For fall, Antonio Marras turned his headquarters in Milan into a dreamy garden filled with roses — and peppered with a few nymph-like models hidden in the rosebushes, embroidering and looking otherworldly.
“The rose is a wonderful flower, but here it’s wild, not tended by a gardener, as it grows on its own, climbing over the garments,” Marras said backstage.
Patchworks have long been a Marras signature, and this season the theme was further developed as he stitched the garments as if they had been “cut by the roses’ prickles.” He applied the rose motif on vintage jackets that he revisited, sketched it on silk evening slipdresses, and on suits that had a 1940s silhouette, and had it running down men’s cardigans and tailored pinstriped or evening jackets.
The embroideries, done by hand in his Alghero, Italy, atelier, are always exquisite and here they sparkled and decorated mannish shirts as well as light chiffon skirts, for example. The roses were also seen as prints on lovely and fluid evening dresses that had an aura of old Hollywood glamour. For fall, Marras added leopard print inserts on a burgundy coat or a men’s peacoat. Inlays, velvets, damasks and brocades alternated across parkas and kimonos.
“I am born a minimalist, but I get messy in the process,” he quipped, as he admitted he worked with shapes that are initially simple, transformed by his decorative embellishments.
Marras highlighted the Caragol bag whose name, in the dialect of Alghero, means snail. It will be immediately available for sale at the flagships in Milan, Florence, Rome and New York, as well as online.
A creative project should never be rushed or considered with a stopwatch, but this season Marras opted for a more edited collection compared with the past, and it was a successful move. The lineup was focused, each garment a singular proposition that allowed it to shine on its own while still being part of a cohesive vision, making the show enjoyable and uplifting.