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

Colour Alchemy in Glass Jars

In the last few posts about butterflies and serpentine dances I mentioned early films coloured using the hand-stencilling technique.

The use of colours, their symbolism and meaning in art, film and fashion always fascinated me and, every time I visit an artist/fashion designer’s studio or creative space, I end up staring in a kind of enraptured trance at their paints, brushes, coloured pencils or fabric swatches.

One of my favourite artists’ studio remains Mariano Fortuny’s. Located inside Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei in Venice, the studio perfectly reflects the personality of this versatile artist.

Fortuny was a painter and photographer, but also a set, costume and fashion designer and lighting engineer, and his studio - crammed with books, sketchbooks, silk lampshades, lenses, electrical wires, catalogues, extracts and clippings from magazines, albums of photographs, engravings, optical instruments, magic lanterns and even a Pathé projection machine - displays his interests in different disciplines.

The best bit of the studio is definitely the tiny retreat behind his work table with shelves of unfinished tubes of colour, brushes, vials of dyes and inks, chalks, glass jars and vases with mysterious materials, powders, oxides, glues and lacquers. This space looks indeed like the cabinet of an alchemist.

You will discover more about Fortuny and his connections with fashion, divas and film at next week's screening of Rapsodia Satanica

But if you want to see some alchemical experiments, colours and illusions in action, check out the Le spectre rouge (The Red Spectre, 1907) directed by Segundo de Chomón and Ferdinand Zecca in the tradition of Georges Méliès. 

The Red Spectre - also included in the programme of the Fashion in Film Festival that kicks off in London tomorrow - features a demonic character playing illusion tricks such as wrapping women in fabrics, making them levitate and setting them on fire; producing three glass bottles in which three tiny women are trapped and conjuring up screens on which moving images are projected.

Throughout his experiments, the satanic figure is challenged by a good spirit represented by a woman who will eventually reduce him to an inanimate skeleton. The directors of this film blended visual trickery and colour effects with the skills of an alchemist, creating a series of early horror vignettes characterised by a touch of irony.

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More Butterflies, More Hand-Stencilled Films

My mind is very much taken at the moment by the use of the stencilling technique in early films, so today’s post continues the butterfly thread that started on Saturday.

That post mainly focused on serpentine and butterfly dances, yet more ballet inspired by butterflies were already popular in Italy in the early 1900s, as this image taken from the 1908 Polvere di Pirlimpinpin that featured 600 extras and costumes by Caramba.
Unfortunately, this image is in black and white, but if you're looking for coloured butterflies, check out the stencilled colours in the short film embedded at the end of this post, Tit for Tat (La peine du talion, 1906) by Gaston Velle.

Influenced and inspired by Georges Méliès, Velle directed films for French Pathé and for the Italian Cines in the early 1900s, shooting over 50 films - some of them documentaries - between 1903 and 1911. He arrived at Cines with set designers Dumesnil and Vasseur and the cameramen Vauzèle who was an expert in special effects, collaborated with Italian director Mario Caserini and went back to Paris in 1907. 

Tit for Tat follows the fate of a butterfly collector and his assistants who end up in a wood populated by vaudeville dancers in colourful outfits. There are some wonderful chromatic effects in the film when the collector checks out the butterflies he captured, but the film is also ironic and entertaining with the two assistants transformed into grasshoppers and the collector being pinned to a giant cork by a revengeful butterfly court.
 
"Tit for Tat" is included in one of the special screenings at Tate Modern during the Fashion in Film Festival on 3rd December.

 

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Early Diva Behaviour: La Falena (1916) and Malombra (1917)

Today’s post is directly connected with Thursday’s since it features two clips from films with Lyda Borelli.

The first clip is taken from Carmine Gallone’s La falena (literally, The moth, 1916, a title that also calls to mind yesterday's butterfly theme), inspired by Henri Bataille’s play La phalene (1913); the second is an extract from Gallone’s Malombra, an adaptation of Antonio Fogazzaro’s 1881 eponymous novel.

