The show notes that awaited guests at Marni’s AW18 Menswear show spoke of a kind of global ethnography, a collage of anthropologists’ field notes, albeit written in stanzas, made from, “collecting impressions and sensations. Connecting sights, flavours and sounds”. This then, was a culmination of lived experiences, a travellers anthology born out of cloth that sewed together, quite literally, a wealth of stimulations and memories, sometimes overlapping, sometimes contradictory, but always stimulating.
Francesco Risso’s ability to transform the subconscious into something tangible and engaging was here demonstrated like never before. Screen prints featured throughout; a seemingly incongruous assortment of chairs, monkeys, musical instruments and keys were all lifted onto tailoring, providing flashes of colour throughout. Mismatched proportions were a prominent theme too, a duel between micro and macro that took place between shirting and knitwear, culminating in vast blankets that swaddled models in a patchwork of colour.
Elsewhere, Risso played with fabrics, mixing and matching time and place, experience and memory – Chinese brocades, Indian ikats, African stripes and English tweeds all came together for deeply layered looks that were as varied in origin and inspiration as they were in fabric. “Following no principles as the only principle” – this was a show that left room for individual interpretation, for our own memories and experience to make sense of what we were seeing, and what a welcome breath of fresh air it was.
