“The contrast between our irresistible love of innovation and technology,” he said. “And the other side, the movements of the soul that you cannot bring to a technological meaning.”
To watch, we were seated on bales of wadded-up, discarded fabric, piles of old carpets, sand-bags and sleeping bags. Old clocks were stacked in one corner. Vintage shoes were poked between vacuum-packed lumps of sheets. As an installation, it felt like the artfully arranged contents of a hoarder’s garage. Backstage, Risso said that it was “about collecting, obsessively putting things in order,” and also “to express human waste, in some way.”
Then it got more interesting. As all fans of Marni know, this is a label that specializes in dresses and vintage-flavored prints. Risso served them up. His ’30s/’40s dresses had the spontaneous air of sampling toiles, perhaps put together from scraps of leftover fabrics lying around the studio – a theme which culminated in two ruched, glittery sequined numbers.
Further questioning in the post-show melee turned up the fact that those materials weren’t pieces of re-used fabrics, but had been sourced through the normal channels, via Italian mills. But there was one moment in this show where Risso did push the aesthetic further along the sustainable route. Check out the flecked, felted coat at number 25 in the sequence. It was made from compressed, recycled textiles; a repurposing of carpet underlay or utilitarian insulation material. High fashion needs more of this ethical creativity.
No comments: