If you're a costume fan and you happen to be visiting Italy, check out the double exhibition Louis Vuitton is hosting in its shops in Venice and Rome.
Entitled "A Tale of Costumes", the event will run through 31st March at the Espace Louis Vuitton in Venice and at Louis Vuitton's Spazio Etoile in Rome.
The Venice side of the exhibition features an 18th century "andrienne" (known as the andrié in Venice, this style was characterised by a pleated tail that descended from the shoulders, widening out to a broad train) from the collection of Palazzo Mocenigo restored with the support of the brand; a reinterpretation of the dress created by the students of the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia (Experimental Film Centre) in Rome and made under the supervision of Italian costume designer and Academy Award nominee Maurizio Millenotti; and a paper garment by Chinese artist Movana Chen, made knitting paper threads from destroyed books.
The Roman part of "A Tale of Costumes" has instead a cinematic twist about it, since it features contributions from the Rome-based tailoring house Sartoria Tirelli.
The exhibition revolves around a film program featuring a docu-film about the history of the tailoring house, "L'abito e il Volto (The dress and the face)" and "Piero Tosi, 1690 - The Beginning of a Century" both by Francesco Costabile, and "Handmade cinema" by Lauda Delli Colli and Guido Torlonia.
The event also features a selection of costumes made by Tirelli. The best piece remains the monumental purple silk dress with an anthracite cameo brooch in a silver frame designed by legendary Piero Tosi and donned by Romy Schneider in Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (1972).
But there's plenty more to see, including the white tunic and pale blue and ochre overgarment created by Maurizio Millenotti for Valeria Golino in Bernard Rose's Immortal Beloved (1994) and the silver sequinned evening gown matched with a white feather boa designed by Alessandro Lai for actress Margherita Buy in Ferzan Özpetek's Magnificent Presence (2012).
Fans of TV series and new films will discover Gabriella Pescucci's ivory silk and gold trimmed dress made in 2010 for the TV series The Borgias by Neil Jordan; Salma Hayek's (you get the feeling the brand picked this costume to piss off her husband François-Henri Pinault, CEO of Louis Vuitton's rival Kering...) red satin and black lace costume designed by Massimo Cantini Parrini for her role in Matteo Garrone's Il racconto dei racconti (Tale of Tales, 2015; a film characterised by amazing costumes and locations, but the stories are narrated in an extremely detached and cold way...); and Paloma Faith's PVC jacket, bra and trousers designed by Carlo Poggioli for La giovinezza (Youth, 2015) by Paolo Sorrentino.
There is actually a strong link between Louis Vuitton and the Rome-based Centro sperimentale di cinematografia where Piero Tosi also teaches as the company offers support to students and the chance to take part in costume and fashion workshops.
Cinema has always inspired fashion: Luchino Visconti's La caduta degli dei (The Damned, 1969) prompted the fashion industry to rediscover and relaunch the '30s; in more recent years designers just lifted famous images from specific films and reused them in their own collections.
As you may remember from a previous post, a few looks by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton A/W 2011-12 collection were borrowed from a disturbing scene in Liliana Cavani's Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter, 1974) in which Lucia, wearing only a pair of trousers, suspenders, long leather gloves and a beret with a turquoise mask on top of it, sings for a group of SS officers.
Silvana Mangano's vanilla and soft pink dresses with hats wrapped up in yards of tulle maline in Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice, 1971) inspired instead some of the looks in Chanel Cruise Collection 2009/10, while more recently images of Maria Callas as Medea in Pasolini's eponymous film with costumes by Piero Tosi, reappeared on the moodboard of Valentino's Spring/Summer 2014 collection.
"Piero Tosi and the late Umberto Tirelli made outstanding contributions to the history of cinema because they created visual images that are so well coded and crafted that they can be easily identified," Dino Trappetti, current Head of the tailoring house and Chairman of the Tirelli-Trappetti Foundation, once told me in an interview.
"It's only natural for fashion designers to use their visual language to call back in their audiences' minds certain references and I'm definitely happy to see that in this way Tosi and Tirelli's work is still out there. What makes me sad is the fact that there is no copyright to protect their unique vision, which means designers can use them and become rich without creating anything original."
So, who knows, maybe the event at the Louis Vuitton spaces will re-open at least in the minds of visitors the dialogue about copyright issues and creativity as well.
In a biography he wrote in the early '80s, Umberto Tirelli, who considered himself not only a tailor but a passionate collector and "fashion archaeologist", stated he had stopped collecting garments in 1968, since, after then, fashion ceased influencing culture and designers started copying each other.
Hopefully "A Tale of Costumes" will inspire students to discover more about Umberto Tirelli's teachings, his legacy at the tailoring house, the power of costume design and the most obscure tricks of costume making. "We have a 5,000 square metre warehouse outside Rome with 170,000 costumes available for research, study and exhibition," Trappetti explained me a while back.
"It is extremely important for students to see how these garments were made, study the cut and explore the seams. We quite often discovered amazing things ourselves by disassembling garments from our collection. Once we found out strategically placed pieces of cardboard inside a men's coat from the 1700s that were put there to give it structure. If you're a fashion or costume design student coming to visit us, you will feel a bit like doing half a university course in one day."
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments