One wasn’t remotely sure exactly where a model would appear next in the latest excellent show on Tuesday afternoon by Francesco Risso for Marni, but when they did, one could only marvel.

Though everything pretty much was made from cotton – with a touch suede – the assemblage of shapes kept the whole mood fresh, unexpected and thoroughly new.
 
No designer in Milan plays as much with form and silhouette as Risso, who rifled through a whole series of costumes – Renaissance, Venetian and Bourbon – this season. From cool modern clubber to sans culottes, yet somehow remaining resolutely modern.

Francesco even reined in the prints, using essentially the same over-the-top red, black and white image of a rose in full bloom in almost a dozen looks, albeit again varying the flowers’ sizes and contrast depending on the look.
 
“I’m like the Beatles. I like a little repetition,” chuckled Risso.
 
But above all, this was a beautiful collection. The cool sinful red suits – faintly cartoonish – made with mannish blazer and 20’s skirts pleated below the knee. Or the dimpled courtesan gowns that the cast clearly loved wearing. Each gal taking a different random route around the set.
 
The designer leavened many looks with scraps of photos of Tuscan noblemen, clipped over the years into scrapbooks. And took the look somewhere very new with remarkable makeup – giant arched eyebrows – and jaunty waxed back hair. Hints of John Galliano but always on Risso’s terms.
 
Plus, his millenary was something else: Venetian doge’s hats, French Revolutionary cocardes or Nelson worthy bicornes. All sprouting flowers, escutcheons or fabric heather, and again all made of cotton.
 
Risso built a Covid-like set, with every member of the audience separated by 1.5 meters. Each chair nailed to the floor. All eyes on the centerpiece where three pianists led by Dev Hynes at first in a staccato entrance and then into a dramatic serial sonata.
 
All told, a really great dramatic production, so much so, Francesco was in tears when he took his bow. 
 
“I’m like Leon, a dangerous man preciously guarding a little child, and that child is the brand Marni, which I carefully protect with all my love,” concluded Risso, in reference to the movie ‘Leon’, where Jean Reno massacres scores of New York policemen in endless shootouts to protect a little child, he barely knows.