An interesting exhibition at the Ex Lanificio Conte in Schio, near Vicenza, explores Yves Saint Laurent and Pour Toi’s knitwear. If you want to know more about “La materia dell’archivio. 1 mostra 1 incontro”, curated by Maria Luisa Frisa, lecturer in fashion design at Venice’s IUAV University, in collaboration with Italian fashion designer, photographer and exhibition designer Francesco Casarotto, you can read my review on Dazed Digital.
The exhibited garments come from two main sources: Saint Laurent’s are stored in the archives of Italian knitwear company Miles, while Pour Toi’s were lent by the Modateca Deanna.
The Maglificio Miles was established in 1962 by Silvia Stein Bocchese. The company, launched with the support of Silvia Stein’s husband, textile entrepreneur Giuseppe Bocchese, was in its early beginnings just a small laboratory with three workers but it soon turned into a successful knitwear company. At the end of the ‘60s Miles started an important collaboration with Saint Laurent (it was model and friend Lison Bonfils who introduced Silvia to the French designer) that gave life to some of the most precious knitwear designs ever made. Since then the company extended its portfolio, collaborating with numerous fashion houses and designers, among them also Céline, Chloé, Azzedine Alaïa, Karl Lagerfeld, Sonia Rykiel, Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Vivienne Westwood and, more recently, Lanvin and Marc Jacobs.
The Modateca Deanna is an important documentation centre that preserves some of the best knitwear collections and prototypes produced since the early ’60s, plus drawings, sketches, knitting patterns, motifs, stitches and the designs produced by historical knitwear company Miss Deanna. Based in San Martino in Rio, the company was founded and directed until 2002 (when it was sold to the Armani group) by Deanna Ferretti Veroni, entrepreneur and talent scout for Luca Coelli and Sam Rey, the design duo behind the Pour Toi knitwear line. Throughout the decades Miss Deanna produced important knitwear lines in collaboration with Giorgio Armani, Kenzo, Julien MacDonald, Martin Margiela, Prada, Yves Saint-Laurent, Versace and even for master of deluxe minimalism Zoran Ladicorbic.
I hope one day I’ll be able to visit both the Maglificio Miles and the Modateca Deanna and maybe study their archives a bit, I’m sure I could learn a lot from them.
All images of the exhibition "La materia dell’archivio. 1 mostra 1 incontro" by Francesco Casarotto.
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