Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law, Science & Technology

Christian Lacroix, Costumier

In a recent post I explored the connection between theatre and fashion and also mentioned French designer Christian Lacroix’s work for the stage. 

Lacroix often claimed in interviews that he's very passionate about his role as costumier. Indeed this job allows him to put his art at the service of directors, set designers and actors and to share their world, their imagination and inspirations. 

His costumes are based on one main principle: the theatre is a fantastic world, a place where dreams can be turned into reality and everything is possible. Theatre shows, opera and ballet are indeed considered by Lacroix as the exact opposites of the more selfish and smaller universe of fashion and haute couture in particular, this is why the former allows to eclectically combine different styles, colours, techniques and fabrics such as velvet, muslin, crepe, tyvek and latex.

In that post I also mentioned the exhibition “Christian Lacroix The Costumier” that is currently on at the National Museum of Singapore. Among the most beautiful costumes exhibited there, visitors will be able to see also those for Carmen, staged in 1989 and directed by Antoine Bourseiller.

Carmen’s black velvet dress was inspired by bullfighters’ uniforms and featured gold trimmings, while the gypsy women wore boleros tied to the waist and skirts made up of various fabrics in vivid floral, polka dot and paisley prints with structures of metal wires that held in place large frills and created in this way movement even while the dancers were still.

If you want to know more about Lacroix's costumes exhibited in Singapore, you can read my piece on Dazed Digital, or scroll down and read the feature here, without leaving this site. 

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Christian Lacroix The Costumier

For the first time Christian Lacroix's couture stage costumes are shown out of France at the National Museum of Singapore.
Christian Lacroix The Costumier

With their costumes for Robert Wilson’s new staging of the romantic opera “Der Freischütz” (The Freeshooter) by Carl Maria von Weber, Viktor & Rolf have recently become the youngest fashion designers to join the long list of couturiers who also worked for the stage. Yet one of the most famous designers who turned costumier, perfectly combining and balancing his passion for fashion with his love for theatricality, is Christian Lacroix.

An exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore, entitled "Christian Lacroix The Costumier" and curated by Delphine Pinasa, is at present celebrating the French designer's work through 80 spectacular costumes and 60 sketches and illustrations from the collection of the Moulins-based Centre National du Costume de Scène. This is the first time the costumes are shown out of France, so the event has a globally cultural resonance.

As a child Lacroix was deeply fascinated by fairground theatres and shows for children. After the performances he would usually imagine new costumes for the shows he had just seen and then draw them. This first passion prompted him to become a fashion designer and, in 1986, he finally had the chance to work for the first time for the theatre when he met Jean-Luc Tardieu, director of the Maison de la Culture in Nantes, who asked him to design the costumes for Edmond Rostand's Chantecler. The play had as main characters a group of barn animals and Lacroix devised fantastically extravagant costumes that somehow echoed the animals’ characteristics but did not represent them realistically. When they entered the dimly lit stage, the actors projected with the costume silhouettes Chinese shadows of different animals, but, once the lights went up, the characters looked very different from what the audience had imagined them. The guinea fowl character for example wore a costume that featured black and white polka dot prints used by Lacroix to symbolise the bird’s feathers.

Since this first show and from the next 25 years, Lacroix designed costumes for theatrical productions both in France and abroad, winning twice the Molière Award, France’s national theatre prize for Best Costume Designer, for his work in Phèdre and Cyrano.

A few examples of Lacroix’s talent for mixing the most disparate inspirations are the costumes for Gâité Parisienne (1988), inspired by the Belle Epoque, Henry de Toulouse-Loutrec, the Moulin Rouge and Vincente Minnelli’s musicals; his work for Othello (1995) in which he combined bits and pieces from flea markets such as biker jackets with luxurious fabrics or for Così fan tutte (2006) that featured streetwear such as jersey hoods and historical costumes from the 18th century. For Shéhérazade (2001) Lacroix was instead inspired by a book of the One Thousand and One Night he was given by his grandparents as a child, by Léon Bakst’s costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s eponymous ballet and by his contemporary designs, from bright red tutus to black and white corsets and turquoise and jade harem pants.

Among the most colourful costumes exhibited there are those for Carmen, staged in 1989 and directed by Antoine Bourseiller. Studying the shades and nuances used by Ignacio Zuloaga and Julio Romero de Torres in their paintings, Lacroix combined in the dresses for this opera traditional Spanish clothes and bullfighters’ uniforms, designing around 350 costumes.

The exploration of Spanish traditions continued in the costumes for Arsa y Toma, a show that chronicled the history of flamenco from tourist attraction to art form and that included both multi-coloured polka dot costumes and more elegant black and grey dresses with pleated skirts.

The embroidered heavy latex armours for Phèdre (1995) and in particular the costume for the Theseus character - the piece that took longer to be made as it needed to be moulded and sculpted, then dried and painted in gold and black - contrast with the lightest tutus Karol Armitage wore in Les Anges Ternis (1987), a show that explored the heritage of classical ballet and became a great collaborative work between choreographer, set designer and costumier.

Lacroix also used colours in his costumes as symbols - the red dresses in Eliogabalo (2004) were wearable metaphors for sex, passion, violence and ultimately death - and collaborated with other artists such as jewellery maker Claude Arpels incorporating in his velvet corsets and long tutus for the show Joyaux (2000) precious pearls and stones.

