For some people, fashion is an obsession, almost a kind of religion, something to abide by.
Designers are prophets; Vogue is fashion's “Bible”; style is the one and only virtue, replacing the teleological virtues of faith, hope and love.
It was only natural then that Italian menswear fashion house Cantarelli opted to present its new collection in a church-like setting at Florence's Pitti.
Cantarelli's space features indeed a painting of a crucified Christ (by Turin-based artist Davide Le Grazie) dressed in a trendy woollen sharply cut suit and hanging in front of an altar; items of clothing from the Autumn/Winter 2011-12 collection – a high quality collection based on grey and dark blues, with splashes of white and beige – are neatly folded on pews patrolled by a fake friar clad in a tailored habit (in the same fabric used for Christ's suit in the painting) and the confessionals conceal behind the red curtains a dummy in an elegant suit.
It was definitely different from the sweet and saccharine candy-coloured world Cantarelli opted for last season and it didn't pass unnoticed to the press, the media and the Church.
Though the image of Christ was based on Diego Velazquez's “Christ on the Cross” (1632), the main point behind the installation is not to offend, but tackling the “devotion” to style, while referencing Cantarelli's "cult" of elegance and high quality items made in Heaven rather than in Italy.
The motto behind the installation and the new collection is indeed “Devoti allo stile” (“Devoted to Style”), followed by the provocative slogan "Perdona loro perché non sanno quello che indossano" (Forgive them, for they don't know what they are wearing).
The installation didn't pass unnoticed to visitors, but, unfortunately, also to assorted politicians and members of the Church.
Some members of Silvio Berlusconi's right wing party claimed they were offended by the use of Christian symbols to advertise a brand (yet doesn't the Italian right wing party use its fake approval of Catholicism to “advertise” itself and get the support of the Church?), wondering why the brand didn't use symbols from other religions like Islam for their campaign (simply because the human representation for the purpose of worship is considered idolatry and forbidden in Islamic law, so we don't have “standard” representations of Allah that would have worked in this same context so well).
The diocese of Florence joined in the protests together with the president of the Tuscan Region claiming the image used by Cantarelli for its campaign is blasphemous, offensive and in bad taste.
Some Italian publications even refused to publish the campaign (though they don't seem to have anything against images that offend women…) while a right wing association defaced the fashion house's posters in Milan with paper strips with the warning “Blasphemous Ad”.
It's funny how everybody is ready to defend Catholicism when fashion references it, but when Silvio Berlusconi swore against God in one of his jokes, a representative of the Church was ready to defend him saying that his swearing had to be “contextualised”.
Well, try to contextualise also this campaign then and try to remember that fashion is provocation and it wouldn't exist without it.
Besides, throughout the decades there have been multiple references to Catholicism, religion and the Church in different fashion collections and there are entire books written about the connections between the Catholic Church, power and fashion.
I do not consider Cantarelli's installation blasphemous (and by the way, didn't Alberta Ferretti's catwalk show the other night take place in a deconsecrated church and isn't Gareth Pugh holding his event tonight in the Orsanmichele Church?), at least it caused a bit of a debate and that's good.
Yet I think the major manifestation of heresy I witnessed yesterday at the Pitti took place during a trend seminar when the speaker said that today we are assaulted by an inspiring barrage of images sampled from here and there, before adding “blogs have replaced exhibitions”.
Thinking about the content of some blogs, if exhibitions have been replaced by the monumental amount of crap that's on the Internet at the moment, well, we are lying in a desperate cultural gutter and we're not even looking at the stars. If I may paraphrase Jesus Christ's words, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are saying”.
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