In La falena Borelli starred as Thea, a sculptress diagnosed with phthisis right before her marriage with Filippo. Abandoning him, she decides to live dissolutely until her death. Yet, as her health rapidly declines, she organises a last party, inviting also Filippo. The man doesn't turn up, though, since he got married with another woman. In a last theatrical and desperate act, Thea shows herself naked to her guests, so that they will remember the perfection of her body after her death, then she commits suicide. 

In Malombra, Borelli starred next to handsome Amleto Novelli. The film told the story of Marina di Malombra obliged to live in a castle on the Lake Como until the day of her wedding. After reading letters written by an ancestor called Cecilia, she discovers the latter was driven to death by her uncle. Identifying with Cecilia, Marina decides to revenge her, murdering her uncle and also her suitor (a sort of typical femme fatale/diva behaviour...), before throwing herself from a mountain.

Though the two clips are very short they provide some good examples of early diva behaviour in action and could maybe help understanding better the grand gestures and movements the "borellismo" trend implied.

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Of Butterflies and Women: Loïe Fuller Vs "Farfalle" (1907)

Dance fans definitely remember Loïe Fuller, even though dance experts often consider her performances as exotic gimmicks.

Born in 1862, Fuller was indeed a theatre actress and worked in burlesque and vaudeville shows. She is mainly remembered as the creator of the iconic “Serpentine Dance”, characterised by sinuous weaving and spiralling movements.

The actress came up with her extraordinary dance movements during the rehearsals for Trip to Chinatown. Somebody had given her a translucent Chinese silk skirt and she discovered while dancing in front of a mirror that the skirt produced wonderful golden reflections and effects when hit by the sun.

The first performance she did using the garment wasn’t successful, but this experiment provided her interesting inspirations for her following shows.
 

As the years passed, Fuller – who was also a pioneer of theatrical lighting techniques and held patents for chemical compounds to create colour gel and use chemical salts for luminescent lighting and garments – regularly performed at the Folies Bergère, mesmerising her audiences.

The dancer would indeed create different shapes - from flowers to butterflies and flames - by moving in the darkness her fantastically coloured phosphorescent swaths of silk attached to a pair of hand-held wands.

You can get a better idea of what the "Serpentine Dance" looked like from this 1896 film by Auguste and Louis Lumière.

Fuller’s style started a trend, inspiring dancers such as Annabella (1897), Crissie Sheridan (1897) and Ameta (1903) and influencing early films.

Several films shot in black and white but hand-coloured in bright and vivid shades, featured performances of "Serpentine" or "Butterfly Dances", among them also the 1907 Italian film entitled Farfalle (Butterflies – often misspelled as ‘Farfale’) and shot by an anonymous director for the Cines production house.

The film starts with a rather awkward dance inspired by the Orient and Japan (an indirect reference maybe to Fuller’s Chinese dancers who were also the subject of one section of W.B. Yeats' poem Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, though it should be remembered that Japanese exoticism was very popular in Italy at the end of the 1800s, as it was also proved by the success of operettas such as The Geisha by Sidney Jones, staged in Turin in 1897), though reminding in the movements and exaggerated gestures the style of the Commedia dell’Arte (improvisational theatre – popular since the 16th century in Italy).

As the story develops the short experimental film turns into a marvellously multicoloured surprise with human butterflies twirling on the screen.

Though Farfalle should be taken as a divertissement rather than a proper film, it was very influential.

Italian poet Guido Gozzano dedicated two poems to butterflies L'amico delle Crisalidi (The Chrysalids' Friend, 1912) and Messaggera Marzolina (March Messenger, 1916).

Gozzano also submitted a few ideas to the Italian production house Ambrosio for a documentary on the life of butterflies.

