It almost feels like a game: how much can you subtract from an object before it becomes unrecognisable? How far must you simplify to arrive at the essence or spirit of a shoe or bag?
At Marsèll, working by subtraction is a sort of mantra that improves with every iteration and sharpens with each collection. The brand has made it a mission to seek the spirit of things and affirms this with the Fall Winter 2024 collection, aptly titled Fondamenta.
The new chapter starts at the Spiga 42 space in Milan, which has opened a dialogue between fashion, design, architecture and sculpture. It is a blend of contamination and osmosis that is crystallised in the campaign imagery by Louis De Belle. An alumnus of both the Politecnico di Milano and the Bauhaus-Universität, De Belle charts a cartography of everyday objects transformed into art, illuminating his subjects through unexpected details and crops without ever sacrificing formal rigour.
The key visual, rendered in milky shades of grey, evokes a vaguely Brancusian sculpture at first glance. Closer inspection, however, reveals the image of a bag: the new Fasma clutch— in the colour mist, to be precise. Simultaneously monumental and delicate, Fasma perfectly embodies the Marsèll philosophy of a relentless merging of art, technology, and craftsmanship into a new hybrid product.
As an evolution both formal and linguistic of the now-iconic Fantasma line, Fasma tells the story of a quest for point zero, a shape sketched in pursuit of the object’s spirit. Sculptural and minimalist, it is, by nature, decidedly difficult to make. The clutch is indeed a masterpiece of design: the leather moulded to the curves, the asymmetrical volumes, and a concealed metal zip to preserve the purity of the lines.
This marks the first time Marsèll has launched an exclusively still-life campaign, a choice driven by a clear intention: to reaffirm the principles that underpin the brand’s entire history and to profess renewed loyalty to its origins, creating a solid foundation upon which to keep reinventing its idea of the future over and over.
It is no surprise that during creation of the image-symbol, De Belle found inspiration in the work of 20th-century giant and master of concrete abstractionism, Max Bill. As an architect, designer, painter and sculptor, Bill gradually developed a highly sophisticated relationship between line and function, driven by a focus on proportion and his own unmistakable elegance.
Perhaps Marsèll’s fundamental nature lies precisely in this tension between two apparently irreconcilable extremes: the celebration of materiality and functionality on the one hand and the pursuit of essence and spirit on the other.
Text by Chiara Bardelli Nonino
marsell.com // @marsell.official
Follow: @chiaranonino
Photos by @louisdebelle
CHIARA BARDELLI NONINO is an independent curator and editor. With an MA in Aesthetics, her research and writings focus on contemporary visual art and its intersection with identity and post-internet culture. She is a curator for the Photo Vogue Festival, where fashion is explored from a socio-political point of view, and has been the Senior Visual Editor of Vogue Italia, L’Uomo Vogue and Vogue.it photography section for over a decade. She collaborates with Italian and international magazines.
LOUIS DE BELLE is a photographer living between Milan and Berlin. After graduating from the Bauhaus University in Weimar, he started working with curators, designers and architects, maintaining a practice between commissioned works and research projects. His photographs have been exhibited in museums such as the KINDL Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin and Triennale di Milano, and published in monographs by Bruno (Venice), Humboldt Books (Milano) and Caryatide (Paris).
MARSÈLL. For over 20 years, Marsèll has combined innovation and craftsmanship to create products of excellence. Made in Italy, Marsèll’s leather footwear and accessories materialise from the constant pursuit of new equilibria between design and craftsmanship. Each Marsèll product features a minimal, essential aesthetic and the use of traditional techniques makes every product unique, as a reflection of the person wearing it. Marsèll goes beyond the idea of a conventional brand, establishing itself as a contemporary project dedicated to the study and exploration of form in all its semantic interpretations.