"Christian Lacroix The Costumier" perfectly chronicles the designer’s devotion to theatre, opera and ballet throughout the decades, concluding with his most recent work - long draped dresses in the Greek fashion and taffeta evening gowns with sculpted hemlines - for the production company Les Arts Florissants.

Some of the exhibited pieces were worn by famous personalities such as Spain’s legendary flamenco dancer Christina Hoya, Comédie Française’s Martine Chevallier and the Opéra de Paris principal dancer Wilfride Piollet, and the exhibition is accompanied by a series of events - from opera shows to design workshops - that perfectly complement the visitor’s journey through Christian Lacroix's kaleidoscopic universe of colours and inspirations.

"Christian Lacroix The Costumier" is at the National Museum of Singapore until 7th June 2009.

All images of Christian Lacroix's costumes in this post courtesy of the National Museum of Singapore

Mr Berlusconi, please tell us, is it better to be "badly dressed" or "shamelessly undressed"?

Angry about the inclusion of TV stars, a Big Brother participant and a former Miss Italia contestant in the recent list of candidates for the ruling centre-right Popolo della Liberta (PdL) party submitted by her husband for June’s European elections, Veronica Lario, wife of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, attacked the idea in an email to press agency ANSA. Describing the idea as “shameful trash, all in the name of power”, Lario highlighted in her email how the choice was “against women” and women’s rights.

“Women today are and can be beautiful and the fact that there are beautiful women in politics is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage. But what emerges today through the curves and feminine beauty is the lack of the retention of power that offends the credibility of all this and goes against women especially those who have been in the front line defending their rights,” Lario stated citing as examples Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, the late Nilde Iotti, president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 1979 to 1992, and Stefania Prestigiacomo, current Minister for the Environment.

Commenting from Warsaw, the Prime Minister said Lario was manipulated by the Left, that spread unfounded reports, then added his party wants to renew the political class with “people who are cultivated and well prepared”, unlike the “malodorous and badly dressed people who represent certain parties in Parliament”, he concluded.

This is where I’d like to stop and ponder for a while: I totally agree with what Lario stated in her message, but, it must be said, she is not the first nor the last to make such a point, while I found the definition Berlusconi gave about the opposition MPs - “malodorous and badly dressed people” - as dementedly stupid. 

Surely from the programmes broadcast by his channels and from the people he chose as candidates for his party, you can easily guess that Berlusconi prefers young, perfumed and possibly undressed bodies to dressed ones, but I find interesting how he resorted to the sort of accuse rich kids reserve to poorer ones in school, which is ridiculously immature. But then what can you expect from Berlusconi? We are talking about a man who’s made more gaffes and decrees to save his arse than laws to rescue Italian families from the crisis.

When I was a teenager the epitome of coolness was wearing a Best Company sweatshirt and a Naj-Oleari bag. In the eyes of those kids who owned and wore such items, those who didn’t have them were just unfashionable and unworthy of even talking to them, it didn't matter if they didn't wear such things as they refused to conform to the rule or, worse, because their parents couldn’t afford the stuff.

Berlusconi’s words made me wonder what makes a politician “cool” nowadays: is it a degree achieved without any recommendations or a designer bag like those ones sported by Mara Carfagna, a former topless model and television variety show presenter sentimentally involved with Berlusconi and fielded by the “Emperor” himself as a candidate for his centre-right alliance in last year’s national elections and then nominated Minister for Equal Opportunities when the alliance won? Maybe for Berlusconi designer clothes are much better than having a brain, but I doubt an Armani suit or a D&G bag can help you taking the proper political decisions if you don't have a bloody clue about politics.

Clothes can empower and politicians can undoubtedly launch new styles, but clothes shouldn’t really be making the man or the woman sitting in the Parliament. Intelligence, knowledge, passion, commitment to a cause, judgement, responsibility and the understanding and adoption of social values are what counts for a politician and not vanity, narcissism, the ability to lie, cheat, steal, look good and give blowjobs. Maybe somebody should remind this to Berlusconi.

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Three-tiered button necklace

Remember my 5 Kg button box? Well, it weights slightly less since I started using a few buttons for different projects. The first one was a collar-like necklace. The starting point for the necklace was my Roberta di Camerino shirt with trompe l'oeil red buttons on blue background, but I also had in mind the extravagant necklaces worn by Iris Apfel and Renaissance collar chains. 

Rather than using red buttons and a blue string to reproduce the Roberta di Camerino design, I opted for blue buttons and a red string, reversing in this way the initial colour code and the concept behind the shirt (real buttons instead of trompe l’oeil ones).

Material chosen: Lots of 4-hole blue buttons in 2 different sizes (depends from your neck size and from the button you choose - in my case I used over 70 buttons in total) and roughly 10 metres of red chamois leather string.

Notes: a) To make the necklace more extravagant you can use the 4-hole buttons as the base for a jewel-like 1 or 2-hole button; b) bear in mind that if you don't pick up the right buttons the necklace will become rather heavy. I don't mind heavy necklaces, but some people out there hate them, so remember to avoid extremely heavy buttons; c) chamois leather string can be expensive, but the final result is much better compared to what you get using cotton or plastic based strings and I can assure you the necklace will definitely look more elegant.     