There was actually an early documentary shot on the subject entitled La vita delle farfalle (The Life of Butterflies, 1911) that won at the time an award for best scientific documentary, though film historians deny Gozzano was involved in it. 

Nino Oxilia’s Rapsodia Satanica also features a colourful butterfly scene connecting the main actress Lyda Borelli to the metamorphosis theme and to Fuller's iconic performances.

Farfalle will be screened next week during the Fashion in Film Festival, but you can also watch it online on the European Film Treasures site. I'm sure its flashes of unexpected colour combinations and movements will prove very inspirational not only for fashion collections, but also for fashion presentations and catwalk shows. Enjoy!

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The Last Bohemian Dream: on Nino Oxilia’s "Rapsodia Satanica" (1915)

This post is a follow-up to yesterday's and focuses on the film I will introduce next week at the Barbican during the 3rd Fashion in Film Festival.

I would like to dedicate this post to all my friends developing projects that involve art, fashion and film. 

Wartime evoked apocalyptic visions of death, but didn’t manage to dim the lights on that form of entertainment that had fascinated Italians since the early 1900s, cinema.

Directors kept on producing films while the country went through enormous sacrifices and young men left for the front carrying images of their favourite actresses with them, consolidating the legend of “divismo”, the obsessive diva cult of those years.

Hiding in its monuments, fountains and buildings esoteric and occult symbols and preserving in its local Egyptian museum mysterious papyruses emanating negative energies, Turin was already considered at the time a city with an intriguing supernatural side.

In 1915 Turin-born journalist, poet and writer Nino Oxilia set to shoot a new film, Rapsodia Satanica (Satanic Rhapsody), for the Cines production house. Directors favoured then historical, dramatic, comic and adventure films, but Oxilia displayed a cinematic taste of figurative origins.

Influenced by irrational atmospheres, early lightning experiments, paintings, an aestheticism that recalled Gabriele D’Annunzio’s, and ballets and films that blended theatre, music and a passion for costumes, Oxilia shot a Faustian story steeped in the phantasmagorical colours of dreams and grazed by a hint of melancholy.

The plot revolved around an elderly lady called Alba D’Oltrevita (literally “Dawn-Beyond-Life”), the owner of the Castle of Illusions, who makes a deal with the devil: she will regain youth, if she gives up romance. Yet, when Alba, now a reborn seductive Salome, meets two brothers, Tristano and Sergio, she fatally tempts them, breaking the pact with the devil.    

Rapsodia Satanica introduced audiences to a new kind of cinema in which sound and images went together with art, architecture, dance, music and fashion, attacking the senses and disrupting traditional patterns.

The main inspirations for this film are to be traced back in experimental ballets such as the hymn to modernism entitled Excelsior, staged in 1881 and in 1908; in the experiments with figurative and rhythmic abstractions carried out in early Futurist films directed by Arnaldo Ginna and Bruno Corra in 1910 and in Baldassarre Negroni’s Histoire d’un Pierrot (1913), shot with a musical accompaniment and screened with a synchronised score played live by an orchestra.

Actress Lyda Borelli, starring in the film as Alba D’Oltrevita, incarnated D’Annunzio’s feminine ideal, a tenebrous and sensual femme fatale. Journalist and critic Matilde Serao praised Borelli for her ability to transform herself in her films, adapting to different roles.

Yet, in Rapsodia Satanica Borelli went through a radical metamorphosis: from an elderly lady she turned into a wild Salome, then became a human butterfly à la Loïe Fuller and was finally transfigured by the camera into a high priestess of Eros and Thanatos.

This transformation was achieved also through Mariano Fortuny’s dresses that draped with naturalness on her body: Borelli’s play of veils and sensual motions called to mind the images of dancers at the opening of the Countess of Béarn’s theatre that Fortuny had restructured or his photographic portraits of a veiled Giorgia Clementi.

