Clothes saved my life

On the same topic:

Patrizia Sardo, wife and partner of antoniomarras all attached, also sentimental patent, has been in bookstores since yesterday morning with a memoir on literature, on Sardinia and on the saving role of dressing that "keeps you standing even when the bed becomes a magnet and the world a threat. In that closet, there is a small silent party waiting only for me. And so I get dressed. Always.

Getting married to a registered trademark. We should start here. From that bizarre and wonderful idea of ​​getting married not to a man, but to a graphic symbol, an emanation, a living logo: “antoniomarras” - strictly lowercase, strictly all stuck together. Patrizia Sardo Marras always calls it that way, even in our meeting on Zoom, even in the memoir that has been in bookstores since yesterday, published by Bompiani, “Fashion is not a profession for lonely hearts”. “Actually, the draft was in a file registered as “Crime novel”, but then I realized that it wasn’t the right one: instead, I seriously wanted to title it “I wanted to be Bruce Chatwin’s wife and instead I married antoniomarras” , but the editor didn’t agree”. It is surprising, almost a little rude, that next to the marital name he does not claim the symbol ®, as if to protect it from attempts at imitation, as if to say: it is mine, it is unique, and it is also a narrative, aesthetic and logistical construction that must be protected with the tenacity with which fashion archives are guarded, because love is also a sentimental patent, an emotional seal, a gluing operation that has kept them united for almost half a century. That is, when, as a young man, on his identity card, under the heading "profession", he had written "merchant", because his father owned the most elegant boutique in the Alghero elite, the one for the ladies with real pearls and long summers.

She, little more than a young girl, came from an equally upper-middle-class Alghero, but with a hunger for the world that was not distributed in boutiques, but in readings and long, passionate writings that then led her to graduate in foreign languages ​​and literature: first love, the building blocks of the great Russian writers, "because I'm an incurable romantic, even if I pretend not to be", followed by English literature to which she owes a very British humour that does not conflict in the slightest with that feeling between devotion and annoyance for the native land of both, Sardinia. "And then, when I wanted to leave, I adore London and Paris, with antoniomarras we took very tiring trips just to return to Alghero: now that I like to stay at home a bit more, he has wanted to move to Milan. We have circadian and psychological rhythms at opposite ends, always have. Better this way". In the midst of all this cultivated intelligence, this articulated love and this selected disenchantment, there is obviously an aesthetic. Because Patrizia is not just words: she is an image that she has thought of, her personal declaration of style. It is no coincidence that in each of her biographies it is written that she never goes out without lipstick. She detests exaggerated minimalism, she adores the Forties and Fifties, “while he is obsessed with the Eighties, which I detest” . Today she is perfect. A blue suit - an exact blue, defined with the peremptoriness with which a boundary is defined - under which a blue and white striped sailor T-shirt peeks out, declaring a certain idea of ​​French classicism but with an island spirit. On her head a toque, matching, decorated with a jewel pin with a retro flavour. And her blond hair (not very blond, but that adult blond that smacks of control) is gathered in braids that feign naivety but are, in reality, architecture.

There is nothing casual about her, but everything seems inevitably natural. As if the form had always been part of the substance. “But it is, and really is,” she smiles. In the book she writes it bluntly, and also repeats it out loud: “Clothes saved my life.” Don’t you think you’re exaggerating? “It’s a fact. When I repeat it, I’m not just talking about clothes by antoniomarras, let’s be clear. I’m talking about clothes. What they can do to you, when you really need them. How they keep you on your feet even when you don’t feel like it, when the bed becomes a magnet and the world a threat. For me, the mere thought of getting up to put something on saves me. I’m not exaggerating. But then I remember that there, in that closet, there’s a small silent party waiting just for me. And so I get dressed. Always. Even if I stay at home. Even if I cook. My aunt looks at me and says: “But do you cook with your hat on?” And yes, if it happens even with a bowler hat: a game, yes, but it’s also a way of keeping myself together.” The word “functionality” makes her shudder. “Some say that a dress should be comfortable, practical… Are you kidding?” And she talks about a documentary on Céline Dion, who like her would buy shoes two sizes too big or too small, if they were nice. “Me too. I can wear a size 36 to a size 39. If I like it, I like it. Comfort is the last thing I look at. I don’t care. It doesn’t concern me. It’s not a category of my thinking.”

In all these years, she has never been just a wife. Nor a muse, nor a partner. She has done something much rarer and more dangerous: she has made herself, alongside a world-famous creative, without ever becoming his shadow, nor demanding the spotlight. We ask if, in their creative complicity, she has never felt a step behind, a little in the shade: a lateral figure in favor of the great antoniomarras narrative. She laughs. But not to avoid the question, but because she finds it weightless. “Should I tell you the truth? I have exploited it extensively, but with complete ease. I have always been good at many things, but not very good at anything in particular. I don’t know how to draw, I prefer to let Antonio Marras choose fabrics, I learned to cook well at forty... In short, I am not born with great talents. So the thought of feeling bad about it has never even crossed my mind. If I had been the type to suffer from it, I would have committed suicide twenty thousand times. But he is the first to not care about it. Not because he is selfish: no, he just doesn’t think about it. And me too. I don’t care. It has never been a problem. He always has to be the prince, self-centered as he is. He doesn’t even bother to sit me down, or pour me wine. Geppi Cucciari once told me that she would never go out with a man who doesn’t pour her wine at the table: then I would have died dehydrated a long time ago. Then, for example, in interviews... He is very good.

