Painting in Broad Strokes
Review of Marni Fall 2025 Fashion Show
By Mark Wittmer
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Playful material mix-ups. Quirky chic. Collaborative chaos.
Marni’s Fall 2025 show was a celebration of the community that creative director Francesco Risso has developed for the brand – but it also called into question whether collaboration and eclecticism are enough to sustain a brand identity and make a meaningful statement.
The collection has its origins in a month-long residency Risso undertook in London last year, where he met and worked alongside Nigerian painters Slawn and Solider. Risso took up painting again after a hiatus, and some of the paintings produced during this moment of close creative collaboration found their way into the collection as prints and illustrative embroideries.
The show itself extended that spirit of a community of individuals by constructing an impromptu jazz club, and featuring runway walks from some of the brand’s celebrity friends, including Tracee Ellis Ross. The visual spirit of jazz extended into the collection as well with the long, dropped-waist silk dresses and angular art-deco sunglasses.
Marni put its own riff on the return of fur that has been dominating the runways this season, finishing coats and cardigans with audacious faux-fur collars and necklines. Motifs from previous collections returned, like a cameo of the three-dimensional appliqué flowers from Spring 2024 or Fall 2022’s exploration of visible mending. Material mashups characterized many pieces: classic chinos were finished with velvet waist bands, while a boldly colorblocked crocodile leather clashed with mohair knits.
While many of these moments were fun – and the best felt like a call to imagine a more globally artful fashion beyond typical European confines – still more felt deliberately elusive. The sense of disjointedness wasn’t necessarily helped by the three-way painter collaboration, which never quite came together into a cohesive statement or aesthetic. Risso’s Marni continues to be best describes as “quirky” and “artistic” – but are these somewhat vague adjectives meaningful enough when it comes to building a values-based luxury identity in 2025?
THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
At a time when many of the major luxury brands are producing collections that feel similar and safe, Marni’s quirky, colorful creativity stands out as an exciting change of pace. At the same time, though, and as this collection exemplifies, Risso can flirt with the pitfall of being weird for the sake of being weird, which is its own kind of safety: when each season is a new stunt where nobody can tell what you’re trying to say, you don’t need to actually say anything.