Seeking contaminations and amalgamating them with the most varied stimuli, Oxilia borrowed from Fortuny the pochoir, or stencilling, technique: while the versatile artist used it to decorate his precious fabrics, Oxilia’s stencilling in colour injected new life into the film.

Red, pink, yellow, blue and green created rich and complex chromatisms, amplifying motions, highlighting the scenes, giving life to a visual polyphony in which the details responded to one another in a harmonic ideal of beauty. 

In his 1920 essay Il mio credo cinematografico novelist Lucio D’Ambra described cinema as "fantasy for the eyes" and predicted for the future frequent collaborations between this powerful medium and different artists. Oxilia anticipated D’Ambra with Rapsodia Satanica, claiming: “Cinema represents for me the sun, the light, it embodies beauty (…). Theatre and music produced melodrama; painting and storytelling gave life to cinema.”   

Oxilia’s Rapsodia Satanica was the last dream of a bohemian: shot in 1915, the film was released two years later, after Pietro Mascagni made the final changes to his score.

In November 1917 Oxilia died on the front line, during the battle of Monte Tomba that followed the withdrawal from Caporetto. A year later, at the climax of her career, Lyda Borelli left the stage and the glamorous world of cinema to get married, leaving legions of fans and elegant women who imitated her manners and style, bereft. 

A new chapter in the history of cinema opened, but Oxilia’s spell-bounding rhapsody remained to bewitch, enchant and mesmerise generations to come.

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Lyda Borelli, Divine Icon of Style

The 3rd Fashion in Film Festival opens next week in London (more about it in the next few days), so, to celebrate it, I will try to mainly focus on film and fashion in the next posts.  

Since I will be introducing one of the films in the programme, Nino Oxilia’s Rapsodia Satanica (Satanic Rhapsody) next week at the Barbican, I would like to focus today on the main actress featured in this film, Lyda Borelli, because she had some wonderful connections with fashion and style.

Borelli was born in La Spezia on 22nd March 1887 from Napoleone Borelli and Cesira Banti. Both her parents were theatre actors and it was only natural for Lyda to follow her parents’ steps.

She debuted in a theatre play in 1902: at the time Lyda looked like an ethereal Pre-Raphaelite women and, in later years, she incarnated Gabriele D’Annunzio’s ideal of feminine beauty.

At 18 she already played in main roles and soon became one of D’Annunzio’s favourite actresses. She starred in 1904 in D’Annunzio’s La Figlia di Jorio (The Daughter of Jorio) and the decadent poet and writer dedicated her Il ferro and Più che l’amore.

In 1908 Borelli had already turned into an icon of style: many elegant women started imitating the way she dressed, moved and even suffered on stage. In 1913 she starred together with Mario Bonnard in her first film, Ma l’amor mio non muore (Everlasting Love) by Mario Caserini, one of the most famous Italian directors of silent films. The movie was very successful and consolidated her fame.

Between 1914 and 1918 she shot 14 films and 2 documentaries; at the climax of her career she married count Vittorio Cini, a powerful man and entrepreneur, and retired, devoting her life to her family (she had four children, Giorgio, Mynna, Yana and Ylda) living between Venice and Rome, where she died in 1959.

The legend says that when the curtain fell at the end of her last play, people in the audience started crying and throwing her flowers: it was almost unbelievable for them to think that Lyda Borelli had just acted for the last time and some critics wrote that was a national day of mourning.

Borelli combined the decadence of D’Annunzio’s heroines, French elegance and Italian beauty and her acting was mainly based on excessive gestures, painful expressions and languid gazes.

She was essentially a dark femme fatale representing desire and sensuality. She often interpreted characters defeated by diabolical destinies who ended up killing themselves (often with poison – she died in 8 out of 14 films…).

Some critics stated she had very limited acting skills and her talent stood in a very special power she had of turning through her gestures and movements unachievable, unattainable desires, dreams and illusions into a sort of tangible reality. Antonio Gramsci, who in 1917 worked as a theatre reviewer, criticised her stating she represented a heightened form of sensuality, “a part of a primordial and prehistoric humanity” that had managed to cast a spell on the audience. 

