Lea T in Antonio Marras

My personal impression on seeing your collections (I am Sardinian, too), is that at the origin of each of them there is a memory of the past, a piece of clothing found in the back of the closet, or a ancient object that – like the madeleines in Proust’s Recherche – generates an associative chain which is expressed in the clothes that you create. Am I wrong? How do you create your Antonio Marras collections?
No, you’re not wrong, in fact, you’ve grasped the concept. For me, designing a collection is like writing, telling a story. The very beginning is always a story. There may be many narrative cues and they trigger visual analogies, original images, sudden meanings. A character, a person met by chance, a story, even a trivial event, an image, an object, a figure, a verse, a song, some music, a letter, a film, all these things can set visions in motion and I always try to grasp the messages and translate them into signs. I love giving voice to apparently silent things, so that they become “rags that speak”.
It’s difficult to explain how an idea is born; it’s difficult to say how a creative process is born, difficult to rebuild the actual process. It often follows irrational paths, yet always new ones.
There’s never anything preordained and everything can be turned upside down. Inspiration is a mystery. Images arrive without me looking for them and they are stored in my mind in many drawers. From these half-open drawers, at the right moment, the collection comes out, recalled by urgency. Every collection is like a chapter in a bigger story, a self-contained chapter in itself and one that works as a separate story. It dialogues with those that preceded it but it is absolutely original, unique, a weave made up of the past with its own references.

We understand that Antonio Marras is a designer who starts from emotion and intuition, in short…
Inspiration and intuition are not enough; it takes a great amount of work. Teamwork that expresses itself in a complex language. The word, the gesture, the sound, the music, and also the scenography must visualize every thought. If even one of these elements were missing or clashed with the others, everything would be askew Everything is joined with everything else. A comma, a full stop, a pause, a detail, a thread may take on meaning, and so give a message. The fashion show is the topical moment, the crowning of a beautiful labour, which requires great energy. It represents the climax of all the work.

What is the value of the present if we must always refer to a memory of the past to create it?
A-I don’t know! I live in houses full of furniture, objects and clothes. I collect, amass, combine everything I find. Old furniture, clothes, objects in the attic destined to be forgotten in attics, in spare rooms, in markets, pressed by the urgency to breathe, and to come back to life and tell their stories attract me. Recycling everything and not throwing anything away is something natural, innate for me, because nothing is destroyed but everything is recreated. I’m attracted by what has a hint of shadow, of the past, of stolen, denied lives. In particular, used objects that are worn, broken, torn, thrown away, useless and dirty. I can’t help thinking about who has worn these clothes, used these objects, read these books, has stopped to look at these paintings, or who has spent a lifetime at these tables or filled a cabinet with their precious objects. Destroying them, or worse, forgetting about them seems like an outrage, a sacrilege to me: almost as if I erased the presence of so many existences prior to mine. Reinterpreting them is a way to give them another chance and, at the same time, to honour the memory of those who have lived before me, through their personal effects.

In your collections you mix elements that are traditionally thought to be poles apart, for example the Prince of Wales sewn together with lace or sports sweatshirts that become dresses because embroidered tulle is added to them; if it’s true that today this has become common practice (Michele’s Gucci comes to mind, for example), it gives me the impression that you have been an absolute precursor, where did this drive to marry contrasting elements come from? I’m attracted by the poetic language that rejects rules, violates codes, frees all the senses and gives voice to the inexpressible. I work with “rags”, the poet with words; he composes texts, I weave textiles. Textiles and texts both refer to a common origin: weaving, spinning yarns. Both are the result of intertwining. I feel very close to the linguistic gap from the grammatical norm, the deviance from everyday language, the free use of words that are combined in an unusual way, creating unexpected plays on words and oxymorons. “The stars are buttons of mother of pearl and the evening is cloaked in velvet”, that is, after all, what I do with “rags”.
So how does poetic language apply to fashion? I work on accumulations and stratifications. The assemblage opposes subtracting and reducing. It is a struggle against platitudes, banality, and the commonplace. Excess and eccentricity win in my collections. We need the system and we need excess, but I prefer excess. The system is a closed order that demands rigour. Excess break the order, all the rigour and produces something new. I have the soul of the collector. Not throwing anything away and recycling everything, is something instinctive, innate, and natural for me.