are drawn, items evolve, sensually, mixing patterns, liveries and functions with Dionysian energy.
The start is classic: bouclé coats, moleskin jackets and trousers, oxford shirts, in bold proportions. An animal and pansexual psychedelia follows on shirts, parkas and anoraks drawing a rebellious bestiary. Mohair sweaters, a bevy of stripes, and then pajamas, checks and foulard shirts. The movement closes again with classics, that now get a sensual touch: leather jackets, misaligned pinstripes, synthetic reptile patterns.
Exploded, stapled, assembled loafers. Banana Sock boots, and then padlocks, flasks and chains.
Fri, January 25 2019 » Fashion Blog
MARNI FALL WINTER 2018 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – MILAN FASHION WEEK
Elementary. The ancestral and the futuristic, joined like siamese twins. Regaining a state of primitive bliss, using technologic means.
Basic, raw, immediate. Constructing pieces around the body, elementarily. Folding, slicing, nipping. Wrapping instead of buttoning. The coat, the jacket and the dress, reduced to the primary line, moving away from the hips, marking the waist, forging the archetype.
Urges that drive mankind. Changing skin as a vital need and a lively force. Using clothes to transform appearance and environment. The act of dressing and adorning as a way to affirm the self, preserve oneself and attract the others, gathering a tribe.
Horizontal, vertical, square angles. Elementary rhythm of elementary movements. Stripes that run, blankets assembled into capes, folds that wrap.
I, we and an army of me: a camouflage of faces. The individual and the collective. Being one and safety in numbers. A plurality of women, sending out vitalistic messages, collecting and assembling signs of the evolution of the species: feathers fluttering from the ears, coins inflating and decorating, ropes dangling.
Elementary urges. Undressing to seduce, covering up to shield and protect, unraveling to express extraordinary desire. The sensuality of a silky movement. Eyes of a cat hypnotizing and attracting, allover.
Fusing halves together. Dresses and coats, embracing their brotherly alter ego. The sensuality of a siamese union, and its feline undertones. Differences that empower, by pointing in the same direction.
Harmony of clashes: done/undone; languid/assertive; natural/synthetic. PVC and radzmire, polyester and leather, a riot of brights and naturals. Opposition as the energy of life itself, ruled by universal magnetism. Elementary.
Tue, February 27 2018 » Fashion Blog
MARNI FALL WINTER 2018 MEN’S COLLECTION – MILAN FASHION WEEK
Field notes. Collecting impressions and sensations. Connecting sights, flavors and sounds. Intuitively.
Traveling across worlds: with or without moving. Spontaneously, automatically. Wrapped in a blanket, Masai sandals at the feet. Protected under overblown duffle coats. Enjoying the childlike pleasures of home-spun jumpers.
An innocent gaze, keeping the inner child alive. A plurality of stimulations, shaken and not stirred. In a lab, with a boilersuit. On the field, in a smoked and printed duvet. In the rain, in gigantic anoraks. Spoonfuls of zabaglione to strengthen the spirit with a sugar rush.
Detours along the lines of notebooks, diaries and states of mind. Slicing thoughts, cutting them up and putting them back together. The boldness of immediate gestures. Decorating oneself with little charms. Pushing a knitted cap on the head. Pulling neckties askew.
Journals intersecting journals, notes over notes of accumulated experiences, worn. Each object, a dot. Each eye, a path. Chinese brocades, Indian ikats, African stripes, English tweeds.
Naïveté and wonder. Surprise of proportions and disproportions. Micro, macro and everything in between. S, M, L, XL, thrown together randomly. Big feet and bigger sneakers. Frank Navin drawing over the surfaces parallel worlds inhabited by animals and objects.
Knowing no boundaries or distinctions. Accumulating endlessly, compulsively. Following no principles as the only principle. Heralding intuition as a state of bliss.
Fri, February 2 2018 » Fashion Blog
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.
Sat, November 11 2017 » Fashion Blog
MARNI SPRING SUMMER 2018 MEN’S COLLECTION – MILAN FASHION WEEK
Lost and found. Enjoying life as an act of self-discovery. A well to do boy falls in permanent vacation. Giving up rules, allowing randomness to shape his own bits and pieces. His encounters with strangers turn into garments, liberally. He dresses himself like he was collecting. His pride is the nobility of coincidence. Items left behind, items to be retrieved.
The boy in on a journey, hitchhiking through the city. In a state of dreamy haze, he keeps toying with disparate archetypes: the trench, the safari jacket, the clerk pants, the suit, the windbreaker. XS, M, L: his game of sizing is absent-minded. Ingenuity urges him to paint his shirts, and he enlists the artist Magdalena Suarez to do so.
Automatisms and surreality. A daydreamer, the boy falls asleep to wake up dressed anew. Did he change overnight? Did dreams turn into clothes? Everydayness and symbolism. Office wear, on holiday. A tie, for the beach and tiny sailboats on the suit. Tailored tropical wool, for the boat.
Jamaican nods and bits of the 20s. Misaligned pinstripes, askew neckties. Shrunken, unfinished knits. Maillots de bain that turn into t-shirts, running bibs for imaginary runs in canvas sneakers and striped shorts. The boy finds meaning in the unexpected, enlightenment in letting things happen. He knows that fate and chance know better.
In poignant abandon, he finds himself.
Tue, June 27 2017 » Fashion Blog
MARNI FALL WINTER 2017-18 MEN’S COLLECTION – MILAN FASHION WEEK
1+1. A kid, tapping away on a keyboard. Exploring a binary code to connect multiple realities. 1+1. Single digits keep their singularity, no matter what. 1+1+1. Regardless of how far the connection stretches. 1+1+1+1. 1+1 is oneplusone and that’s it.
Visions that spin, in a span, fast. Vortexes that draw bridges, bravely. Shamans in code-sharing with digital pioneers. And viceversa. Healing in computing. Raw. Primeval. Primal. Primordial. Fastforwarding in a supercut. Zip zap.
Too long, a bit big: a belt helps. A patch bag, too. Leisure suits traveling from bedroom to boardroom. Formality entering a void. Teddy bear. Polyester. There’s comfort in quilting. Stripes. Checks. Patch pockets, fur patches. Visual addition, retinal stimulation.
Scribbles, loops, messy fur, messy brushstrokes: a door to the wilderness. Padded vests, padded slacks, roomy jumpers: keeping the inner child satisfied. Eyeballs around the waist. A tail, at the neck. Decoration, as a pastime. Trainers, from the cave. Screen glasses. 1+1. Tapping away the keys of multiple wardrobes.
Thu, January 19 2017 » Fashion Blog