He's a champion when it comes to speaking and managing. I've always kept a step back. But not for strategy. I've never cared about being at the center. The PR guy we had in Paris, when my husband was creative director of Kenzo - an incredible character, like a Versailles courtier, witty as hell - told me I was perfect as a partner because I never stole the scene. But I didn't even think about it. It wasn't a pose, it was just like that." Then she becomes a bit more serious. "I've never been jealous. Not of him, nor of his success. It's not my merit, it's just a biological flaw of mine: jealousy is not part of me. I've always had my own personality, my own voice. For years, for example, I hated being photographed. I have entire periods without a photo. Now it's different: with Instagram I have fun, I post my things. But for a long time I didn't want to appear, period." She also talks about how they've changed, together. Of a time when they did everything together - and how they've now separated a bit, not in feelings but in trajectories. "Now I also do my own things, which I like. And when he's not there... sometimes I say: thank goodness, so I can enjoy it alone." She stops, smiles. "We loved each other very much, we still love each other. But there was never any cancellation. Not mine, nor his. Just a refined form of mutual dependence. Which today, perhaps, has become freedom." In what sense? "For example, when I turned sixty I treated myself to a trip to India to celebrate my birthday. I was very intimidated by the idea of ​​not going with him, but our sons Efisio and Leonardo, who I must admit are always on my side, decreed: "But do you want to ruin your vacation?". And down with a laugh."

By the way, how was antoniomarras’s review of the memoir? “Do you think he read it? He doesn’t read PDFs.” He states it as if the file format were an ominous diagnosis. “I asked him: “Read it, at least to see if there are any typos, if I wrote something too true”… But nothing. antoniomarras has a relationship with reading, so to speak, very meditative. If for us, me or you, an article says “reading time: five minutes,” for him it’s fifty. Imagine an entire book. He told me: “No, I trust you.” Do you understand? “I trust you.” It’s his way of saying “I don’t have time, but I love you anyway.” And in fact, it’s not like he needed to read it to know that it’s not a bad book. And in any case, I didn’t show it to anyone else. No reading committees. No sensitive friends. Just the publisher and that’s it. And who did the cover: a portrait of me of my photographer friend Daniela Zedda, who passed away too soon, edited by Paolo Bazzani, a friend and right-hand man for the sets, the invitations, the architecture of the boutiques.”

When we mention feminism, she takes on the air of someone preparing to bring order to a messy conversation. “The English,” she assures us, “had Virginia Woolf. And for that alone they have the advantage. Because, in my opinion, she is still the most modern of all. For the themes, of course, but above all for the way she wrote . “A Room of One’s Own” is still one of the great occasions for which we must talk about difference, about conquests not yet accomplished. Do you realize? It’s 2025, and we’re still there.” She pauses and digs in: “We still talk about “sisterhood,” as if that were enough. A word I don’t like, honestly. I’ve seen real women, with real lives, destroyed by mediocre men. Prison lives, not metaphorically. And not all of them have had the opportunity, or even the mental space, to rebel.” When we try to shift the conversation to his rebellion, he interrupts us: “No, no. I have already won. My dream, I also wrote it in the book, was “Saving the soldier antoniomarras”. And we did it. You know: fashion is cynical, it is cruel. When other people’s capital comes in, the founders find themselves without a say in the matter – as happened to Missoni and others. I was ready to pack my bags just to see the work survive”.

In 2022, Antonio Marras and the Calzedonia Group signed an agreement for the Veneto company to enter the capital of Antonio Marras's company: the deal included the purchase by the Veneto group of 80 percent of the company and investments adequate to relaunch the brand. "In Sandro Veronesi, we have found a partner who believes in our work. Mine, Antonio Marras's, my children's who work with us. In one year, a small miracle has occurred. Ten stores: New York, Costa Smeralda, Milan...". At a certain point, we see her fiddling with something off-screen. An office badge appears. One of those stamped-in ones, like those on an assembly line. So we ask her: is the agreement with Calzedonia really that idyllic? “Fashion, unfortunately or fortunately, is not a normal job. It is a job that, to work, requires something more: passion, time, heart. You have to be there, always, even if no one calls you. The badge - because yes, we have it now - is a structural necessity. But it cannot replace what brought us here”. He shows it. “I stamp too. But some things can’t be stamped. Beauty, vision, insistence, you can’t use them at set times. If we had done this job only with our heads or with logic, we wouldn’t exist: what we built was because we could count on a team of crazy people. People who believed in me even when I was the only guarantee on the account. People who worked without a salary, who waited trusting that I would pay everything back. Others, however, closed their doors. The banks, certain suppliers, those who do the math before saying goodbye. Now they come back, with a smile. I smile too, but I don’t forget. Forty years later, if we are still here, it’s because there was heart. Mine, that of antoniomarras, but above all that of the others. A tribe of stubborn people who believed in it. And who put their soul into it, not their badge”.