Step 1: Make three long necklaces of buttons. To make one necklace: take roughly 3 metres of leather string, bend it in two parts and make a sort of hangman's noose (Fig. 1 after the Roberta di Camerino shirt). This is going to be the necklace closure, so make sure it’s large enough for the size of buttons you have chosen. Start weaving the string in and out of the buttons, as if you were sewing them onto a shirt.

Step 2: Once you have finished the three necklaces (Fig. 2, measure the necklaces on your neck to realise when you should stop), put them down on a table (button side down) and link the three necklaces together with another leather string, making sure the three necklaces are firmly held together (Fig. 3).

Step 3: Wear it as a three-tiered collar necklace and enjoy it!

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Uninspired by fashion? Shop at Not Just a Label

Has it ever happened to you to go out on a shopping spree and realise that what's on offer is not what you had in mind? Lack of originality and uniqueness are two of the main reasons why the designs on offer both in the shops and on the Internet often fail to arise any desire in potential buyers.

Things might change, though, thanks to an interesting initiative launched by Not Just A Label (NJAL). The site already appeared a while back in a previous post on this blog, but I'm happy to dedicate it this brief follow-up piece to announce a new and exciting project by the NJAL team.

In a month's time the site will open a shop offering unique pieces - chosen by key industry figures - made by the young designers featured on the NJAL site.

The store host for the first month will be Robin Schulié, head-buyer at Maria Luisa Paris and Unit F, the Austrian Association for Contemporary Fashion.

Since new hosts will pick up the best creations by the best designers on a monthly basis, uniqueness and variety will be guaranteed.

Designers are asked to submit images of their strongest pieces from a current or past collection or archive. If they fancy it, they can also create a special one-off piece for NJAL. There is no limit to creativity or imagination, so the more exciting the piece, the better.

There are currently over 1,200 designers from 43 countries on the NJAL site, so you can easily guess the selection will be definitely exciting.

While offering potential customers the chance to buy something really exclusive, the new NJAL initiative will also allow young designers to promote their work and their brands.

So if you're a young designer and you still haven't joined NJAL, you'd better do it soon; if you're a potential buyer you'd better start saving instead while patiently waiting for May 28th, the day the shop will be launched.       

Images: Designs by Jamie Bruski Tetsill and Scott Ramsay Kyle.

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Back to Chalayan

There are two weeks left to visit the Hussein Chalayan exhibition at London’s Design Museum. To remind you about it, here’s an extract from a long interview with Chalayan I did for the next issue of Zoot Magazine (Spring/Summer 09 issue – available from early May).  

One installation at the recent “From Fashion and Back” exhibition organised at London’s Design Museum to celebrate Hussein Chalayan’s 15-year long career, explores the limitations of language and features three dummies wearing the minimalist tunics from the ‘Panoramic’ (A/W 1998-99) collection, painting a wall.

Though engaging with the space, the figures can't actually see what they are doing as egg-shaped headpieces constrict their heads and entirely cover their faces, while a dummy clad in a black dress and cape keeps guard over them. The way the collections are exhibited mirrors in a way Chalayan’s approach to his work.

Indeed when he designs Chalayan doesn’t focus only on the garments, but also on their meaning. “The event shows how different worlds relate to each other, how everything is interconnected,” Chalayan explains, “my work is a reaction to things that happen in the world - in history, anthropology, science, technology - it represents a merging of all these worlds which is what makes the work unique.”

Creating bridges between different worlds and disciplines is what Chalayan enjoys best: “People are not sure where to place my work,” he states. “It is interesting when a school of architecture uses my designs as a basis for student projects – choosing garments based on geography, identity and culture and asking the students to create an environment based on these clothes. But academia is spreading beyond people who teach, more members of the public are appreciating the processes and research behind design.”

Does it bother him the way the fashion media often portray him as an avant-garde designer? “Sometimes, I feel that there are a handful of people in the fashion media who have no vision but who are allowed to rule the industry,” he replies. “It is about time fresher blood with more vision is given more of a chance. As far as my work is concerned, there is a certain duality. I feel there are monuments in each project that emphasises an idea. But, mostly, they are monuments which exist to inspire the rest of the collection which is highly wearable and flattering.”

As a whole the exhibition is very important as it allows visitors to get to know all the most important projects the designer was involved in: since 2003, Chalayan also directed art projects, including the short films “Temporal Meditations”, “Place to Passage” and “Anaesthetics” and, in 2005, he represented Turkey at the 51st Venice Biennale with “Absent Presence”, featuring Tilda Swinton. “Catwalks are for a limited audience and art projects were only shown in galleries,” he says, “so this is an amazing way to show so many projects in one place and, specifically, in London where everything has been conceived.”

At last year’s “Skin+Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture” exhibition at London’s Design Museum, Chalayan’s works were compared to those of architect Thomas Heatherwick and, a while back, the designer was also invited to speak about art and architecture with Zaha Hadid at London’s Tate.

