From the press notes
The Marni collection for f/w 14/15 takes the defining elements of the Marni aesthetic and brings them on a higher scale while keeping restraint and severity as design principles and effortlessness as a form of expression.
The interest for folk and the twisted angle on sport and functionality, the stress on artisan craft and the appreciation for the conventions of couture, the offbeat touches and the painterly take on the treatment of surfaces all mix up and explode in bold new ways.
Volumes inflate, artisanality gets intricate, details are overblown in a constant play of firmness and softness, of padded densities and assertive weightlessness. The result is affirmative yet gentle, with an austere edge, and a certain fearlessness.
The bold purity of design comes to the fore. The silhouette is an architectural and textural take on an idea of femininity that is soft in spirit yet though in its sturdiness. The body is barely touched. Elasticated belts cinch waists with a quick, sporty gesture. There is a sensorial element that plays with contradictions, inviting to reconsider with the hands what has been appreciated with the eyes.
What looks heavy is in fact airy, and even embroideries on jacquard silk have a spongy feel. Sliced neoprene is used for dresses and skirts that swarm with ruches, trousers with curve cuts, tops that cocoon around the bust.
Outsized hoods, lined in dyed fur, cover the entire back of neat blousons; massive industrial zippers recur as functional signs. Big volumes and bold crops suggest protection: rollneck jumpers are thick and abstract; felt coats and roomy trousers as dense as blankets; padded nylon looks ready to face rigours with a certain airiness. Metallic touches highlight the amalgamation of the artisanal and the industrial: a laminated sheepskin coat; metallic toes on shoes.
In contrast, craft turns into an exaggeration of the organic: furs are hairy geometric compositions of pure textural joy; feathers multiply, swarm, accumulate wildly on felt coats. Prints have a gestural immediacy and a pictorial richness: organic geometries, drippings. The abstract figurations of German artist Magnus Plessen, whose singular style consists in adding and removing sections of paint to define shapes, are transported as prints onto simple pieces.
With its whites, greys, camels, blacks and military greens broken by flashes of red and aqua blue the palette is pragmatic, with a twist. Fabrics have a sensually tactile quality: washed felt, alpaca felt, padded nylon, spongy embroidered silks, radzmir.
Accessories express pure design precision: mannish lace ups and stack-heel sandals made in one single hue for both sole and shoe create a stark color-block effect; metallic derbies have a shimmering surface. Marni’s iconic Trunk in brushed leather sports lustrous metal sides, while necklaces and rings have boldly deconstructed architectural shapes.
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