From a fashion and style point of view Borelli was very important for two main reasons: she had a favourite fashion designer, artist Mariano Fortuny (admired also by Eleonora Duse) and deemed his creations as vital in her films, and she started a peculiar phenomenon defined by the term “borellismo” and the verb “borelleggiare”, that, included even in encyclopaedias and dictionaries of the Italian language, mainly referred to women, meant to pose, dress and move like Lyda Borelli.

Novelist Lucio D'Ambra wrote about her in 1937: “The new goddess eclipsed with her aesthetic prestige all the others; young Italian women literally moulded themselves on this sinuous statue that, struck by love pangs, harmoniously twisted and turned like a sensual music. Women at the time loved her grand gestures on stage and on the big screen and tried to imitate as much as they could those plastic yet sensual movements. What later on happened with Greta Garbo, had happened in Italy with Lyda Borelli a few years earlier. It was easy to meet in the literary salons and cafes, at the theatre and in the streets many little Borellis who starved themselves ending up looking like sinuously serpentine shadows, thin, wrapped up and draped in the shortest fabric swatches they could find among the stocks of the silk shops.”

The "borellismo" trend only lasted a few years, disappearing soon after the actress retired. Today’s vapid celebrities and supposed instant icons of fashion and style dictating us how to dress and what to look like, should maybe ponder a bit about Borelli's life.

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Art, Architecture and Hosiery: Emilio Cavallini's Magnificent Obsessions

It may be difficult to talk about hosiery, art and architecture in the same post.

Yet, luckily, there is an Italian designer who managed to produce hosiery moving from very artistic inspirations, Emilio Cavallini.

Born in San Miniato in 1945, Cavallini graduated in economics and soon after decided to follow his passion and dedicated himself to fashion and style.

During his frequent trips to London he also met Mary Quant who turned into one of the first designers he collaborated with. 

Cavallini opened his own company, Stilnovo, in San Miniato in 1970.

To experiment further he acquired a hosiery stock from a factory that was closing down and started re-elaborating it, adding striped and polka dot motifs (fashion design students pay attention!).

The entrepreneur and designer actually took inspiration from art when he started working on the decorative motifs to decorate his hosiery, trying to turn this simple accessory into a vitally important part of women's wardrobes.

His geometrical styles, black and white optical motifs and bold colours quickly became very successful, marking a boom for Cavallini's products between the end of the 70s and the early 80s (a pair of Cavallini tights was the epitome of stylishness when I was a young girl...).

In the 80s the brand expanded into the ready-to-wear market, while continuing to produce hosiery and collaborating with famous fashion houses and labels, including Dior, Balenciaga, Gucci and Alexander McQueen.

As the years passed, Cavallini also focused on new passions, such as maths and architecture, using these disciplines to create innovative and modern patterns (check out the embedded video at the end of this post for further architectural and arty inspirations also regarding surface elaborations), while experimenting with new technologies and launching seamless designs in natural and synthetic fibres. 

A recently released book entitled Magnificent Obsession and published by Skira celebrates Emilio Cavallini's story. The best parts of the book are definitely the ones dedicated to the designer's inspirations that combine art, architecture, geometry and graphic design. Highly recommended if you're into these disciplines and looking for a book to add to your personal Christmas Wish List.

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All Fashion's a Stage: Teatro alla Moda

A while back I did a post on fashion designers who created during the 1900s,  costumes for the theatre, ballet and opera.

There have been a few contemporary designers – among them Iris van Herpen who recently did the costumes for a production of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, directed by Dutch choreographer Nanine Linning – who are currently renewing this tradition.

Yet many of them seem to be more interested in creating costumes for ephemeral fashion icons and pop stars than for theatre, ballet or opera shows.

