The Marni customer doesn't do frilly. So creative director Consuelo Castiglione turned her furbelows vertical, made them integral to mid-length sheath dresses and had them unravelling from the sides of long-line tunics, so they didn't feel frothy at all.
It's this sort of skewed thinking that has made Marni such a mainstay of the wearable avant garde: these clothes project an idea but they do so without overwhelming the identity of the person inside them.
Fittingly then, Castiglione presented a blank canvas for Spring/Summer 2015. Using greige linen as a basis, she constructed the flat cut, planate shapes that have become so popular, falling to circle skirts or a more tubular silhouette, belted just a little Hugh on the waist, almost obi-like.
There were floral motifs too, naive and abstract, then picked out in embellishment towards the end of the shows, with rosettes and mirror tiles clustering on hems and down the yoke of shifts. Graphic polka dots and abstracts on grass green and yellow silk and neoprene were wrapped into tops and skirts, and held in place with cords like African kangas.
It is testament to the talents at this house that it can be known on the one hand as a great purveyor of a certain type of sporty minimalism, in cut and functional design, but also as one of the more whimsically minded when it comes to bristling embellishment with every inch of surface adorned.
Ultimately it's this contradiction and juxtaposition that works. The Marni customer doesn't like being predictable or in line with any one particular mood. But that doesn't meant she isn't interested in elegance or wit when it comes to getting dressed. Castiglione, in this 20th anniversary year for the brand, has achieved both in one fell swoop.
Marni wearers, of the fashion, art and architecture worlds, always feel like a special sort of club. Intellectual but not, as with so many conceptual labels, unapproachable. The membership of that group is sure to jump at this collection.
