At Marni’s spring 2025 show on the first day of Milan Fashion Week, models meandered around a dimly lit room where attendees were seated here and there, scattered throughout the space. From the darkness poured look after look of pure, raw fantasy—for which creative director Francesco Risso is well-known. There were Napoleonic hats, arty prints on stiff fabrics with capes, a big skirt that resembled puffy cardboard trim, and a series of increasingly distorted and high-volume looks that mirrored the dramatic piano being played live.
The collection was also anchored with more wearable pieces that seemed to riff on uniform dressing, like short, boyish shirts and shrunken black slipdresses.
Some came in a monochromatic color palette. Models wore strappy sandals, and the coed collection included men with big hair and oversize aviators—a bit like fashionable caricatures. Bulky white latex shirts; bow necktie details; floral mismatched suiting, and big polka-dot prints were all highlights of the signature Risso-for-Marni look.
The collection firmly cemented a new era for statement hats, and drove home the power of accessories. Those artful, exaggerated sailor-esque caps were like disguises, proving that a little bit of weirdness in fashion is still alive and well. The details were not to be missed: contrasting lapels, flared mermaid hems on floral dresses, and crumbled florals with dramatic necklines and hems dominated.
If you’re wondering whether Risso had a particular theme in mind, the designer chose to stick to his usual abstract expressionist tendencies. Like the brand’s other recent shows, the show notes were written as poetry. “The white rabbit darts, hushing the forest’s quietude. The silence parts through a vacuum, strange moon rises, undulating and bleeding pink to the darkness’s demises,” a few stanzas read.
Paloma Elsesser, Eva Herzigová, and Leon Dame all walked in the show. To close the collection, the last few looks erupted through the venue in a sea of sparkles, with lots of fluff and trims done distinctively, and deconstructed. In Risso’s world, one doesn’t have to go too far down the rabbit hole to see that whimsy is everlasting.
