Francesco Risso's Marni Presents Beauty Without End
On the 17th of September, in the hypostyle hall of the Marni showroom located in Milan’s Viale Umbria, designer Francesco Risso chased ideals of beauty for his Spring Summer 2025 collection. He did so via the late Middle Ages, bringing us through to the centre of the last century. Models walked in a square formation around three concert grands. Performers Sharleen Chidiac, Adam Tendler, and Dev Hynes (who wrote the main piece) serenaded them.
The first section explored uniform styles and contrasting shades. There was a black top with a micro collar and sleeves with exaggerated turn-ups, both in white. A version of this with a white body and black details followed. Trousers were drainpipes and cropped with zips at the calf. The shoes could best be described as snub-nosed brogues. There was also a ballet slipper with the same toe shape.
Then we saw Risso move onto a broader palette that was subtle, yet confident. A suede camel topcoat was worn with a mint and pearl top and a mint cross-body bag. More mint followed in a broad but cropped suede jacket, and as a pair of long johns with a white jacket that knotted at the throat. Thick socks were pushed down, and the model wore crushed headwear that was a cross between a field service hat and a nurse’s cap. The effect conjured an image of a model who had improvised (or ‘made do’) with the materials at his disposal—materials he could have salvaged whilst clinging to Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19). The same jacket effect was explored in a pale Spanish pink with a hobble skirt, which made the model wiggle when she walked. This section closed with a boned and structured white cotton poplin dress, with a headpiece made from shreds of fabric cut to create a feather effect.
The second section was defined by a boxier oversized shape and the use of leather. A double-breasted cropped jacket was worn with a mini and topped with a bi-cornered hat. That same leather in a shade of buttermilk was used in a pair of pleat-front trousers, cropped at the ankle and worn with a cropped black pea coat. The black leather jacket and lemon poplin blouse and trouser combination could be attributed to Claude Montana.
The same jacket opened the third and final section. This is where print was applied either as an all-over repeat pattern or placed onto specific areas of the garments. Bolder primary colours were used heavily in this last section. The first all-over prints—mostly black on a white base—mimicked the effect of sgraffito, an art technique of scratching through a coating on the surface to reveal parts of another underlying layer. Again, that boxy double-breasted silhouette appeared, this time with a red shirt featuring a clerical-style collar layered over the top.
A long figure-hugging dress that was pure va-va-voom-Monica-Vitti! followed. This one had a larger sgraffito bloom, and the model wore a large beehive hairdo and pencilled eyebrows (a recurring, rather dashing, beauty look). A corseted version of the dress with a squared-off neckline that curved into a narrow strap appeared in a ditsier version of the floral.
The next looks mixed scarlet, black and white with prints of famous neoclassical paintings and text. The most identifiable was a portrait of Dante Alighieri (known mononymously as ‘Dante’—yes, The Inferno) bordered by strokes of white and black-like impasto. The cape effect was used on all looks, with the scarlet taken from the cap famously worn in the painting The Barque of Dante (1822) by Eugène Delacroix.
The show closed with oversized blazers or suits, employing the black and white contrast. There was also a red skirt suit. The suit with a large shaggy textured scarf, worn by Eva Herzigová, almost resembled a zoot suit if not for the slim (very slim!) trousers which looked almost like a hose. The spats shoes further fit the theme.
Of the last five looks, there was a 1950’s dress with a puffball skirt, the same shape in a longer version with an opera coat (worn inside out), and a wide-lapel suit, all with roses made up of that central palette: mint, scarlet, Spanish pink, and buttermilk. The closing two dresses, while a departure from what came before them, added an embellished and textural glamour with beading and the same 3-D leaf appliqué.
While Risso may have been “chasing beauty” across centuries and the subcontinent at no point did his collection feel fettered by being too costume-y or over-referenced. In the most fully developed phase of Medieval thinking, Thomas Aquinas said, for “beauty to exist, there must be not only due proportion, but also integrity." Risso has acutely balanced beauty and integrity, tracing two vastly different geologic eras that had differing beauty standards and applications: the big hats, colours, and dramatic shapes of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the form-fitted femininity of the 1950s. Here he has presenting us beauty that is not epochal but instead without end.
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