Baroque fashion

Have you ever visited the Basilica of the Santi Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso in Rome's city centre? The building was first started in the 1600s.

The dome, designed by Pietro da Cortona (who also made the stucco decorations on the ceiling in 1669), is one of the widest in Rome after Saint Peter and Sant’Andrea della Valle’s.

The church is very rich inside and decorated with quite a few elements that evoke the late Roman Baroque style, such as frescoes, marble columns and golden details. You can get a quick idea of what the Basilica looks like inside from this very (low quality and) brief video I did a while back.

Now, you will probably be wondering what has a church got to do with fashion, but this extremely ornate basilica came back to my mind while I was going through some fashion images for the Autumn/Winter 09 season.

I have already mentioned in a previous post Pollini’s collection in which Jonathan Saunders turned the brand’s iconic baroquish swirl into a 3D motif applied to dresses and sculpted into the heels of the shoes.

A few months ago I also reviewed Basso & Brooke’s collection that featured dresses characterised by golden nuances and ornate prints that mixed Baroque and Rococo influences.

Another example of a designer who manages to inform his designs with Baroque inspirations is Maurizio Pecoraro.

Leaving aside his most evidently "Baroque" pieces such as sequinned dresses, I think his most interesting designs are those ones displaying a sort of "balanced Baroque" style such as his black or ivory blouses from the A/W 09 collection.

Though decorated with embroideries, embellishments and decorations that at times seem to evoke the stucco ceilings of Baroque churches, when worn with smart yet minimalist trousers they create a rather beautiful effect.

Yet designs don’t have to be extravagantly opulent to evoke Baroque styles: Christopher Bailey, for example, used prints of digitalised images of vintage Baroque etchings on silk dresses for Burberry Prorsum’s A/W 09 pre-collection.

Maybe the Baroque theme will develop into a proper trend in the next few months. In the meantime, if you are in Rome, you can try to visit a few more Baroque churches and spot links between architecture and fashion. You can find many churches around the Baroque area of the Italian capital (Via del Corso, Via del Babuino…), around Campo Marzio, Colonna and Trevi and don’t forget to visit also the Baroque churches located in the Medieval areas such as Trastevere. Enjoy your Baroque style tour!