“La moda è una cosa seria” – fashion is a serious business - wrote Gianna Manzini in 1935 on women’s magazine La donna. “We should pay attention to fashion as a language, as a witty manifestation of form, as one of the several ways in which the physiognomy of a people or an epoch shows itself,” Manzini explained.
These are very interesting words that should inspired us to look at fashion with the same interest and respect we approach art, culture and literature.
Shame that, in Italy, at the moment people are not taking fashion seriously.
Let’s make a very simple comparison: when it comes to Haute Couture, France undoubtedly does it better, for quality, style, elegance and organisation. Italy provided great and memorable high fashion designs between the 50s and 60s, but at the moment there are no Italian fashion houses offering extremely innovative or amazing designs.
This is essentially the main reason why the Rome-based high fashion week called AltaRoma AltaModa (closing today) is usually ignored by the international fashion media and buyers.
Throughout the years different dark fashion (and political…) forces tried to turn this event into the epitome of the Roman summer, but dragging in one or two high profile bloggers and making sure the name of Vogue Italia was somehow linked to the event through the "Who Is On Next?" competition doesn't seem to have worked too well. Then, yesterday, there was the final faux pas on Raffaella Curiel’s runway.
On Monday, Guillermo Mariotto, Creative Director at Gattinoni, attempted some very deserved criticism at the Italian government’s recent laws against interceptions (that will have a very negative impact on the press and seriously limit freedom of expression), sending out on the runway a gagged bride in a newspaper-printed wedding gown (NB "Stampa" means "Press").
The idea wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t new from a fashion point of view (remember Elsa Schiaparelli’s newspaper print designs) and it sounded rather insincere coming from somebody who is more famous for appearing in the jury panel of the Italian version of "Strictly Come Dancing" (broadcast by the now Berlusconised State TV channel RaiUno) than for what he designs. But that was nothing compared to what closed Raffaella Curiel’s catwalk show.
Let's go back in time to a few weeks ago, on 2nd June, when Italy celebrated Republic Day (and Irenebrination answered with a post on Berlusconi’s life). While watching the traditional parade of armed forces in Rome, the Italian Prime Minister was photographed making the sort of faces you would see on the Benny Hill Show (accidentally broadcast in the early 80s by his own channels…maybe he watched too many episodes…) at a good-looking Red Cross nurse parading.
A few journalists thought the Prime Minister was struck by the fact that she looked a lot like his ex-wife, “actress” Veronica Lario; I actually thought that, as usual, Berlusconi had shown he has a huge problem in relating to women.
The Italian Prime Minister has the rather embarrassing tendency to identify women not with brains, but with physical attributes, namely bosoms, legs and bottoms. You know when a cartoon cat sees a little bird and suddenly a mouth-watering chicken appears above his head in a thinking blurb? Well, the same happens to Berlusconi when he sees a good-looking woman, though his thinking blurb features a dirty vision that mixes the worst episode of the Benny Hill Show with the trashiest Edwige Fenech film.
Berlusconi always had a sort of unhealthy fixation with nurses: four years ago, after undergoing an operation to get a pacemaker fitted in a Cleveland Clinic he claimed "Italian nurses are better-looking. These ones (referring to the staff in the American clinic) scare me a bit...don't even think about leaving me alone at night with one of them."
I somehow managed to remove the nurse accident from my mind, after all Berlusconi makes so many gaffes a month that you tend to lose count on them. The most recent example of embarrassing gaffe happened just a couple of days ago when, at an international conference with Mediterranean leaders, Berlusconi concluded his speech with the words: “Bring some good-looking girls over some time, ambassadors. We would appreciate them because we're Latins. I'm not a playboy any more, though, I'm a play old.” (Are you laughing? I’m not...)
Berlusconi's constant references to good looking girls honestly make me sick and I'm convinced his decadent
macho semantics dictated by his Viagra-ravaged mind are
probably indirectly responsible for the high rates of violent crimes currently committed against women in Italy.
This issue needs to be seriously investigated. In the meantime, let's go back to the nurse accident.
Indeed, the nurse magically reappeared yesterday this time on Raffaella Curiel’s runway wearing a wedding gown, and flaunted by uniformed Red Cross nurses.
Spot the difference: Jean Paul Gaultier had Dita Von Teese closing his Haute Couture show, Italians have Berlusconi’s favourite nurse on Curiel’s runway. Says a lot about the state of Italian "alta moda" (high fashion).
We have all seen bizarre and tragic things happening on runways, from wardrobe malfunctions and models falling off extremely high-heeled shoes to anorexia becoming the protagonist.
Yet I still hadn’t seen a Red Cross volunteer ending up on a runway just because she caught the Prime Minister’s eye. Nurse Barbara Lamuraglia, now in her mid-40s, is indeed an ex fashion model who also worked for Lancetti, but she doesn’t currently have any further connections with the fashion industry. So why choosing her? The Red Cross said that in this way they got more visibility and will inspire more girls to join their ranks (oh, Florence Nightingale, you’re so passé!). This doesn't explain why they chose her and not somebody else since the Red Cross says that all their nurses are the same.
Besides, I thought that being a volunteer meant to silently and invisibly do something for other people and not jump on a stage and show how cool you are. In fact the volunteer Red Cross nurse's motto states “ama, conforta, lavora, salva” (love, comfort, work, save), it doesn’t say "sashay down a catwalk in haute couture".
Seriously, this was essentially a rather silly idea with some unfortunate subliminal connections to Italian sexy nurse films from the 70s (I'm seriously worried that, one day, I will have to start making my cinematic fashion connections, rather than with masterpieces, with embarrassing pieces of trash à la L'infermiera nella corsia dei militari), something that amazed me especially coming from a socially engaged designer.
If Manzini was right and fashion is a language, a way in which “the physiognomy of a people or an epoch shows itself”, we have very little left in Italy to show to other countries, apart from our decadence, slowly and relentlessly corroding the beauty and poetry of our past and definitely not helping all those young fashion designers working hard in Italy who seem to have a lot to say but not many people willing to listen.
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