Wandering around Milan with Marni's crew

There is a sense of strange familiarity that pervades Marni's latest lookbook to present vol.1 of the SS22 collection, recently arrived in boutiques and online. You almost have the feeling, scrolling through the shots, of having come across a photo album of friends, a group of young international creatives and scapestrati who populate the houses, streets and gardens of Milan. Familar are the environments and rooms that are the background to the lookbook, less familiar are the clothes, which all bear the sign of that sublime awkwardness of which Francesco Risso has become the spokesman – it is an idiosyncratic beauty, which rejects any notion of classicism or tradition without getting lost in eccentricity for its own sake.

Between accumulations of prints, textures and layering multiplied; loafers and GAT sneakers; tartan, chess and pied-de-poule, Marni's parade of faces winds through Milan and through the pages of the lookbook. Speaking to Vogue, Risso said that he had made the protagonists themselves decide on the location and look of the shots – all to create the collective portrait of a community but also to promote that sense of open work, circularity of experiences and knowledge that is the basis of the work of the creative director and that was elevated to epic levels during the SS22 show of last Milan Fashion Week,  perhaps the best seen in the city during the week for sophistication, for concept and for the ability to create an authentic sense of happening.

Returning to the sense of familiarity, which is the real leitmotiv of this collection, a relatively restful breather after the last challenging show, it is interesting how the brand, which has always enjoyed the intellectual charm of the niche, reflects on its identity, meditating almost on its staples before taking the new step and moving forward. All the signatures of a brand that, season after season, becomes increasingly experimental on all levels: from the final product that parades on the catwalk to the structuring of the creative process and the production of its own lookbooks and fashion shows.