Architecture is another discipline Chalayan drew inspiration from for his designs. “Everything that surrounds me is a source of influence,” he explains, “I am ultimately inspired by beauty. But it can be said that my work is a gap between fantasy and reality. I always feel that a cross-disciplinary approach to design leads to more interesting results. However, the processes which create a collection are there to create a base for the designer. People who wear the clothes do not always need to know about this process.”

Yet it’s fascinating to hear about the processes that led Chalayan to specific designs: for his A/W 09 collection, entitled ‘Earthbound’ and inspired by the principles of building engineering, he created concrete buildings for the body with the help of high-tech fabrics and foam employed to mould rigid and sculpted silhouettes for his coats, jackets and dresses.

As a child, Chalayan reveals, he was attracted by the power of the body, “I was so excited about anything to do with the body and I was brought up mainly by women which perhaps helped to fuel this fascination,” he recounts, “I started to create narratives around the body. In my culture, a lot of emphasis is placed on going out and looking good, it is a hot environment, which also creates a sexual charge around the body which always fascinated me. I guess fashion for me was the closest thing which celebrated the body and that’s why I decided to study it (...).”

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Congratulations Mareunrol’s!

Latvian designers Mārīte Mastiņa and Rolands Pēterkops from the Mareunrol’s duo appeared in this blog a couple of times, first last December after an interview I did with Rolands came out on Dazed Digital and, more recently, in March when they sent me via email new images of their "Private Detective" collection.

Well, a third blog is due today as they won the L’Oréal Grand Prize and the 1.2.3. prize at the 24th edition of the Hyères International Fashion and Photography Festival.

Here they are pictured with Diane Pernet, who's been a sort of mentor for them in the last few months, in Rome where “Mareunrol’s Private Detective” by Latvian film director Kristīne Kursiša was presented at the end of January during a reduced version of the film festival A Shaded View on Fashion Film.

At Hyères Mārīte and Rolands presented beige and dark brown trench coats with multiple folds and pleats, their by now iconic yellow housewife dress (also featured in Kursiša’s film) and a selection of deconstructed men's coats and jackets, all inspired by film noir and gangster and detective stories.

Belgian menswear designer Simon-Pierre Toussaint won with his cocooning duvet-like padded capes, trench coats lined with star map printed fabric and wooden armours the public prize and shared the Swarovski Prize with Norwegian Harald Lunde Helgesen, who created a menswear collection inspired by archaeology and archaeologists' assistants, litmus paper and colour separation. The Photography Grand Prize went instead to Swiss Linus Bill for his collages of surreally ordinary images.

Congratulations to all the finalists and winners and good luck on their future endeavours!  

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The Ballets Russes' 100th anniversary celebrations start here

The weekend is almost gone and a new week will start soon. To distract yourself from the thought that tomorrow is again Monday, try to think about the group visits - starting tomorrow - offered by the Victoria & Albert Museum Theatre and Performance Department to view costumes and items from Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes collections.
 
The V&A will celebrate the centenary of the first performance by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes next year with a major exhibition entitled “Sergei Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909-1929”, that will focus on the company's design, costumes, choreography, music and art. 

Soon after their debut during the 1909 season at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, the Ballets Russes were hailed as one of the most exciting, inspiring and influential dance companies.

Already in 1911, just two years after they debuted in Paris, they inspired an art exhibition of Léon Bakst's work at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. The following year the Fine Art Society in London organised the first exhibition of the Russian artist and further events followed featuring also Alexandre Benois, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov’s work.  

The Ballets Russes influenced with their work fashion, home and public decoration, inspiring many designers, from Paul Poiret to Yves Saint Laurent. There were echoes of the Ballets Russes's costumes even in Marc Jacobs' S/S 09 collection and in Chanel’s Pre-Fall 09 designs.

Despite the corps the ballet had such great influence upon the world of fashion, interest in the Ballets Russes' costumes was sparked only in later years. Sadly some of the costumes were lost in previous decades, while others were destroyed in a fire in 1958 or sold at various auctions to private collectors.

At the moment Stockholm’s Dansmuseet has one of the world’s most interesting collections from the Diaghilev era (1909–29). The Swedish dance museum started building its collection in the 60s and throughout the following years new purchases were constantly added. The Dansmuseet will run an anniversary exhibition, entitled "Ballets Russes in Paris", from 29th May 2009 until 10th January 2010, so there's plenty of time to plan a trip to go and admire the Swedish collections.

From 19th until 27th June 2009, the Dutch National Ballet will instead pay homage to the Ballets Russes with a programme featuring Michel Fokine’s Les Sylphides (1909), George Balanchine’s The Prodigal Son (1929) and Sheherazade, a world premiere by Krzysztof Pastor and an entirely new interpretation of Fokine’s eponymous showpiece. I love the poster for these events, conceived as a reinterpretation of Léon Bakst's illustration of Vaslav Nijinsky in the ballet L'Après-midi d'un Faun (Afternoon of the Faun, 1912).    

A few further notes about the visits at the V&A: the Theatre and Performance Collection holds Ballets Russes' costumes, sets, designs, programmes, photographs and drawings.

The visits at the V&A - led by Jane Pritchard, Co-curator of the 2010 exhibition - will take place from Monday 27th April to Friday 1st May 2009 (2.00-3.00pm).

You can click here to know more about the visits offered by the V&A and book your place. 

