«The designer who paints too much», interview with Anna Deller-Yee

Anna Deller-Yee had just graduated when she was contacted by the Marni team. It was 2021, and the German-American artist had just completed her studies at the Royal College of Art in London. «It was actually over LinkedIn,» recalls Deller-Yee. «Within two months, I moved to Milan and started working for them.» What immediately attracted her to the brand, she says, was not its reputation but its humanity, a quality that sometimes struggles to find space among the big names in fashion. Of her collaboration with creative director Francesco Risso, Deller-Yee especially appreciates the designer's «uncompromised vision,» his love for creativity without limits, even in the fabulous world of luxury, where it is often stifled. «I think he’s special, especially in this industry where things can become very clean and impersonal.» With a specialization in material painting developed during her final year at university, the artist’s works for Marni could only revolve around color, as the maison has made texture and vibrant hues a distinctive trait. As she shows us the palettes she used to create the looks for SS and FW24, jackets, dresses, pants, and skirts entirely covered with thick layers of paint, she pulls out from her bag the clothes she wore while painting. «This is Nicki Minaj,» she says, pointing to one of the stains. The jeans are almost entirely covered in the colors of the brand's latest collections, and they seem almost like a ready-to-wear version of the custom-made dress worn by the rapper at the Met Gala. For Deller-Yee, even that is art, or rather, lived art, the tangible proof of all the professional successes achieved in the past three years.

Although it may seem that Deller-Yee’s art has little to do with the world of sports, this summer the artist’s painted flowers came into contact with the Paris Olympics on multiple occasions. First, through a special collaboration with Nike, a line of activewear with blurred graphics celebrating the dynamism of body movement with the vitality of Deller-Yee’s works, and then with a custom-made look by Marni for Anna Wintour, a long, hand-painted white dress that the Vogue US editor wore to watch the gymnastics competitions — a look that Wintour seemed to particularly appreciate, as she wanted to replicate the collaboration for the US Open. «I got my hands dirty over a weekend,» recalls the artist about the first look for Vogue’s editor-in-chief. «I took the dress home, then to my own studio,» she adds, saying that even though in recent months she has worked on huge projects, like Minaj’s Met look or the Nike capsule, she still finds it hard to believe they are real. «I always feel like that girl who sits in her room and just has a paintbrush and gets messy.»

Deller-Yee was able to challenge her «imposter syndrome» thanks to her collaboration with Nike, during which she learned to live art just as the brand's motto says, “Just Do It.”: do it, in sports as in design. As an emerging artist, she explains, she struggles daily with a certain sense of inadequacy that never lets her fully enjoy the milestones she’s reached. However, while working on the capsule, she felt a true sense of welcome and recognition with the Nike team, an approach she considers essential. «It’s really important that we see eye-to-eye, and that it’s not just someone telling me what to do,» Deller-Yee says. What she calls a creative dialogue, a clear and reciprocal communication between the brand and the contributor, she was fortunate to find both at Nike — «sometimes big brands can become very faceless, but with them it felt very personal» — and at Marni, where her originality was finally celebrated as she had dreamed. «In the beginning, I struggled because I didn’t really fit into one box or another, I wasn’t a designer and I wasn’t considered an artist either,» she says. «Marni gave me a place where I fit in, because I think Francesco appreciates that duality.»

From the green velvet couch in the nss office, Anna Deller-Yee's personal style emerges with pride. Underneath a black bomber jacket, she wears one of the tops she designed for Nike, her ears adorned with a multitude of silver earrings, and large flower, snake, and plant tattoos curl around her knees, peeking out from her black boots. But her personal style doesn’t influence her art, says the designer, quite the opposite. «I always like to refer to myself as a collector, I like to collect physical things but also memories,» she says. Of her first three years in Marni’s ateliers, she fondly remembers the boldness of the team. «The womenswear team is predominantly women, and being surrounded by so many, seeing how they dress, the kind of dialogues and conversations we have around dressing has really influenced me in terms of confidence.» Like a true collector, Anna Deller-Yee’s personal style doesn’t follow trends, but rather the experiences she lives firsthand. Like the paint on her clothes, each project is a brushstroke of color that adds originality to her journey. That’s her true identity, the one, quoting her Instagram bio, of a «designer who paints too much.»