Interview with Antonio Marras - Illustrations by Leonardo Floresvillar

01/13/2014

Not clothes but stories to be interpreted according to personal creativity. Because the work of Antonio Marras is a challenge to convention and an antidote to the boredom of rules. Born in 1961, stubbornly attached to his native Alghero even when the creative director of Kenzo would have liked him in Paris, the most lyrical of Italian designers speaks out about style and possible scenarios for the future of fashion

The most radical event which has impacted on stylistic design in the last few years.

The Comme des Garçons philosophy has had a universal influence on everybody’s style.

Know yourself and dress accordingly. Is this a maxim that you wish to share?

Dress as you like and know yourself as a result.

The advent of fast fashion has exacerbated the pace of work of designers who at times are forced to complete twelve collections a year. Isn’t this asking too much?

Yes! Yes it is too much. When work becomes routine, when you are working at piece rates you risk losing control with all that entails. “It’s the market, baby. It’s the market!” – I would say; to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart.

Market rules impose ephemeral trends, yet your clothes endure over the seasons. Does it always pay to be authentic?

I don’t know. Everyone is as they are.Fashion is luxury, seduction, identity, innovation, modernity, art, a life ideal, an attempt to make something poetic from the routine, something eternal from the transitory, a transformation, an appearance, ephemeral, a mask, duplication but above all language, communication, denial of rules and codified principles, continually striving to find a perpetually new beauty.

What would you like to see in the future of fashion, and Italian fashion?

I would like to avoid the in and out in preference of style with a capital S.