February 27, 2017 |
It’s good morning from Milan and we begin today with a first – Francesco Risso’s debut womenswear outing for the house of Marni after his celebrated menswear offering a couple of months ago. And this was, by all accounts, a rather dazzling display of Francesco’s design talents. But first, let’s talk about the hair. Is it a stretch to say that our Editorial Director Phoebe was the inspiration? Because it was that kind of undone beehive that’s her signature look – so close, in fact, she could probably sue for nicking it. She didn’t mind, though. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all. Not that this has much to do with the clothes, because anyone who knows Phoebe also knows that she considers grey a stretch too colourful and here we were pounded with the stuff. We were pounded with just about everything really – call it: more is more. Starting with those incredible furry bits – massive jackets that swamped the girls bodies, skirts, hats, stoles or even poking out the top of a boot – in everything from striped tiger-print to pastel to zinging blues and reds. Moved on to something almost Italian principessa, suggested by that combination of lace and shiny jewellry, or those mermaid-like sequinned fabrics that closed the show, looking almost like like bubblewrap (like the chairs we were sitting on). Silhouette was that skewiff kind of thing that Marni has long done, here interpreted by Francesco – clothes that look like they’ve been knocked off their axis slightly – that rounded, slightly off, puffa jacket with cropped sleeves, dresses that sort of ballooned outwards from under the best, straight-cut trousers that flared, ever so slightly, towards the ankle.
