For 25 years, Antonio Marras’s greatest inspirational protagonist has been his home island of Sardinia. This morning we were transported there again, this time in a retelling of the story of 14th century Sardinian noblewoman Eleanor of Arborea. This tale’s relationship with the truth, you suspected, was about as loose as the designer’s magnificently swooshy double breasted coat-cum-mantle in look seven, but it was no less compelling for that.
The timber runway was set around a beautifully ramshackle “tower” made of upcycled wooden doors. A fellow wearing big boots and an Aran sweater kirtle hybrid came out and exhibited powerful vocal projection in his entertainingly histrionic quest to track down the missing heroine. Entirely understandably, his head was turned by La Repubblica’s fashion editor Serena Tibaldi—he spent some time beseeching in her direction—before the “real” Eleanor revealed herself in a magnificent yarn-fringed patched brocade gown.
There was much bombastic declaration as Marras’s eclectic cast of late medieval-touched looks emerged from his tower. Rose print silk damasks and sheer organzas were worn alongside abstract chainmail sleeves and collars. A gentleman in a pressed white wool hemmed notch collar overcoat wore a vaguely armor-like metal-embroidered coif, jerkin and underwear. A cracked shearling coat was coated in a glintingly metallic coating, and there was a golden suit, also with coif. The tree heraldic insignia of Arborea was redrawn to be growing from a broken heart on hoodies. We saw some darkly jewel colored intarsia adaptations of Chaucer-style knightly pilgrimage illustrations on a bomber and skirt, as well as in knitwear.
Beneath the escoffions, wimples, and other Game of Thrones-y whatnot, it gradually became apparent that Marras was using his runway quill to trace a more contemporary tale. A black leather biker and zippered skirt look plus some really interesting lurex striped folded sleeve suiting with panelling at the bag suggested he was conjuring the radical spirit of Eleanor and channeling it to fashion updated forms of feminine power dressing. As Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale so sagely observed around the same time Eleanor was doing her thing: “There’s never new fashion but it’s old.” Marras told his ancient story beautifully today.
