The day before staging his first Marni show in Japan, the Italian house’s creative director Francesco Risso is holding court in a stark-white room of the geometric sports venue Yoyogi National Gymnasium, built by the architect Kenzo Tange for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic, where the show will take place. His signature bleached curls are freshly shorn, his demeanour centred and zen, and his typically colourful wardrobe swapped out for an all-white outfit made predominantly of paper. What is going on? All became clear the following day when guests stepped foot inside the showspace, which entirely wrapped in the crisp white material. There, they would witness with a performance by an orchestra wearing the same white paper pyjamas as Francesco, and sit on paper-wrapped seats with hand-written letters on each. Most importantly, they would see predominantly locally streetcast models wearing a collection that signified carte blanche for Marni.
The show took place in Tokyo because Francesco wanted to connect with friends and his community of like-minded creatives who have been sectioned off from the world here during the last couple of years — but also because he found that the discipline and clean rigour of Japanese art, architecture and culture spoke to his new mood. The country was also home to the very first global outpost of Marni in the late 90s, and still accounts for 23 per cent of its sales — not to mention the brand’s highly successful collaboration with Uniqlo, which perhaps also served as a lesson in how to clarify an aesthetic message to a wider audience. The show also marked the house’s second travelling spectacle, following last season’s outing in New York, and marked a continuation of what Francesco introduced with that show: a sharpened focus on graphic, direct clothes that feel like a leap from the typically ethereal and romantic collections that he had become known for since taking over Marni in 2016. No more hand-painted fabrics, or cobweb-like crochets falling off the body.
By contrast, the concept of the collection shown in Tokyo was simple and direct. Comprising four key colours — red, yellow, white and black – the collection featured a recurring juxtaposition of straight lines and circles; perpendicular lines and square checks alongside polka dots and bulbous silhouettes. Clean, direct, easy to understand and remember. It also felt more grown-up, a classic wardrobe of serious clothes, from beautiful crombie coats to neat shift dresses; buttoned-up shirts down to ladylike pumps; LBDs, scarves, suits, you name it! — all of which was given a head-to-toe Marni makeover. Often proportions were exaggerated, blown up into bubbled, chubby shapes courtesy of padding (and a collaboration with DingYun Zhang) shown alongside svelte dresses and tailoring.
The end result felt like a playfully childlike idea of grown-up clothes, almost like cartoons — again, following in the tradition of graphic art and design that Japan is renowned for. Against the white paper set, and in front of an audience of almost 2,000 people (many seats were available to students and the public), the clothes stood out for their starkness and singularity, like anime on a page or the Superflat art movement, pioneered by Takashi Murakami.
During our preview, Francesco explained that the idea was to cut through the noise with directness, and to lean into the flatness of digital communication. “It’s about finding a rhythm between something that feels quite rigorous and creativity,” he extemporised. “A rigour that feels delicate, reflective and makes you think; a creativity that feels comforting and not just made for the algorithm.” Having recently read Johan Hari’s Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, which explores about how our brains are overloaded with information in modern society, Francesco was thinking about rigour, discipline and focus. During the pandemic, he learned to play the cello, a hobby that reminded him how much work and discipline it takes to get better at a chosen métier. And like all of us, he is increasingly fed up by the gimmicks and distractions we are bombarded with in the fashion landscape, often as a decoy from looking at the clothes. “I’ve been actually struggling with this imprisoning algorithm, which is harsh and brutal,” he explained. “I think what we’ve been working on, gradually, is about really trying have a dialogue with what we make — which, to me, is the thing that I love the most.
Hence why the collection marked an emphasis on real-life clothes, albeit with typically Marni off-piste details: the high-waisted trousers were actually knitted, the classic crombie coats were given glitched Op Art checks, accessories and clothes were carefully mismatched to appear trippy and optical. Francesco described it as a “rewiring of our classics”, avoiding gimmicks in favour of something linear, disciplined and energetic. It could also be described as cleaner, even if Francesco can hardly be described as a minimalist.
Though his new vision of Marni may seem more severe, and definitely less warm and fuzzy, one thing has remained the same: the show was full of Francesco’s rabble tribe of like-minded creatives and collaborators. Marni’s musical director Dev Hynes envisioned a soundtrack performed by the Tokyo Chamber Orchestra, while Paloma Elsesser and Angel Prost walked the show, Mimi Xiu DJ-ed at the after-party, and the devoted community of Marni superfans travelled from around the world to be there for the occasion. With them at his side, Francesco need not get too existential about his profession— the significant impact of his work is plain to see on everyone around him, each one encouraged to be more creative by their wardrobes of lovingly-made Marni clothes.
Credits
Images courtesy of Marni