Salon 1884 Spring 2025 Ready-to-Wear

Spring was a swashbuckling affair at Salon 1884. Andrea Mary Marshall chose Giacomo Casanova, the 18th-century Venetian adventurer, as her starting point. Criminal as some of his behavior was, Casanova, who is best known for his seductions, continues to fascinate (yet another biography was published in 2022). It’s not difficult to see why Marshall would be drawn to this self-invented man who was able to adapt to seemingly any situation. “I really love creating a character,” said the artist and designer, who took the self-portraits that comprise the look book.

Casanova recounted his adventures and journeys in a memoir called The Story of My Life; listening to Marshall explain her process and intentions—“I wanted this collection to feel like a love letter that felt like a heartbreak,” she said—it seems like she could pen an essay called “The Story of a Collection.” Marshall, who was already a successful artist when she launched Salon 1884, thought she could balance both areas of creativity, but she found that fashion took up all her time. “I felt I needed to bring my art practice back in [to Salon], and one thing that was holding me up was the patternmaking; I couldn’t really express myself the way I wanted to. I wasn’t in control of the silhouette, the proportion, where the darts go…I was always diluting [my ideas],” she said. To rectify the situation, she hired an FIT professor to teach her patternmaking and draping. “I worked like a maniac,” Marshall continued. “I didn’t sleep for six months, and I didn’t really need to because I was so involved.”

Perhaps it was the romantic/decadent theme, but this collection had a distinctly dressed-up feeling. Among the fanciest pieces were a “cake” dress made of 150 yards of toffee-colored tulle and a Vionnet-y black gown with triangular inserts of black lace. Casanova wrote of a ménage à trois with two nuns, and the black and white typical of habits was used for a cheeky basque corseted dress with a full skirt, with a slit up one leg that revealed the hip-padding underneath, which Marshall styled with a white veil. The 18th century met the New Look in two coatdresses, one of snug black leather with hip flanges/pocket flaps, the other in caramel Loro Piana fabric with corset lacing at the princess seams to the waist and down the back, with panniered hips and a fuller skirt. Beautifully made, these pieces had a certain formality and historicism.

More relaxed takes on the theme included a gauzy blue dress that tied twice at the bust and was shown with the train tied at the neck rather than down. Dark denim came into play in the form of a set consisting of a fitted peplum jacket with wide lapels and dramatically flared capris. Paired with slimmer jeans in the same wash was a striped seersucker shirt that iterated on the aforementioned jacket shape, but which had long puffed sleeves with French cuffs.

A design that related most closely to the kind of garb Casanova would have donned was a pearly white tuxedo, beautifully tailored to fit close to the body, worn with a bodysuit with a lace jabot. At the presentation, Marshall wore a gray-washed pair of jeans with a triangular gusset on the side, with a beautiful ruffled blouse adapted from an 18th-century men’s shirt. For all its romance, this piece was a marvel of construction, draped, the designer explained, “with one pattern piece, with the exception of side panels,” and with darts instead of armhole seams. Past and present were well balanced in this top and outfit.

One has to tip one’s feathered tricorn cap at Marshall for being uncompromising in her vision. Plus the clothes were well made and distinctive. They were also largely a departure from what she’s shown before. In addition to the pieces in the look book, which represented the artist’s statement for the season, there were racks and racks of less costumey clothes for buyers to peruse. It’s still early days for the label; perhaps Marshall will decide to have a main and an atelier line, or maybe she’ll dream up a new business model entirely. On a more thematic level, the collection addressed the reveal/conceal dichotomy of fashion and the role of clothing in self-creation. As Casanova wrote: “There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.”