Maria McManus Pre-Fall 2023

Maria McManus looked to the movies this season. Specifically , the 1964 Michelangelo Antonioni movie that was his first in color. “It is stunningly beautiful,” McManus recalls, but it also addresses themes that the designer deals with in her work every day. “It’s that time in the 1960s in Italy when it’s [being] industrialized, and everybody is wearing their beautiful suits, and trying to progress and earn money thinking it’s all wonderful. And Monica Vitti [who stars in the movie] is completely at a loss and despairing in this sort of disconnected, industrialized world—I feel like 60 years later we are doing the same thing.”