DressSpace

Picasso and cubist customs

Everything has already been said about, and everyone knows Pablo Picasso, the most famous artist of the entire 1900s.

His eclectic and versatile genius has made the Spanish artist able to leave a recognisable imprint on anything he put his hands to, the trademark of his unmistakable style.

He traversed innumerable artistic currents and took on any material, able to transfigure it and render it his own.

But not everyone knows that during his most loved period, that in the early 1900s in Paris, when he faced the overturn of revolutionary Cubist movement (his work as well as that of George Braque), this the untiring creator also realised theatre sets and costumes, transferring the results of his pictorial research to the scene.

Hence, in 1917, “Parade” a theatre performance fusing dance and acting was born, an absolutely innovative experiment, branded by the mark of an exceptional nature thanks to all of its components, beginning with Picasso and proceeding with the text of Jean Cocteau, the music of Erik Satie and the choreography of Léonide Massine.

For this dance, the artist will purposefully create the characters of the “managers” adding by his own initiative to the text, and will realise some downright clothes/sculptures, made of super-impositions and  break-downs of architectural elements, that rendered his painting talent finally real, and his painting three-dimensional.

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546-548MOSAIC – CHIESA DI SAN VITALE, RAVENNA

 The imperial mantle of violet purple donned by Theodora, wife of Emperor Justinian, is embroidered with the figure of the Three Magi.

The tunic has jewelled embroidering, double pearl crown with a pendant, a very precious jewelled necklace sewn onto a fabric that completely covers the shoulders (maniakion).

To the side is Patricia with and embroidered mantle closed like the paenula but much richer, and a tunic with strips embroidered with precious gems (patagium).

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To the “Gianni and Marella Agnelli picture gallery” of Turin there is an exhibition that cannot be missed until 29th August.

There is a big selection of paintings coming from an anti-conventional museum and full of ideas, both in the content and in the setting up, as few institutional spaces are able to be.

We are talking about the “Museum of Everything” opened in London last year and already place of destination for many of the most renown artists, critics, musicians and writers, which have been often invited to compare themselves with their activity and works.

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Fifty years of T-shirt.

It has a T shape, but it is not always a close end road.

What is it?

It is the T-shirt.

The t-shirt with short sleeves is living a second life.

It is actually a third, maybe fourth or even a fifth life.

It was part of the navy dress during the XIX century, the t-shirt to be in contact with the skin has reached, thanks to the American soldiers, after the Second World War, the breast of many Europeans.

It has then become the symbol of the burnt youth of the Fifties’, until when in 1960, in Miel Valley, California, some proactive guys of the Monster Company, musicians and fashion agents, have started to decorate it.

It has then become a surface to write anything on: a cotton tattoo.

Today it is its 50^th anniversary and on the internet there are many websites proposing catalogues of decorations carried out with different techniques; the trend diffused among the mothers now is to ask small craft laboratories to re-elaborate with buttons and fabrics the t-shirts bought at the market: something original for their children.

How could it happen that it was a poor element and has now become a sought for object?

Malcom Gladwell believes that some clothes reach their “critical point”: unknown to most of the people, they become suddenly popular, in a contagious way, like an epidemic.

There are people, Gladwell says in his book

The critical point (edited by Rizzoli),

Those working for fashion brands have a sixth sense in individuating districts, coffee places, clubs where it is possible to find the new trends and looks.

In those places there are those ones that Gladwell calls the Innovators: they wear a certain kind of shoes that can be found only in some department stores of the province, or a white and tight singlet, leaving uncovered the straps of the bra, or using shower flipflop as evening shoes.

The expert sees them on the Innovators, he informs the Users about them – the opinion makers – therefore the object, produced in series, reaches the inertial and skeptical Majority, which buys it in the shops.

It should be happened the same with the t-shirt, always present in any boutique or trendy fashion house.

Today it is evolving and becoming more and more sophisticated, almost chic.

