The early days of building your label are a chaotic time for any designer, but no one understands that better recently than Marco Ribeiro. As well as a major takeover of Harry Styles’ beauty brand Pleasing this fall, the young Paris-based designer with a love of bold colours, geometric shapes and unique silhouettes has also now changed to the usual fashion schedule of showcasing two collections a year, with him making his IRL presentation debut at Paris Fashion Week SS23.
“It was beautiful and it was intense, I’ve never done something this big and so when I came out of the presentation I was so emotional that I started to cry,” Marco tells us about the latter. “The past few years I’ve been launching [my projects] digitally and so I felt that, for this collection, I needed to take the next step and be closer to the people so they can see and feel the Marco universe. Digitally you can have an idea, but it doesn’t let the whole craft show.”
Marco’s style often has a couture approach, inspired by the likes of Pierre Cardin and Cristóbal Balenciaga, with a strong focus on shape and volume. Bright, dynamic colours, music and dance all play a significant role too, reminiscent of the festival culture of his Brazilian heritage. “I love structures, architecture, colour and texture. I love making things by hand,” he shares. But for SS23, with the world very much out of the throws of lockdowns, Marco headed in a slightly more ready-to-wear direction: “I wanted to show people what I am doing is also wearable. Of course, I could go very conceptual again or more commercial but I prefer doing this change gradually.”
What that entailed was candy-striped sheer bodysuits, trainers sprouting multi-coloured ribbons, off-centre pleated skirts in strips of contrasting tones, dynamic bowling shirts, shreds of fabric hanging from belt loops or skirt hems, and string bikini tops and bold-hued fitted tees with nipples covered by barely-there orbs in his signature ruched style. “It’s a colourful presentation to bring people joy,” he says. “It’s about happiness and being confident in yourself. You feel good wearing [the pieces] and you want to dance and express yourself. It’s this idea of sharing love, sharing joy and sharing a nice moment.”
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Marco was born in Brazil before moving to Argentina at 14 after his parents’ divorce. Having grown up watching them run an atelier for local suppliers, it was in his teenage years that Marco began wanting to explore and express himself in new ways and first discovered art, modelling and drama. But while art gave him a new creative outlet, it didn’t completely feel like his calling. “I felt like I was a consequence of what I did but it was not really me right away.”
At the same time there were a few Brazilian designers who were taking off in the fashion industry, including Francisco Costa, who became the principal designer for Calvin Klein’s womenswear in 2003. It was Francisco, along with Alexander McQueen, who first inspired Marco to enter the world of fashion, by studying design for three years in Argentina. These years played a major part in the signature codes of Marco’s work today. “Being bold, being colourful and being geometric is a little reference to my roots and where I come from. A little bit of Latin America,” he says. It was at an exhibition by an artist, one whose name he can’t remember, while going back to Brazil for the holidays that he noticed that the shapes and colours of his designs were similar to the flag of his home country. “I then started to see the Brazilian flag not as a flag anymore but as geometric shapes that have their own life.”
The same vibrant and expressive Latin America culture can be seen too in Marco’s use of colour, which he sees as an “energy with its own language; music, which transports him to “another dimension” where he’s very creative; and dance, seeing humans and garments as reliant on the other to bring each life.
But after studying in Argentina, something unconscious within told him the next natural step was to move to Paris – a move which felt correct given his love of traditional craft, couture and handmade designs that are more sustainable and less wasteful; what he considers the future of fashion. “I love New York, I love Milan, but Paris is Paris,” he says. “As a Latino American Black man communicating my projects, Paris is such a fashion capital and everything you do here has more context. Your voice is taken more seriously. That is my philosophy. I of course have maps and goals and everything but I do things step-by-step.”
That was Marco’s approach to the Pleasing collection too, which interestingly played a role in the themes of his SS23 collection, and the brand’s focus on love and diversity. “Pleasing was an amazing process. It was beyond. From the beginning I was in charge of everything you see there. It’s not just a beauty brand, it’s not. It’s much more than that. It’s a community. It’s fluid. It’s non-binary. It’s joyful, playful, it feels very organic. Everything they do, they do because they feel it.”
Many of his ideas for the capsule collection of bright nail varnishes, glosses and hoodies, as well as the brand’s first venture into makeup with versatile powder and cream pigments, were inspired by his AW22 collection, Memories, which looked at how we have the power to contain and collect memories that then shape us as beings. “I was trying to revisit my memories as a child and what was inspiring me in colours and moments where I remember my mum or my grandma putting makeup on.” Proposing the colours first, he worked with Molly Hawkins and Harry Lambert, co-creative directors of Pleasing, on the formulas.
Working on a project that was less about shape and structure was daunting, Marco says, as was the huge audience that comes with collaborating with a Harry Styles-formed brand. “I was going to this new audience. This big audience. Harry Styles’ fans are a big community,” but the feedback he got from the Pleasing fans was positive. “[Harry] has very kind fans and so it was beautiful. And it was cool seeing them using the products. What I create, I need people to give life to it and the pieces to bring life to the person… I also got a lot of people asking if I could talk to Harry for them or get him to film a video for their girlfriend’s birthday saying hello,” he shares, laughing.
Marco would like to explore the world of beauty again in the future, and also venture into fragrance. After Harry Styles wore some of his pieces on tour and Emma Corrin wore his lilac suit with a ruched circle in the centre of the chest, he’s drawn to creating more custom pieces. “Harry Lambert [also stylist to both Harry Styles and Emma] mentioned Emma would love to wear some of my pieces and I wanted to create something for the red carpet,” the designer says. “I like to create things for the people that work with me. They looked beautiful there. It was my first red carpet moment and I hope it’s the first of a lot.” As for the distant future? Marco would like to go further into the world of couture and maybe even open his own Parisian atelier: “Paris loves tradition and making things by hand which is the approach I love. I want to make a couture collection and bring those values in my own way.”
Credits
Photography Otman Qrita