A Gianfranco Ferre advert from 1991
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Lead
sponsor
Bulgari
The Glamour of Italian Fashion 1945 - 2014:
About the Exhibition
5 April - 27 July 2014 / http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/exhibition-the-glamour-of-italian-fashion-1945-2014/about-the-exhibition/
This major exhibition is a glamorous,
comprehensive look at Italian Fashion from the end of the Second World War to
the present day. The story is explored through the key individuals and
organisations that have contributed to its reputation for quality and style. It
includes both womens and menswear to highlight the exceptional quality of
techniques, materials and expertise for which Italy has become renowned.
The exhibition examines Italy 's dramatic transition from post-war ruins
to the luxury paraded in the landmark ‘Sala Bianca’ catwalk shows held in Florence in the 1950s,
which propelled Italian fashion onto the world stage. During the 1950s and '60s
the many Hollywood films that were shot on location in Italy had an enormous impact on fashion as stars
like Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor became style ambassadors for Italian
fashion, fuelling a keen international appetite for luxurious clothing made in Italy . On
display are around 100 ensembles and accessories by leading Italian fashion
houses including Simonetta, Pucci, Sorelle Fontana, Valentino, Gucci, Missoni,
Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Prada and Versace, through to the
next generation of fashion talent.
Return to Luxury
In 1945, Italy ’s post-war government aimed
to reinvigorate a country weakened in spirit and in physical and financial
ruin. With American aid provided through the Marshall Plan, the swift retooling
of Italian factories alongside efforts by the country’s many entrepreneurs
helped fashion become a cornerstone of Italy ’s post-war recovery.
In 1951, Giovanni Battista Giorgini
launched Italy ’s
first internationally recognised fashion shows. The following year, he secured
the use of the Sala Bianca or ‘White Hall’, an opulent, chandelier-lit gallery
in Florence ’s Pitti Palace .
As clothing designers and textile
manufacturers gradually resumed trading, their stylish designs responded to a
hunger for glamour after years of wartime deprivation. Italian high fashion and
fine tailoring became popular exports.
The Italian stylist Valentino poses among
his models near the Trevi fountain, in Rome ,
in 1967. Photograph: Mondadori Portfolio/the Art Archive
From bomb sites to Bulgari:
V&A falls under the spell of Italian glamour
A new
exhibition charts how postwar Italy
transformed the world's perceptions of it, using its greatest export: style
Jess
Cartner-Morley
The
Guardian, Tuesday 1 April 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/apr/01/v-and-a-italian-glamour-exhibition-style
The word
glamour originally meant magic or enchantment: to "cast a glamour"
was to cast a spell to make something appear different from reality. And it is
glamour in this sense – what the author Virginia Postrel calls nonverbal
rhetoric – that is at the heart of the V&A's new exhibition, The Glamour of
Italian Fashion 1945-2014.
Not that glamour
in its modern, mainstream sense is in short supply: there is, naturally, a
leopard-print gown by Roberto Cavalli, and a devastating cutaway cocktail dress
by Donatella Versace.
There is a
stunning 1950s silk cocktail dress in millefeuille layers of scalloped violet
silk by the largely forgotten Roberto Capucci, and a floor-length gown of
beaded silver by Mila Schön that was worn by Princess Lee Radziwill to Truman
Capote's Black and White Ball in 1966. (Both of these dresses are displayed
with their matching evening coats: violet velvet and silver bead-edged white
silk, respectively. That's glamour, right there.)
There is a
slinky black silk dress worn by Ava Gardner, a pristine white gown made for
Audrey Hepburn, and a sumptuous silver evening coat made for Maria Callas
But the
central message of this show is a serious one, about how fashion was used to
transform the image and fortune of Italy in the second half of the
20th century.
The first
image is of a bombed street in Florence
in 1946, giving a stark picture of the physical and economic reality of a
country with a 50% literacy rate and a badly tarnished international
reputation.
The next
room introduces as protagonist the figure of Giovanni Battista Giorgini, with
letters and photographs chronicling how this exporter of Italian homeware
persuaded his contacts in US department stores to travel by boat and train to
Florence for fashion shows that brought together designs from all over Italy.
Against all odds, the shows were an instant hit: after the first, in February 1951, a Womenswear Daily
headline ran: "Italian styles gain approval of US buyers."
In the next
room, the story has moved on a decade, to the golden era of Hollywood-on-the-Tiber:
Rome has become
an alfresco film set, and between takes the world's most beautiful people buy
clothes and jewellery on the Via Condotti and enjoy romantic trysts on the
Amalfi coast.
On to the
walls of this room are projected images of Taylor
and Burton
descending arm in arm from a plane and Audrey Hepburn in sunglasses,
ribbon-tied purchases swinging from her arm. (Publicity-savvy Ferragamo would
book a photographer whenever he heard an actress was in the mood for shoe
shopping. Indeed, this was the era which gave birth to the term paparazzo.) In
stark contrast to the bombed street, Italy has become a playground, a
byword for a chic and modern lifestyle.
This bold
storytelling, casting the invention of "Italian style" into a simple
narrative, is the exhibition's big strength.
In the second half of the exhibition, where
the modern Italian ready-to-wear industry emerges, the clothes are familiar and
compelling but the story loses some momentum.
This is in part because the cast list
changes so dramatically: of all the designers who showed in the 1951 show, only
the house of Pucci remains in business today. But apart from a few Benetton
adverts, there is an absence of cultural context around the more modern clothes
– a lack that is keenly felt after the gripping drama of the Hollywood
years.
The exhibition's sponsor, Bulgari – whose
diamonds are worn by Elizabeth Taylor in a 1967 photograph that has been one of
the most reproduced images of the show so far – must be thrilled.
The show is beautifully and intelligently
staged. A display of Italian textiles, which uses a digital map to show areas
of wool, silk and leather production, has a subtle soundtrack of machines and
looms.
The last and biggest room, devoted to the
cult of the designer, has a vaulted, church-like, curved ceiling – but in silk.
And classic pieces, including a Prada dip-dyed dress from 2004, an Armani man's
suit from 1994, and a 1995 Fendi Baguette handbag are spotlit from below so
that they throw soft, ecclesiastical shadows across the white silk above.
It is a smart trick, to depict these modern
pieces as classic Italian artefacts. But while this makes for a soaring finale,
the heart of this show is in the Roman Holiday glory years.
Fashion show in Sala Bianca, 1955. Archivio
Giorgini. Photo by G.M. Fadigati © Giorgini Archive,
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A jewel-bedecked Elizabeth Taylor at the
masked ball in Hotel Ca' Rezzonico, in
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2 comments:
Nice blog Photos..! The blog you have shared is really very nice. Clothes Made in Italy wearing design dresses is really very beautiful. I like this type of style dresses. Thank you for sharing this wonderful blog with us.
Fabulous, fashion, you might like to look at http://sheepandchick.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/florence-fashion-week-spring-1952.html
which I blogged last month about the first Florence show.
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