You may try and spot deep and intricate arty connections in MSGM's A/W 2016 collection. The polka dot texture of Antonio Lopez's 1967 illustration for the New York Times magazine or his 1974-1975 Red Coat Series showing Grace Jones, Paloma Picasso, Jessica Lange and Tina Chow wrapped in a red quilt-like padded jacket were for example reinvented as oversized white or red polka dots on black or red background that spread like a virus on oversized coats, skirts and tops.
Betty Woodman's vividly coloured and at times collaged works that defy categorization as painting, sculpture, or pottery were translated in mismatched patterns pasted together, such as the dichotomic jumper split in two and combining a Breton fisherman sweater with a granny top or the sequin bands hugging velvet dresses and men's shirts.
The profile of a woman with a prominent and aquiline nose, may have come from Ursula Hertz-Sternberg's folder of joyful, humorous and colourful designs for textiles and dress originally submitted to Ascher Studio, a textile firm in London (renowned for working with fine artists to create patterns and designs for silk scarves and furniture fabric).
Yet making arty connections wasn't the main point of the collection: Creative Director Massimo Giorgetti's wans't indeed making bold statements about art, but he was trying to reshift the attention of people on the clothes.
He indeed asked press and buyers attending his show that took place two days ago during Milan Fashion Week not to post images on social networks, but put away their phones, enjoy the show and above all look at the clothes.
Giorgetti's decision came after he realised that the various images showing what goes on behind the scenes of a fashion collection, including fittings and castings, weren't helping in terms of sales, but contributing to confuse the consumer.
According to Giorgetti consumers may indeed be losing interest because of the fast pace of the industry and because of overexposure: in a nutshell, they see so many images of a design that when that garment of accessory final arrives in store they don't buy it because they have already seen it in its digital incarnation too many times, and not because they have been waiting too much time to be able to purchase it.
Giorgetti's choice came therefore as an attempt at supporting retailers, online stores and print publications, but also as a way to encourage show attendees to watch the clothes with their eyes and not through a screen.
Did it work? Well, maybe in part: rather than snapping pictures, most people attending the show – entitled "Interlude", almost to hint at a moment of pause in the middle of all the fashion brouhaha – looked indeed at the puffer coats and skirts; some were mesmerised by the huge polka dots, others probably found the frayed jumpers with knitted roses (actually polka dots and roses also appeared in Giorgetti's first collection) matched with sequinned trousers and sporty sneakers rather desirable in a casually chic way; a few attendees may have instead wondered if at the end of the runway they may have been able to touch the lacquered lace and large paillettes decorating some of the pieces.
The collection wasn't 100% convincing, though, and there were echoes of Prada, Miu Miu and Margiela, the latter filtered through Vêtements (see the mens' shirts and the leather/flower-print velvet knee boots). Yet asking people to refocus on the clothes and try to live more through their eyes and less via the screens of their phones was not a bad idea.
You can't certainly blame only social media for the state the fashion industry is in, but it is undeniable that people with no knowledge of industrial processes and manufacturing techniques becoming more important than designers, "It" girls with millions of followers but with very little talent landing major ad campaigns, and assorted vapid characters with very little experience and dubious funds (what about an investigation on fashion frauds and dirty money being laundered in fashion?) becoming "influencers", haven't collectively elevated the fashion discourse (the words of the late Umberto Eco come to mind: "The drama of the internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the status of bearer of truth…Social media gave the right to speak to legions of idiots who first spoke only at the bar after a glass of wine, without damaging the community. They were quickly silenced, and now they have the same right to speak of a Nobel Prize. It is the invasion of fools.")
But, is it genuinely possible to take an anti-social media stance? Giorgetti's MSGM line benefited so far from people posting street style images; he has a personal account and a brand account on Instagram, and he didn't apply the same ban to post images on social networks to Emilio Pucci, the historical Italian fashion house that he is currently reinventing. Besides, searching for the words #MSGM on Instagram alone will provide with over 100,000 results, so, in many ways, trying to escape the social media may be almost impossible for all of us, not just for Giorgetti.
And yet something must be done: huge art exhibitions have become catalysts for selfie taking with people using even paintings and murals tackling tragic and dramatic themes as cool backgrounds for photo opportunities; as stated in a previous post, by emphasising the power of the digital world we may be creating a generation of consumers who, rather than buying physical things, satisfies its fashion needs and desires by watching and sharing digital runway images and fashion campaigns.
For his next collection Giorgetti may want to rebalance his arty connections and emphasise and expand them a bit and, while it is yet to see if he will allow instagramming back onto his runway, in the meantime, his choice to ban from his show our collective addiction for instagramming the useful and the useless wasn't such a bad idea. We should indeed try to live more in the real rather than the digital world.
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