You get indeed the feeling that, rather than establishing long-lasting relationships with the highest forms of art, too many designers are at the moment lured by the possibilities offered by instant fame and by the superficiality of being en vogue now.  

An exhibition entitled "Teatro alla Moda" (Theatre à la Mode) - that recently opened in Rome - is instead rediscovering the long-standing connections between Italian fashion houses and costumes, and the art and craftsmanship behind some of these designs. 

The event - with a title inspired by a satirical 1720 essay by poet, writer, composer and lawyer Benedetto Marcello that focused on opera - is organised at the Museo della Fondazione Roma in Via del Corso (on until 5th December 2010) and features 100 original costumes, sketches, drafts and video installations with clips from different shows.

The costumes showcased are borrowed from different private and public collections (mainly from Milan’s La Scala and Piccolo Theatre, Rome’s Opera, Parma’s Regio Theatre, Naples’s San Carlo and the National Opera of Washington DC) and the exhibition is divided in eight different sections.     

"Teatro alla Moda" starts with a focus on the 80s, when Italian designers first started collaborating with important directors, set designers, singers and dancers.

This period of time was very important since designers infused in the shows their imprint in such a strong way that many critics started talking about “Missoni’s Lucia di Lammermoor” or “Armani’s Così fan Tutte”, rather than mentioning the directors of the shows.  

Among the most interesting costumes included in this section there are Gianni Versace’s designs for Richard Strauss’s Capriccio (1990) worn by Dame Kiri te Kanawa, full 18th century dresses with extravagantly ample petticoats and panniers sprinkled with multi-coloured crystals that create geometric motifs inspired by Sonia Delaunay’s works.

The second section is instead dedicated to Fendi and fur coats, cloaks or costumes with fur inserts designed for Verdi, Puccini, Mozart and Bizet’s productions.

Apart from three examples of costumes from Bizet’s Carmen (1986), among the best pieces in this section there is a pink fur cloak designed in 1984 and worn by Raina Kabaivanska in an edition of La Traviata directed by Mauro Bolognini, with costumes by Piero Tosi.

The next section provides instead an interesting insight into Missoni’s Autumn/Winter 2010 collection.

As you may remember, that collection was inspired by Scotland and Africa and the historic Italian fashion house created in 1983 costumes inspired by Scottish atmospheres for Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, while the house's costumes for the Italia 90 World Cup opening night show featured references to African culture and abstract art mixed with the fashion house’s trademark zigzagging motifs. 

Viktor & Rolf's fans will definitely enjoy the section dedicated to Roberto Capucci that features some of the most experimental designs for the stage he ever created.

In 1986 Capucci designed 12 costumes in white and silver taffeta with an 11-metre trail for the vestals in Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma staged at the Verona Arena (Lady Gaga, beat this...).

Pink, orange, red and green explode instead in Capucci’s designs created for opera singers such as Anna Caterina Antonacci and Raina Kabaivanska.

Armani dominates the fifth section of the exhibition: the designer created his first costumes in 1980 for Schonberg’s Erwartung at Milan’s la Scala.

Armani’s love affair with theatre and opera continued through the years with Richard Strauss’s Elektra (1994), Offenbach’s Les Contes D'Hoffmann (1995), Mozart’s Così fan Tutte (1995) and Verdi’s Rigoletto (2000), though he is more famous for his contributions to ballet shows and musicals such as Neumeier’s Bernstein Dances.

Antonio Marras’ costumes for Hippolyta and Titania in A Midsummer’s Night Dream (2008) - in the sixth section of the exhibition - have instead a dreamy, yet dark and folkish quality about them as they are decorated with metallic appliqués, embroideries and sequins. 

The seventh section is dedicated to a different group of designers and costumes and includes Romeo Gigli’s 1995 colourful and surreal designs for Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte; Alberta Ferretti’s white, red and black costumes for Carmen (2001); Coveri’s dresses for The Great Gatsby (2000) inspired by Art Deco, jazz and Charleston, and Valentino’s works for the modern opera based on the life of Rodolfo Valentino, entitled The Dream of Valentino (1994). 

