For
the last three weeks I have been a victim of the Sex And The City mania.
No, I’m not a fan of the series, in fact, I never watched it, but, for the last
20 days wherever I turned and whatever I did there was something ready to remind
me that the SATC movie was coming out, from ads on TV to
articles/interviews/previews and reviews on dailies, magazines and the Internet.
I
happened to be arriving in London on the exact night of the film preview. The
following day, I switched on the TV at 6.00 a.m. to see the news, but Sarah
Jessica Parker and her Philip Treacy hat were already there, being commented
and complimented on a breakfast show.
Then
there were days and days of expectation, anticipation and speculation, with
women’s magazines and fashion sites suggesting ideas to copy the SATC looks,
literally screaming in your face “Here’s what THEY wear, here’s what YOU should
wear!” (it's called "fashion fascism"...)
The
whole PMS-like stress mounting operation culminated in the NYC premiere with a haemorrhage of more celebrity pics circulating on the
Internet, all peppered by extra gossips, rumours and more beauty, fashion and
style tips.
My
Italian hometown, Pescara, was well-known in the ‘50s-'60s for a local competition for
the best film-inspired window shop. The craze seems to be back, as my brother documented the other day, when the local Swarovski store unveiled a window shop
dedicated to SATC: The Movie, while trying to sell clutches and bracelets that featured on some of the characters.
I’m
in Glasgow at the moment and I can assure you that many fashion crimes have
been committed throughout last week in the name of SATC. There have been
SATC-inspired cocktail and dinner parties, and the warm weather brought the worst out
yesterday with women with a “Neds and the City” rather than a “Sex And the
City” edge wearing horrendous outfits (I know, I’m bitchy, but what I’ve seen
was really horrendous, trust me…).
I’m
a passionate fan of the fashion and cinema combination and I extensively
researched the two topics, but this is too much. This is not about fashion AND
cinema, it’s about money and product
placement. What I hate the most, though, is the fact that Patricia Field’s name
appears after the words Costume Designer, a title that I find incorrect as
these two words used to define somebody who actually did the costumes. A person
who assembles outfits with bits and pieces of clothes and accessories (given
for free by money-crazed designers…) should indeed be called a “stylist”.
Anyway, there is an
antidote to all these SATC shenanigans: Michelangelo Antonioni. No, I’m not
trying to be smart or wanting to be a hyper-intellectual, but there is more
about fashion in Antonioni’s films than in nowadays' supposedly stylish films.
When in 1950, the director shot his first feature film, Cronaca di un amore (Story of a Love Affair), he called as costume
designer Ferdinando Sarmi who also starred in the movie as Enrico Fontana.
Sarmi, who worked on the film with a young designer from Naples, Fausto Sarli,
left Italy shortly afterwards, moving to the States where he became head
designer for Elizabeth Arden and where, years after, he opened his own
boutiques.
Lucia Bosé, was only nineteen when the film
was shot, but Antonioni remembered in an interview how, after they dressed her
up in Haute Couture creations and extraordinary jewels, she turned into a real
lady. The lavish furs, the rich evening gowns and the avant-garde hats worn by
the actress had a sociological purpose in the film: they had to highlight
the emptiness, alienation and futility of the upper middle-classes who hid
their loneliness, frustrations and banality behind luxurious items of clothing.
Fashion and luxury are in the film unambiguously and predictably
associated with the dissoluteness and perversion of the female protagonist, a
stereotypical femme fatale.
Lucia
Bosé was also chosen to star in La signora senza camelie (The Lady
Without Camelias, 1953) in the part of Clara Manni, a young shop assistant who,
discovered by a film producer, becomes an actress. For the occasion, the
costumes for Lucia Bosé were created by the prestigious Sartoria Battilocchi,
an Italian Haute Couture fashion house founded in the 1920s in Rome by Aurora
Battilocchi. The dresses produced by Battilocchi were famous for their precise
cut, precious fabrics and refined details and were perfect to highlight Clara’s
transformation from rags to riches. Exquisite and lavish fabrics such as satin
and silk were chosen for the evening dresses Bosé wore, complemented by
accessories such as leather gloves, belts and bags, while plush leopard furs by
the Venice-based Riele were used as a symbol of the status Clara reached at the
climax of her career.
The
connection between the world of fashion and Antonioni continued in Le Amiche (The Girlfriends, 1955), a
film that proves that SATC is actually an old concept. Taken from Cesare
Pavese’s novel Tra donne sole, this is the story of Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) who moves
from Rome to her native Turin to set up a fashion salon. In Turin, Clelia makes
friends with a few young women who belong to higher social classes. Antonioni
lucidly described in the film the relationships between the different social
classes and attacked the bored cruelty of the upper middle-classes. Fashion is
charged with sociological connotations: Clelia dresses smartly,
but doesn’t seem to be able to hide her humble origins when she’s with the
richer Momina (Yvonne Furneaux), an incarnation of Dior’s “New Look” with her
cinched waist and fuller skirts.
The Fontana Sisters, the most famous designers
of those times, were hired as fashion consultants and costume designers for the
film, creating the glamorous gowns displayed by models during the final catwalk
in Clelia’s atelier in front of her bourgeois
nouveaux-riches clientele. The fashion show in the film is a form of
spectacle hinting at a sad truth: both the
fashion and cinema industry try to use the female body to make money.
As the years passed, Antonioni concentrated on more existential themes in his
films, and started using the language of fashion accordingly. In his trilogy of
films about alienation and loneliness – L’avventura (The Adventure, 1960), La Notte (The Night, 1961) and L’eclisse (The Eclipse, 1962) – the smart suits or dresses worn by the
characters hint at their position in society, but also at their inner
condition, contributing to create that “chic existentialism” that will
characterise many Antonioni’s films.
If you find hard to fight back the SATC mobs by just preaching the word of Antonioni and you're also looking for something cinematic to wear, here's a dress inspired by the
monochromatic ensemble Vittoria (Monica Vitti) wears during her brief love
affair with Piero (Alain Delon) in L’eclisse.
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