Reinterpreting Memory
The story of Limited Series garments
Love is taught by a memorial mould.
(Emily Dickinson)
Patrizia Marras tells us what inspires the unique pieces of the Serie Limitata, Antonio Marras’ project that gives a new life to garments rich with untold stories.
At the beginning of each work there is a reflection of the past, reflection on memory and time; memory understood as individual, collective and historical memory of my land; time as a past time, deposited on objects and clothes, a sign of identity.
An item of clothing found in a wardrobe, or an antique object, generates - like the Madeleine in Proust's Recherche - an associative chain of ideas and suggestions. Everything that tastes of shadow, of the past, of stolen, denied lives can be found in a forgotten habit. You just need to know how to read, to be able to listen, to give another life.
Thinking about who has worn those clothes, used those objects, read those books, who has focused on those paintings, who has spent a lifetime on those tables or set up a showcase with their precious objects is important. Destroying them, or worse, forgetting them, would be an outrage, a sacrilege: almost as if I were canceling the presence of so many existences prior to mine.
Reinterpreting them is a way to offer them another chance and, at the same time, honor the memory of those who lived before me, through their personal effects.
An item of clothing found in a wardrobe, or an antique object, generates - like the Madeleine in Proust's Recherche - an associative chain of ideas and suggestions. Everything that tastes of shadow, of the past, of stolen, denied lives can be found in a forgotten habit. You just need to know how to read, to be able to listen, to give another life.
Thinking about who has worn those clothes, used those objects, read those books, who has focused on those paintings, who has spent a lifetime on those tables or set up a showcase with their precious objects is important. Destroying them, or worse, forgetting them, would be an outrage, a sacrilege: almost as if I were canceling the presence of so many existences prior to mine.
Reinterpreting them is a way to offer them another chance and, at the same time, honor the memory of those who lived before me, through their personal effects.
Francesco Guccini, Italian singer and incredible storyteller, says it well in his song Vite:
I like to rummage through memories
of other people, winters or springs
to lose or find connections
in the apparent chaos of a second-hand dealer:
paintings that someone has been posing for,
a telescope that has looked at a point,
a globe, two bijou, a rose,
junk once beautiful and now worn,
think who could have used them,
seek an answer to the charade
why they were abandoned
like a dog left on the road.
Objects that someone has perhaps loved
now they lie there, without a master,
without function, without history or status,
in the intertwining of chance or reason.
I like to rummage through memories
of other people, winters or springs
to lose or find connections
in the apparent chaos of a second-hand dealer:
paintings that someone has been posing for,
a telescope that has looked at a point,
a globe, two bijou, a rose,
junk once beautiful and now worn,
think who could have used them,
seek an answer to the charade
why they were abandoned
like a dog left on the road.
Objects that someone has perhaps loved
now they lie there, without a master,
without function, without history or status,
in the intertwining of chance or reason.
The jackets come from a rigorous, very elegant, impeccable men's wardrobe, preserved from the wear and tear of time, intertwined with feminine fabrics.
The jackets have been taken apart and remodeled, the recycled materials embellished with embroidery, patchworks and laces that come from the traditional female universe.
Volumes, shapes, patterns and fabrics are mixed. Fabrics that come directly from the Saville Row tailors, in grays and browns, cut from jacquard upholstery in devorè and colored inlays. The men's jackets in Pied de Poule and Prince de Galles are softened by lace and jewels. Fragments of embroidery extrapolated from laborious and infinite feminine works and fragments of Chantilly lace are combined with technical fabrics and black pinstripes. And flower prints in very light voile.
Fabrics apparently distant from each othermate thanks to an absurd alchemy, agree, tell the journey. Breaking down and reassembling, they merge. Elements that come from afar with elements of the lands of passage and the land of arrival and tell stories of transformation and change.
The jackets have been taken apart and remodeled, the recycled materials embellished with embroidery, patchworks and laces that come from the traditional female universe.
Volumes, shapes, patterns and fabrics are mixed. Fabrics that come directly from the Saville Row tailors, in grays and browns, cut from jacquard upholstery in devorè and colored inlays. The men's jackets in Pied de Poule and Prince de Galles are softened by lace and jewels. Fragments of embroidery extrapolated from laborious and infinite feminine works and fragments of Chantilly lace are combined with technical fabrics and black pinstripes. And flower prints in very light voile.
Fabrics apparently distant from each othermate thanks to an absurd alchemy, agree, tell the journey. Breaking down and reassembling, they merge. Elements that come from afar with elements of the lands of passage and the land of arrival and tell stories of transformation and change.
