A Tropicália Study: Women's History Month 2024
March is, of course, Women’s History Month. But rather than use this month to do what typically feels like cheerleading, instead I want to use this month to hold myself accountable. I want to use every March, starting now, as a gut check — to ensure that the worlds I’m building at MW are consistently celebrating women, particularly women of color, through the many forms that we exist in.
Because here, we are building Women’s History 365 days a year, through the thoughtful development of each MARRISA WILSON New York Collection.
This project is a creative exercise — meaningfully archiving the ways that we, women, are showing up through my work to make sure that in all the ideation and exploration, we remember that celebrating women is our foundation, the soul, of the world of MW.
Each collection I develop is an entry point into the the soul of MW. Each has its own individual journey, ideation, thought exercises, in-depth research and development, hand-drawn prints, fashion illustrations, surface treatments, reference of time, location, and space.
But the way that I want to look at my work — by seeing the connective threads, revisiting past ideas and concepts, and creating a cohesive world — felt at odds with the linear and seasonal nature of the fashion calendar. And I put so much of my soul into each collection, that I couldn’t help but feel that all of this work can exist in more meaningful ways than just the collection of imagery and the final garments.
With this project, I want to invite you follow along as I revisit my past collections — that each travels to different times, spaces, and places — and remix my own work, viewing all of these individual concepts as existing within the singular world of MW.
So I’m taking the principles of the Tropicália movement, a Brazilian art movement from the 1960s, and creating collages inspired by the album art of this era. Each collage takes imagery and garments that I developed for different collections, and remixes them together to highlight the consistent, cohesive message that connects them all — the celebration of women in all of our many forms.
‘Wild and Audacious’ collides the worlds of the Spring/Summer 2022 Collection ‘Audacious Faith’, with our current Spring/Summer 2024 Collection ‘Wild Coast’.
The MARRISA WILSON New York Spring/Summer 2022 Collection drew parallels from the Space Age— amid the backdrop of the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement — to today, through technological advances post-pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and the continued fight for social justice and gender equality. ‘Wild Coast,’ my Spring/Summer 2024 Collection, envisioned a harmonic blend of disparate Caribbean cultures and presented a globalized view of the classic Americana aesthetic.
When remixed together, these artworks highlight that the concept of multiculturalism is our strength. The confluence of influences and identities is the soul of the MARRISA WILSON world.
Below are the garments that have been born from these ideas. Shop and incorporate these pieces into your world, and make them your own.
‘Vegetation’ connects the elements of natural beauty that are expressed throughout MW collections.
Whether that’s translating rugged terrain, palm trees, and florals into beautiful textile manipulations through our current ‘Wild Coast’ Spring/Summer 2024 Collection, or exploring my first-generation Guyanese-American heritage with my Spring/Summer 2023 ‘Of Many Waters’ Collection — the theme of incorporating nature through the seasons is consistent.
For my SS23 runway show, we ornamented the model’s natural hair by using clear “bubbles" to recreate the look of a raindrop. This was done to pay homage to Kaieteur Falls in Guyana, the largest single drop waterfall in the world, and was also an ode to my personal memories using bubbles to decorate my hair a little girl, a celebration of Black women’s natural beauty.
In my Fall/Winter 2023’s Experiential Runway Show, ‘Rhythmic’, the hair looks were used as a medium to sculpt textured hair into avant-garde shapes and silhouettes — using our natural hair as a form of artistic expression.
All elements of natural beauty, Black beauty.
This week, I stumbled down a rabbit hole of listening to Tropicália music, which is how I arrived at this concept above. I somehow entered this world through discovering the Brazilian artist Djavan, then from there listening to albums from the likes of Milton Nascimento, Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Jorge Ben Jor.
I was fascinated by the musicality and rhythms that felt so unique and specific to this genre, yet I could pick out so many elements that were familiar to my ear for this time period — jazz, soul, psychedelia, disco, and Calyspo.
Some of the album art reminded me of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and I recognized a direct correlation with Caetano Veloso’s Sugar Cane Fields Forever. When I arrived at Jorge Ben Jor’s ‘Mas Que Nada’, there I recognized the origin of the Black Eyed Peas re-recorded version from 2006. I listened to a lot of Black Eyed Peas around the times of Elephunk and Monkey Business, but revisiting that track made me better understand why what the Black Eyed Peas were doing at that time was pretty cool, looking past the popular and catchy beats. The mash up of elements in the genre also reminded me of Beck ‘Que Onda Guero’, and I could understand now why people found his work to be so experiments in the ’90- early '00s.
After I extensively explored the sounds of Tropicália, I was curious to better understand this mix of familiar and unfamiliar sounds. So after listening to music, I dove deeper by researching exactly what were the influences and origins of this genre.
Tropicália is an experimental and avant-garde art movement in the late 1960s that fused Western and European pop culture with traditional and indigenous Brazilian music and elements. So think of the contemporaries that were creating simultaneously in the ‘60s — The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix, Donna Summers, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Toots and the Maytals, Pharoah Sanders. It was interesting to be able to so clearly hear all of these different elements that sounded so specifically 1960’s (through my first-generation Guyanese-American Black woman experience and understanding of music in the 1960’s), but so clearly and intentionally sprinkled with Brazilian flavor.
The artistic ideology behind Tropicália are cited as early as 1928 to Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropofago, or ‘Cannibalist Manifesto.’ Andadrade’s main argument was that Brazil’s history of “cannibalizing”, (or absorbing and creating something new) from other cultures was its greatest strength. The ‘Cannibalist Manifesto’ (cannibalism used here as a metaphor) challenges the dualities between civilization/barbarism, modern/primitive, and original/derivative, which had informed the construction of Brazilian culture since the days of the colony.
And I think these specific intersections struck me because I’ve been seeking to understand my work through my Caribbean experience in its entirety, not just the singular version that most people think of when they think of the Caribbean. And without doing any research, I felt like I was able to understand all of these ideas that this genre expressed through the work, the music.
The Manifesto Antropofago ends with this sentiment that I will amend for the spirit of Women’s History Month.
My (daughter), put this crown on your head. Before some adventurer puts it on his!
Happy Women’s History Month 💛
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Marrisa Wilson is the Creative Director and Founder of MARRISA WILSON New York. The first generation Guyanese-American designer uses her collections as a medium to explore culture and history through the lens of her Caribbean heritage, with artisan hand-painted prints, high-quality custom fabrics, expert surface treatments and unique textile manipulations.
In this entry, Marrisa celebrates Women’s History Month 2024 with a creative exercise used as a gut check — to ensure that the worlds she’s building at MW are consistently celebrating women, particularly women of color, through the many forms that they exist in.