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Contemporary talismans, global messages: Super Fertile

There aren’t many jewellery labels that can boast of having been featured in the most disparate publications, from food magazines to the website of the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) association, but Kali Arulpragasam’s Super Fertile is, after all, a rather unconventional jewellery brand. 

Tackling in her previous collections themes as disparate as the world food crisis (‘Hunger’), countries affected by war (‘Tourism’) and animals in danger of going extinct (‘Endangered Species’), Kali’s pieces inspire both fashion-oriented articles and longer essays about vital contemporary issues.

Super Fertile’s new collection is entitled ‘The Real Super Stars’ and it’s a reaction to our celebrity-dominated world. Rather than paying homage to the stars who everyday haunt the pages of newspapers and magazines, the Internet and our TV screens, Kali decided to dedicate her latest collection to 10 inventors and scientists who have enhanced our lives. Among them there are also Christiaan Barnard (heart transplant), Alec Jeffreys (DNA fingerprinting), Garrett Morgan (traffic lights) and John Shepherd-Barron (ATM machine and pin).

Luxury jewellery might be for an elite market, but Super Fertile’s pieces are not regal ornaments. As the lookbook photos for the brand’s new collection prove - shot in India and showing ordinary people wearing Super Fertile designs surrounded by the invention Kali paid tribute to - they are indeed for everyone, or at least for all those people out there who want to spread a global message and make a bold statement. What’s precious about Super Fertile’s contemporary urban talismans is not the jewellery itself, Kali highlights, but the final message.

The quick Q&A with Kali that follows is an extract from a longer interview that will be featured in the next issue of Zoot Magazine (Spring/Summer 09 – available from May), in the meantime, you can also read my interview with Kali on Dazed Digital.

Question: Did you follow any jewellery design courses before launching your brand?
Kali Arulpragasam: When I started Super Fertile I thought that maybe I had to do it in order to be taken seriously, so I enrolled for an MA at Central Saint Martins. But I went there feeling that I wanted to learn the ropes on my own and didn’t want to spend time analysing what I did or explaining why I did it. While I was studying for my MA course I got an email from the New York Times, asking me to give them one sentence that could describe my next collection and I remember going into this interview at the college, mentioning it and asking the tutor if I should have actually done the course. They suggested me to keep on working on what I was doing, which I thought was nice of them. I prefer the way I’m learning now from the new problems I come up with and I like trying to tackle them with my collaborators. I think it works better for me in this way. Besides, because I don’t have a jewellery background, I have a new approach to things and I’m always trying to use new materials. 

Question: Who is Super Fertile’s ideal customer?
Kali Arulpragasam: I really want everyone to enjoy what I do and I don’t want to think of my brand as something for just one type of person. This is reflected also in my lookbooks: the most recent one was shot in India and shows ordinary people wearing Super Fertile’s designs surrounded by the inventions I paid tribute to. In every collection I do I try to question three things: I wonder if the design of a piece is new and fresh, if a piece is wearable and, last but no least, if the message it spreads is relevant. I don’t want Super Fertile to be pigeonholed in a box, as I think that art is for everyone and fashion is art.

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Mariano Fortuny Vs Roberto Capucci

The early May Bank Holiday break is drawing near and if you can afford it or you happen to be around Venice even for just a weekend, you have time until 4th May to go and visit the "Roberto Capucci at Palazzo Fortuny" exhibition.

The Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia is paying homage with this event to Capucci through thirty dress-sculptures, created between 1978 and 2009, and showcased at the Fortuny Museum.

If you are planning to stay in Venice for a longer time, prepare in advance and try to organise a personal "Fortuny tour": on 2nd May Fortuny fans will celebrate the 60th anniversary of his death, so a trip entirely dedicated to this talented artist would be the perfect way to pay homage to him. 

If you don’t have time and money, don’t despair, but read on, and, maybe this double post dedicated to Fortuny and Capucci will conjure up for you a bit of Venetian magic. Let our trip start then!

Mariano Fortuny: notes on his life (plus some tourist tips)

Born in Granada in 1871, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo was the second child of Mariano Fortuny y Marsal and Cecilia de Madrazo Garreta. 

When his father died in 1874 in Rome, Cecilia moved the family to Paris where her brother Raymundo de Madrazo lived.

Mariano grew up in the French capital surrounded by art and soon developed also an interest for the world of theatres. Electric lighting and the theatrical applications of electricity occupied his thoughts, but also stage sets and decoration interested him.

In 1889, Cecilia moved back the family to Venice, taking up residence in Palazzo Martinengo, on the Gran Canal, near the San Gregorio Church. The palazzo soon became a meeting place for many literati and artists and Mariano continued his painting studies while developing further interest in photography and stage sets.

At the end of the 1890s he started exhibiting his paintings publicly, first at the 7th International Exposition in Munich, then at the 3rd Venice Biennale and at the Societé Nationale de Beaux-Arts in Paris.

In 1899, he designed the scenes for an operetta at Countess Albrizzi’s private theatre in San Polo. He was so successful in this task that Giuseppe Giacosa, the Puccini librettist, suggested him to prepare the sketches for Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde that opened in December 1900 at La Scala. 

