Russian-Belarusian-French painter Marc Chagall was born on 7th July 1887 in Vitebsk, Russia. The eldest of nine children in a close-knit Jewish family, Chagall moved to St. Petersburg to study art and then settled in Paris where he joined the local community of artists in Montparnasse. He moved back to Russia in 1914 and married fiancée Bella before moving back with his new family in Paris in the early ’20s.
When the deportation of Jews started during Word War II, Chagall moved to the United States and went back to Europe after the death of his wife. In the post-war years, the artist rediscovered the use of colour, and moved between Venice and Paris painting and designing stained glass windows such as the windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem.
The main inspiration for his art came from childhood memories, Belarusian folk-life and Biblical stories. Through his use of brilliant and vivid shades, tending towards saturated primary and secondary colours, Chagall created a dream world, in which no gravity seemed to exist, couples flew in fantastic skies, and dreams took the place of reality, nostalgia gave way to fantasy and love prevailed.
Now, what has Chagall got to do with fashion? Well, I’ll rephrase the question: what has Sardinian fashion designer Antonio Marras got to do with Chagall? The answer is simple, some of his colours, inspirations and definitely the poetry of Chagall’s paintings.
Born in Alghero in the early ’60s, Marras debuted in the world of fashion in 1987 working for a Rome-based prêt-à-porter clothing company. Nine years after, he presented his first collection under his own name and, since then, he has been renowned for his ethereal creations and for his contaminations that eclectically combine art with Sardinian traditions.
The use of the finest, almost immaterial lace is often juxtaposed with sophisticatedly cut but linear jackets; his dresses are painstakingly embroidered, a sign of his obsession with fabrics, details and Sardinian artisanship.
Marras has taken the colours of the female figure’s dress in Chagall’s “La Promenade” (1917) and infused it onto his fluid satin trousers, tops and voluptuous kimono-like jackets from his Spring/Summer 08 collection, while the white dresses from the same collection evoke the wedding dresses worn by Chagall’s brides.
At the end of the show for his Autumn/Winter 08-09 collection, Marras even had a couple dressed like a bride and groom suspended in the air, flying above the models, a hint at Chagall’s couples in the five paintings of the “Song of Songs” cycle and at his dreamy couple in “The Bride and Groom of the Eiffel Tower” (1939) flying above Paris.
Colours seem to suddenly shatter the linearity of Marras’ A/W 08-09 grey dresses, creating geometries similar to glass-stained windows, or to the colours of the painting “I and the Village” (1911), while the black dress in “Birthday” (1915) has been transformed into a modern and chic version of Sardinian women’s mourning attire, with a heavy and elaborate woollen top that contrasts with an ethereal organza skirt.
Feminine and masculine forms clash and combine in Marras’ trouser suits paired with immaculate white shirts, a crossover between Sardinian men’s costumes and the attire of Orthodox Jews.
In some of his paintings, Chagall seemed to be overwhelmed with joy, intoxicated by a special marvellous exuberance, a richness and visionary poetic imagination. For Marras fashion is joy, it is the highest expression of human imagination and emotions, a mix of art, traditions, eras and worlds.
“In Art, as in life, everything is possible, so long as it is based on Love,” Chagall once stated. The same applies to fashion, a sometimes unfair, superficial and cruel world in which only love-based creations like Marras’ can stand the test of time.
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