The purpose of fashion is to make us believe to be different, even though we are all the same.

T-shirt: the difference represented by a t-shirt.

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“The moccasin is the perfect shoe for walking, not only because it adapts itself to the foot, but because it is in perfect harmony with the natural elements and any pair of shoes was always decorated with care and adapted to the identity of the user”.

( B. BERNSTEIN in FIRST AMERICAN ART)

Moccasins are par excellence the shoes created and worn by the populations from the North America, handing down the traditional techniques from generation to generation.

The cultural beauty and richness in the North American continent is indeed represented by these wonderful creations.

In these populations men hunted the animals and obtained the skins that were used by their women as crafts products, clothes and shoes were among them. The decorations of these moccasins represented the artistic expression of these native populations that through that tried to preserve their traditional values protecting their identity.

(Pair of moccasins of Hidatsa origin with needlecraft carried out with hedgehog’s quills).

From the wonderful Indian moccasins, which are the symbol of comfort, crafts and also spiritual and cultural values, around 1939 the “penny loafer” took place, comfortable shoes to be used in the spare time with the famous lips-shaped toe-cap that later on contained a penny coin.

Worn all over the world, by Fred Astaire to the young mods, in the Eighties and Nineties the new designers like reinventing the moccasin with a glamour touch, or as Renzo Rossetti did already in the Seventies, introducing the legendary little bows, which are criticized at the beginning by the fashionists, but very much appreciated later on, until today at the presentation of the BRERA moccasin, name dedicated to the historical Milanese district, since ever place of innovations and cultural and art events.

(Brera Moccasin, autumn/winter 2011 Fratelli Rossetti collection).

Today walking in the streets of the centre and along the corridors of the shopping malls, which is the shop window that does not offer to our absent-minded glance the shape of a moccasin, that could be sportive, colourful, of glamour or created by a designer?

(Colourful and designer Car Shoe)

The native populations of the North America would be proud to see that their masterpiece has become so popular and maybe without all those symbolic and spiritual importance belonging to their identity and civilization.

Cristina Girelli

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The time has come to talk about a resurgence of the tie: after the iconoclastic storm of the protests years, post-modern Italy feels more at ease talking about its elegant past, or tuning into the suggestions of the technological civilization.

Free from formal restrictions and ideological prohibitions, the tie is born again as an art of chromatic creations, a pleasant choice, a symbol.

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The human terminal.

In an era of IT, telecommunications and artificial intelligence, it is important to remember that  humans remain the ultimate terminal.

Telematics’ future developments and evolutions will be modelled on humans and their visions.

Thus, it will be possible for machines to understand the importance of the tie as a symbol of its wearer, and exchange all relevant information with other terminals within a network.

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The illusions of bioengineering and robotics appear to be leading to the materialization of the old superhuman myth.

In reality, each and every man has always been a superhuman: being able to project beyond his nature into the dimensions of language, arts and fashion.

A garment, with its unpredictable inventions and evolutions constantly surpasses the natural being of the human body, adding an element of taste and culture.

The robot will thus never be human until the day it will be able to create its own garments and choose, autonomously, its own tie.

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Long live V.E.R.D.I.! -Vittorio Emanuele Re ( king ) D’Italia ( of Italy ).

This motto by the patriots of the Italian unification  – risurgence – sounds certainly rather tired nowadays.

When it comes to the tie though a certain amount of patriotism would be easily justified: 2 out of 3 ties in the world are “made in Italy” and our success appears destined to grow further.

Of all the male fashion exports under the Italian flag, the tie would constitute at least one of the three colours.

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Sometimes the tie happens to become a livery, a uniform, a flag even.

An important statement, appropriate for important meetings.

Amongst the better known the presidential ties spring to mind: the summit ties, diplomatic flagships.

Only when meeting “Madame guillotine” sovereigns would lose their ties: only a blip, an exception that confirms the rule of an inescapable presence.

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