The last section is dedicated entirely to Gianni Versace and this is definitely the best one because it shows the strong passion the late designer nurtured for the stage, a passion his sister didn’t inherit and an obsession that too many Italian designers forgot about.

Versace collaborated with some of the best dancers, choreographers and directors, among them Maurice Béjart, Bob Wilson, Roland Petit, John Cox, William Forsythe and Twyla Tharp, creating masterpieces for Richard Strauss’ Josephlegende (1982), Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (1984) and Strauss’ Salomé (actually the Salomè connection deserves a separate post...).

Versace’s inspirations and vivid imagination seemed to work at their best in the most extravagant costumes displaying incredible chromatic combinations, Baroque motifs, sculpted lines, graphic motifs inspired by Mirò and Oriental elements reminiscent of Paul Poiret.

The best costume he ever created remains the 1987 gargantuan Matrioska dress in hand-painted silk shantung with embroideries and appliquéd motifs for the "Souvenir de Leningrad" ballet, choreographed by Béjart.

This ensemble can indeed be conceived as a symbol of Versace's joie de vivre and exuberance.

There is a negative note about this exhibition and that regards the way the costumes are displayed as - despite the video installations - it's sometimes difficult to imagine the effects these designs had when brought to life by a dancer, and actor or a singer.

Yet it's still very inspirational to be able to explore this endless connection between fashion and the stage and to be reminded every now and then that - as Versace taught us - fashion can have a role in all the arts.      

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Adventures through Pirate Silks

When we see a beautiful design characterised by striking prints we almost give it for granted, maybe praising the designer who created it, but rarely wondering which textile company worked on the fabric employed.

A recently opened exhibition at the Swiss National Museum in Zurich is currently attempting to give us a different perspective on prints by rediscovering a vitally important archive from a Zurich-based textile company.

Entitled “Soie Pirate (Pirate Silk)”, the exhibition explores the secrets behind the Abraham Textile archive, donated in 2007 to the Swiss Museum by the Hilda and Gustav Zumsteg Foundation.

The exhibition is the result of two intensive years of studies carried out by The Zurich Silk Association and it is conceived as a journey through handicraft, glamour and innovation.

The story of the Abraham Ltd. company started in 1878 when Jakob Abraham was a partner in Königsberger & Rüdenberg.

As the decades passed, Gustav Zumsteg (who died in 2005 at 89) became one of the key characters in the company.

Zumsteg started as a humble apprentice but soon became a partner of Ludwig Abraham in 1943, turning into a skilled businessman and bringing some interesting and vital innovations into the company.

He was also an artist and, inspired by the works of art exhibited at the Zurich-based Kronenhalle restaurant - owned by his mother Hulda - he used colours as if he were a painter, creating silks characterised by abstract motifs, colourful butterflies, roses or checks.

He also became an important link between the textile industry and the main Haute Couture designers such as Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Dior and Hubert de Givenchy, while he was a very close friend of Yves Saint Laurent with whom he shared a passion for books and music.

The exhibition starts from the early days of the company, but has a strong focus on the Abraham collections, with many reference and sample books divided in motifs and themes such as “Roses”, “Glamour”, “Animals” or “Black & White”.

Fashion designers and students will definitely find interesting the section about the fabric library and the printing processes. 

Abraham did not actually print or weave the textiles itself, but commissioned the work to other companies, based in Switzerland, but also in other countries such as Italy where Zumsteg often collaborated with the Como-based Ratti.

In 1955 the company decided to cut four metres of the most beautiful fabrics produced ever year and preserve them in its archives and two media stations included in the exhibition allow to view 700 lengths - or “coupons” - of fabric, but also Abraham designers’ sources of inspiration, together with swatch books of Lyonnais silk.