Fortuny worked on the scenes and costumes from his new studio, a workshop on the top floor of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, and even attempted to implement parts of La Scala lighting system. The staging was very successful and Fortuny went to Berlin and Paris to obtain recognition of his innovations.

While in Paris he also created the “Fortuny Dome”, a concave device that could be used to enhance the depth effect of the stage set. 

In the following years he concentrated on stage lighting and costumes and the restructuring of the Countess of Béarn’s private theatre, that featured his famous “dome” and a velvet stage curtain decorated with a fabric-printing technique that would made Fortuny famous in the following years.

The Countess’s theatre opened in 1906 and the new and innovative dome installed in it amazed many visitors, even foreign ones and soon the German company AEG got in touch with Fortuny to start selling his stage lighting systems.

In 1907 Fortuny produced his first item of clothing, the Knossos scarf that featured prints applied to it by means of wooden plates.

Researches into fabrics continued and soon he developed a technique for printing on silk and velvet.

While working on further theatre projects, Fortuny focused on experimenting on new chromatic ranges and fabric printing, inspired in his search for new and exciting colours by masters such as Titian and Tintoretto and infusing in his textile designs influences from China, Japan, Persia, Turkey, Northern Africa and Spain.

A few years after, in 1909, Fortuny registered a pleated silk fabric made with a machine he had invented. In the same year he patented a process for polychromatic printing on fabric and paper and, in November, he launched the Delphos Gown, a garment inspired by ancient Greek sculpture.

At the 1911 Decorative Arts Exposition in the Pavillon de Marsan of the Louvre, Fortuny exhibited dresses, tunics and scarves and soon success arrived, also thanks to many celebrities of the time, among them Eleonora Duse, Isadora Duncan, and the Marchesa Casati, who all favoured Fortuny’s designs.

With over 100 workers creating his pieces in the workshop at Palazzo degli Orfei, Fortuny’s production output increased. He opened a boutique in Paris and another in London and even showcased his fabrics in 1914 in New York, but World War I slowed down his work and researches.

It was only after the War ended that he managed to start his textile business again in partnership with Giancarlo Stucky.

Together with him he opened a new factory on the island of Giudecca and founded the Società Anonima Fortuny.

Tourist Tip 1: Giudecca can be reached by getting the N. 41 vaporetto just outside Venice Santa Lucia’s railway station. The Stucky flour mill has currently been turned into a 5 star hotel, but the Fortuny factory is still open and still creates printed cottons for interior decoration on machines designed by Fortuny himself.

This is the only factory in the world that knows how to obtain these precious fabrics and preserves the secret for his peculiar printing technique. You’ll see the Fortuny factory  from the vaporetto as you arrive at the first Giudecca stop, “Palanca”. Visitors are not allowed in the factory inner sanctum but the showroom is open from Monday to Friday, so just ring the doorbell and you will be allowed in the showroom.

Here you will find rolls and rolls of decorative fabrics for interiors in different colours, from mauve to intense blue, from bright red to pale yellow. Prices vary and one metre of fabric can even reach €500. If you are after a small souvenir you can buy a notebook with a beautiful cover in Fortuny fabric (prices start from around €50). NB There are quite a few companies in and around Venice that reproduce Fortuny textiles and motifs, but this is the only factory that produces fabrics with the original method, so if you want a genuine Fortuny souvenir this is THE place where you can get it.

Fortuny started producing interior design fabrics from the 1920s: his creations were used to decorate famous residences such as the house of actress Dina Galli and of the Princess of Noailles, and also hotel rooms, ships, museums and churches.

In 1924 Fortuny married in Paris Henriette Nigrin, who inspired him throughout his life, and the years that followed were quite successful for him as his paintings were exhibited at different art events, his costumes and stage sets appeared in various plays and he also received new commissions for his stage lighting systems.

In the early 30s he took out a patent for a carbon-pigment photographic paper he had invented, began selling his tempera paints created with a secret formula and took permanent possession of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei in Venice. Fortuny continued working on his stage lighting systems and costumes and died in Venice on 2nd May 1949.

Palazzo Fortuny (plus some tourist tips)

Tourist Tip 2: The Palazzo is near La Fenice Theatre, but get a map to avoid getting lost. The ticket office doesn't accept any credit/debit cards, so make sure you have some cash with you. Once you get at the Palazzo, stand in front of it for a while, admiring the façade and studying its architecture and flowery decorations and arabesques around the corners of the balconies.

Though the building was started in the mid-15th century, its architecture bears the signs of a long process of transformation that continued during many centuries.

The main style is late Gothic, though some elements remind of Mauro Codussi’s Renaissance edifices.

Among the most beautiful features of the palazzo there are the huge seven-light mullioned windows and a deep Venetian portego. Access to the ground floor is from Campo San Beneto, via a beautiful Gothic portal with a flat architrave. 
     
The palazzo was used from the late 1700s to host two different philharmonic academies that organised in it concerts and performances.

When Fortuny took possession of the building the palazzo had been divided in different apartments that were rented out, so he had to start a long restoration work to allow the building to regain its monumental dimensions and the proportions of its space.

Rooms and spaces were transformed by Mariano and Henriette into workshops where Fortuny’s experimental products were created. Spaces were filled up with objects or pieces of furniture Mariano created, from curved shelving to easel-benches for painting and drawing, working tables, reading desks and lamps.

