Marni’s trunk full of treasures

After just two women’s collections for Marni, young Italian designer Francesco Risso has already made the house’s DNA very much his own.

The hallucinatory, surreal and occasionally outlandish clothes he showed had all the exuberant color and emotional pull one associates with Marni. Yet with an added youthfulness and sense of optimism.

He also reconnected with Marni’s original impulse. The brand initially was formed to create a ready-to-wear collection for the Castiglioni family, noted manufacturers of fur coats. Matter of fact, his most fabulous ideas were in fur – boxing champions' dressing gowns made in combinations of candy colored mink and foxes, interspersed with panels of nylon and jacquards. One in white was dotted with tiny fabric strawberries. Worn by the models that let the long fur belts trail behind them, like a beauty that had just won some chic bout.

But it was his bold sense of fantasy that was at the heart of this collection – chess piece bustiers, humungous plaids, elephantine Indian maharaja pants and bold leather coats in massive abstract roses.

Designer Risso does not lack courage. His first show for Marni was very much a work in progress. This was far more assured. Indeed, it was in many ways the most stimulating show in Milan, and the collection that offered the most novel ideas.

Presented inside Marni’s headquarters in Viale Umbria, in a smartly revamped set, featuring hairy cow-skin benches, the event earned a great burst of applause. Risso’s original inspiration was a simple scribble, and a dream which developed into a woman perched on a skateboard with a 20s sculptural look.

“I wanted a bizarre cocktail of events and – clashes. So, I called this collection Treasure Hunt. Where a woman is scavenging into a trunk full of treasures, dissecting and magnifying and adapting them ” said the designer.

Marni’s trunk full of treasures

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