Fashionistas will instead rejoice at the high fashion creations by Balenciaca, Givenchy and Saint Laurent exhibited and at the fashion photographs included that hail from the 40s and 90s and also feature images of film icons such as Catherine Deneuve and Audrey Hepburn. 

“Soie Pirate” closes with a special showcase: five contemporary designers – Akris, Diane von Fürstenberg, Dries van Noten, Heiner Brambilla and Peter Pilotto – were asked to select a fabric from the Abraham archive and create a garment or an outfit, bridging in this way the gap between this historical company and contemporary fashion.

The exhibition is accompanied also by a series of workshops about patterns, fabrics and screen-printing.

It would be great to see Soie Pirate, or at least some of its sections, touring or maybe being combined with another event maybe based in a silk district in another country.

In the meantime you can enjoy Abraham's kaleidoscopic textiles also thanks to two books linked with this event, Soie Pirate. The History of Abraham Ltd (volume 1) and Soie Pirate. The Fabric Designs of Abraham Ltd. (Volume 2), both published by Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess (available together or separately).

"Soie Pirate. The Abraham Textile Archive Zurich" is at the Swiss National Museum until 13th February 2011. 

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Pretty Vacant: Fashion Collaboration Vs Creative Collaboration

I’m growing more and more disillusioned with the fashion industry.

If the world had come to its sad end last week, many players in the fashion industry would have never realised it since they were too busy raving and ranting about the Lanvin x H&M collaboration, the ultimate collection that should allegedly turn all of us – or at least those who will manage to put their hands on some items from the collection – from ordinary and common pariahs into elegant and chic stars.

Yet, while this clever marketing ploy scored another point in favour of H&M making the just released Valentino capsule collection for Gap look like the Cinderella of the situation, I’m left wondering if it would be possible for the fashion industry to go beyond the mere commercial collaboration and truly create something useful, stimulating and lasting to enhance the quality of people’s lives.

In the last few days I’ve been thinking a lot about projects such as the “Vacant NL” installation created by Rietveld Landscape for the 12th International Architecture Biennale in Venice (on until today).

The project moved from a critique of the Dutch government that failed to make use of the enormous potential of vacant buildings and suggested to employ them as spaces to create complex collaborations between professionals working in different fields, such as architecture, design, digital media, fashion, science and technology.

 
Collaborating together in these experimental labs, creative initiators and pioneers could originate new responses to the needs of our society, while sharing their knowledge and ideas.

Such projects would generate dynamic inspirations, helping to develop lasting cultural activities that could combine art and media, producing innovative urban and technological achievements.

I really wish the principle behind this project could be applied to the fashion industry as well. If you have been following this blog for a while, you may have realised that there are quite a few posts on architecture and science, disciplines in which teams of people are usually at work together. 

So far in fashion we have mainly seen two entities - that is a fashion designer and a retailer - working to produce something commercial. There are indeed very few examples of artistic projects involving fashion or launched by fashion companies that do not have any major second aims like selling us something.

Yes, you're right, the fashion industry is not a charity and to sustain itself it must sell things. But, at the same time, I think the moment has come for it to change and transform itself radically by opening up to new forces, that is cultural entrepreneurs, engineers and programmers, able to create urban labs in which interdisciplinary work can be carried out.

I do think that, despite what they want us to believe, the future is definitely not in the umpteenth commercial collaboration (though Henry Holland doesn't think so...).

A collaboration generates money and interest for a fashion house and a retailer, but it doesn’t enrich any of us in the long term (and makes young fashion students erroneously believe a collaboration will grant their fashion house financial salvation one day...).

I strongly believe that genuine cross-fertilisation between different creative forces will eventually become the crucial way towards the most relevant contribution the fashion industry could give to society and, eventually, it will even get us out of the impasse of the current economic crisis by creating new jobs and unleashing the enormous potential within us.

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