The first floor of the palazzo was transformed into a space for living and working, while the second floor portego and the attic were used by the workers to produce Fortuny’s famous fabrics and costumes.

Nowadays it's not possible to visit Fortuny’s studio: its entrance is indeed protected by a glass screen through which visitors can admire his books, presses, photographic equipment, vials of colours and cases. Everything is perfectly preserved and stacked upon the shelves and the spirit of the alchemist who once lived and worked here seems to still be haunting this magic world.  

Roberto Capucci at Palazzo Fortuny (plus final tourist tip)

“Of all the outdoor and indoor gowns that Mme. De Guermantes wore, those which seemed most to respond to a definite intention, to be endowed with a special significance, were the garments made by Fortuny from old Venetian models. Is it their historical character, is it rather the fact that each one of them is unique that gives them so special a significance that the pose of the woman who is wearing one while she waits for you to appear or while she talks to you assumes exceptional importance, as though the costume had been the fruit of a long deliberation and your conversation was detached from the current of everyday life like a scene in a novel?” Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past – The Captive

Fortuny was a technical innovator, a talented artist with a passion for colours, a painter who also made dresses. In the same way Capucci is an architect and a sculptor, a creator of forms and, ultimately, a designer.

Fortuny was a painter, but Capucci’s colours come from artists such as Beato Angelico, Pisanello, Benozzo Gozzoli and Paolo Uccello, while his velvets and sartorial details evoke the clothes seen in paintings by Carpaccio, Titian, Tintoretto and Tiepolo.

This art-fashion connection is what links Fortuny and Capucci, and it's also the main idea behind this exhibition, curated by Daniela Ferretti, Enrico Minio and Milly Passigli.

Yet there are further points in common between the two artists, first and foremost the fact that the starting point for Fortuny’s designs was fabric – be it silk, cotton, linen, velvet, pongee, gauze or light satin – that he dyed, printed, pleated and embossed.

Capucci also starts from a piece of fabric, that he pleats, bends and transforms, creating contrasts of volumes, three dimensional folds and shadows, wearable structures that wrap up the body.

The exploration of Capucci’s work and sartorial prowess starts from the ground floor with a mikado silk wedding dress in two shades of red silk, an embroidered top and ample trail. Two voluminous wings jut out from the hips and a golden tulle veil covers the head, gently falling on the shoulders, the back and the trail.

Before going up the staircase that leads from the bookshop to the first floor, you encounter a green sculpture-dress in pleated matelasse taffeta with box-like green sleeves lined with bright fuchsia and red fabric that resemble two huge flowers. 

Stepping into the main room of the first floor is a bit like being transported into a strange and exotic land: Capucci’s creations are showcased among Fortuny’s pieces of furniture and objects, plaster casts of statues, lamps, paintings and portraits.

There are chairs and folding tables, custom-made etageres, painter’s easels and souvenirs from far-away lands such as precious daggers and an elephant’s ear.

Some paintings reveal Fortuny’s inspirations - from German and Wagnerian mythology to Giorgione or Titian - while the objects around the main room illustrate Fortuny’s genius, Capucci’s gowns are tangible proof of the latter's talents.

In this space you can admire a fuchsia and turquoise dress with a pagoda-like trail, the iconic 80s black dress with green lined cape-like sleeves and central mask; a multi-layered gold and silver lame dress with baroque waves on the sides that form a snail-like motif, a wedding dress inspired by Tiepolo in yellow ermesin taffeta with a dark pink and green trail and a black velvet number surrounded by minutely pleated spires of fabric.

The plant kingdom inspired a black velvet dress framed by two waves of satin leaves in dark Autumnal shades; the natural elements are evoked in a wave-like dress in different shades of green mikado silk with fuchsia lining (water) and in a red sauvage silk dress with a skirt created by pleated motifs tending upwards (fire).

The red silk “Ventaglio” dress with pleated wings that open up like a huge fan, Capucci's symbol of creative freedom, is showcased near the “Baroque Angel” dress, in pleated gold lame with two voluminous wings at the back.

In some cases the sculpture-dresses in bright colours contrast with the more delicate nuances of the paintings and fabrics that surround them, in others they seem to engage in a dialogue with them.

A 1989 orange and red pleated dress for example stands in front of glass displays that protect capes and textiles by Fortuny, while two clay coloured ermesin taffeta dresses with finely pleated trails are surrounded by Fortuny’s photographs, the colours of the images evoking the shades of the dresses.

Fortuny left us 12,000 negatives on glass plates and film. Some of the most beautiful images are unconventional photographs of Venice, with local women walking around the streets, going about their domestic routines. A few of these images are used as a background for the Capucci exhibition.
 
There are images of nude models used for painting studies; an iconic portrait of Giorgia Clementi wearing a hat, the contours of her face almost erased by a veil; Henriette is portrayed wearing the Delphos gown and the Marchesa Casati is shown in an extravagantly exotic dress at a party at Ca’ Venier dei Leoni with painter Giovanni Boldini at her side (1913).

On the first floor a glass cabinet displays precious sculpture-jewels by the Valenza-based Vhernier jewellery company.

