Marni
Founded in Milan in 1994 by the Swiss designer Consuelo Castiglioni, with her husband and business partner Gianni Castiglioni, Marni has become known internationally for experimental collections. Without a formal education in fashion design, she made sharp silhouettes, bold prints, and texture into some of the most inventive work in fashion.
A behind-the-scenes film with Marni, backstage at the catwalk in Milan, for Nordstrom.
Storytelling structured to endure
During his Marni presentation, Francesco Risso compared his vision of fashion to an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. The hair artist Julien d’Ys dusted the models in gold and silver. The collection was a collage of macro, micro, and fractal elements. Garments were assembled from remnants: leather, calico, scraps of existing clothing, a visually striking do-it-yourself aesthetic.
Purses and old-fashioned wrestlers’ shoes were made from production remnants, a technique that recalls Martin Margiela, though in Risso’s hands it feels uniquely childlike. The finale pieces were scraps of cotton and cut velvet, hand-woven in a Venice factory on looms first designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Risso called these pieces “our new furs,” and likened them to holy vestments in Renaissance paintings.
The collection also considered what time does to clothing and to cloth: fabrics that looked aged before their time, or weathered, as if left too long in the sun or washed too often. The idea extended to the room. Editors sat on sagging mattresses. Models walked on rumpled calico. It sharpened the otherworldly vision Risso holds for the house.