Founded 25 years ago, Vhernier is famous for producing unique pieces with futurist and geometric lines, architectural earrings and bangles or animal-shaped brooches that evoke in their colours and forms Capucci's work.

On the second floor you are greeted by an early 80s design, a black and white creation with a huge red bow at the back and a big red coral like fibreglass mask on the front, completed by a futuristic headdress.

The designs on this floor are proof of Capucci’s continuous experimentation with geometrical patterns, architectural forms and contemporary art.

Capucci’s pink dress with multi-coloured pleated panels on the hips is for example showcased near the works of Lucio Fontana whose slashes are evoked in a fuchsia number with a green edged slash revealing a bright orange lining.

A black and white dress representing an exuberant orchid is instead exhibited next to Andy Warhol’s diamond dust shoe paintings and a black taffeta dress with a skirt that features hundreds of multi-coloured fabric “blades” that open up like a book, creating an amazing movement, stands next to Eduard Angeli’s “Lighthouse” painting.   

Tourist Tip 3 (for designers and artists): On the second floor there is a big wooden table set in front of two tall windows with a wonderful view of the roofs of the nearby palazzi.

If there is an exhibition there are usually a couple of catalogues lying around (in the case of the Capucci exhibition, there is also a copy of his notebooks with plenty of sketches and drafts by the designer himself that allow the visitor to discover the background research behind various designs) and visitors can stop and leaf through them for a while.

Since photographs are not allowed, bring a pad or a notebook with you and draw, take notes or simply sit for a few minutes looking out of the windows and be inspired. Try to make the most of your visit, by looking around yourself and exploring the important relationship between the colours in Fortuny’s paintings and in his materials.  

Before leaving have a final look at the bookshop that offers exhibition catalogues and a good selection of books about fashion (both in Italian and English).

As I said there are still a few days to enjoy the Capucci exhibition, but if you don’t manage to see it, remember that the Fortuny Museum is always open and usually hosts very interesting events that combine art and fashion.

Hope you enjoyed this mini-trip to Venice. Guess you really deserve some cicchetti now... 

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Genuinely useful eco-fashion?

The meeting of the G8 environment ministers discussing climate change, global investments in renewable energies and pollution opened yesterday in Syracuse, coinciding with Earth Day, a date that was more or less celebrated all over the world. Yet the eco-party for fashionistas started a couple of weeks ago on Yoox.

The global Internet retailer recently started a new project, Yooxygen, offering ethically and ecologically conscious products - clothes, accessories, design objects and books - and is at present also planning to offset 100% of its shipping carbon footprint.

Ilaria Venturini Fendi launched on Yoox her “Venetian Bag” collection for Carmina Campus that features a series of clutches in bright and vivid colours - red, blue, yellow and green - created by assembling aluminium slats that were once part of Venetian blinds.

Brazilian jewellery line Caboclo offers instead on the site a line of accessories created by native craftsmen from the Amazon rain forest and made in natural materials such as bones, seeds, stones, raffia and mother-of-pearl.

Multiple award winner Italian design firm Pandora Design, famous for focusing a large part of its production on biodegradable tableware objects, created exclusively for the Yooxygen initiative the “Aperitivo Bio”, an interesting “aperitivo” set comprising 4 cups, plates, sticks and forks, made in Mater-Bi, a 100% biodegradable polymer obtained from corn.

The eco-party continues on the Yoox site with a selection of vintage clothes and further eco-fashion products, from Momaboma and Espiritu Libre's paper bags to Stella McCartney’s designs in natural fibres, Camper’s footwear in coco fibres and jute and Katherine Hamnett slogan T-shirts.

Passionate readers can instead get further information on eco-sustainability with a selection of books on subjects such as green architecture and green design published by National Geographic, Phaidon, Steidl and Thames & Hudson.

The main partner of the initiative is the Green Cross International, an environmental non-governmental organization founded by President Mikhail Gorbachev. The NGO is active in 31 countries and aims at promoting actions that can ensure a just, sustainable and secure future for humanity.

In the next few months, Yooxygen will launch new actions and collaborations and while so far this sounds like an exciting and laudible initiative also thanks to side projects such as “Elements by Magnum”, a  multimedia essay produced by Magnum in Motion, a multimedia and digital project from the photographic agency Magnum Photos, done exclusively for Yoox, I find some of the projects rather worrying. 

Asking Costume National, C.P. Company and Emporio Armani to come up with an ecomask is one of them (I thought the main idea was trying to make the world a better place and not surrender and going around with a mask to avoid breathing polluted air…).

Inevitably you also start wondering if producing and buying more is actually the key to save the Earth. I honestly doubt the umpteenth Katherine Hamnett organic t-shirt with slogans such as “Choose Life” or "Save the Future" will actually save the planet rather than simply ending up clogging your wardrobe.

The very final dilemma then is about prices: a "Venetian bag" by Ilaria Venturini Fendi will set you back €390, the sort of price that will make you stop and wonder why not opting for a bejewelled leather and fur clutch for the same amount of money, while buying 4 aperitivo cups and plates (despite their exclusive design...) for €36 might be considered by some people as a waste when you can buy porcelain sets for even less. Yes, you may argue this is all meant to save our planet, but, ultimately, who will save our wallets?
 

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