A truncated military tower, Orsanmichele (View this photo) is the oddest-looking church in Florence.
The first building erected on this site was a small oratory secreted in the orchard of vegetable garden (orto) of a Benedictine monastery and open loggia with a grain warehouse upstairs.
A larger church stood on the site from the 9th century, San Michele ad Hortum or San Michele in Orte (contracted in Orsanmichele).
The church was replaced by a grain market in the 13th century but the place retained its religious associations.
Giovanni Villani, a chronicler, wrote indeed in the 1300s that “The lame walked and the possessed were liberated”, after visiting a miraculous image of the Virgin painted on one of the market pillars.
Unfortunately, no miracle happened last Thursday during Gareth Pugh's presentation at the Pitti event organised inside the Orsanmichele church.
Upon entering the ground floor the visitors were introduced to a room with a giant golden cube hanging from the ceiling surrounded by the impressive 1300s restored statues that once filled the niches of the building and that were built with the money of the rising middle class of merchants and their guilds.
Though the setting was supposed to create contrasts between the modern, futuristic and mysterious golden cube and the ancient statues, it was painful to see Nanni di Banco's Quattro Coronati, Donatello's St George and St Mark, a gothic Madonna and Child, Ghiberti's John The Baptist and Verrocchio's Christ and Thomas surrounded by melting hot candles (any art historians and restorers reading this screaming already?).
After going up several flight of stairs, visitors reached the top floor where a new film directed by Ruth Hogben was projected onto two screens hanging from the ceiling.
The film featured models in Gareth Pugh designs interspersed with shots of a group of dancers and called to mind the video that accompanied Pugh's S/S 11 collection.
Screened in two different sessions (one for the main press, the other for the pariah press and other assorted guests...), the film was cleverly shot and assembled, showing a sort of obsessive phantasmatic vision based on a main dichotomy, abstraction Vs physicality, and accompanied by Matthew Stone's dramatic score.
Yet, though seductive and sensorial, this hypnotic barrage of images left you rather cold. Besides, the mini-collection Pugh created for this event - comprising six designs revolving around a basic palette of black, cobalt blue and gold allegedly referencing art, architecture, religious iconography and Florence - wasn't really that strong or memorable.
A neoprene coat with angular tails with a matching suit, a mini-dress with gloves covered in gold scales plus a theatrical headdress (View this photo), armbands (View this photo) and shoes (View this photo) in the designer's trademark triangular pattern, were typical Pugh designs.
Yet the mini-dress with a blue cape at the back (and seams that had come apart on one side of the dress - View this photo - didn't anyone in the Pitti offices have any thread and a needle?) together with a long gown in a slashed stretchy fabric reeked of déjà vu.
Apparently, Florence inspired and informed the collection - mainly based on contrasts, darkness and light, soft and hard, structure and fluidity, masculinity versus femininity - yet you got the feeling that, rather than referencing Florentine art and architecture (that vaguely appeared at the very beginning of the video), Pugh was referencing the tacky golden furnishing of the Cavalli Club.
The designer also mentioned Caravaggio among his influences, though the only reference to the painter was in the use of chiaroscuro in the video that actually displayed in the final images showing the dancers forming statuesque groups some connections with Pontormo's figure groups.
You wonder why the quality of the pieces wasn't that impeccable especially on a tailoring level.
Was it because the collection was put together without really caring about what the press may have said since Pugh showcases anyway his designs in Paris?
Or was it maybe the worrying proof that young designers must be allowed to grow up and develop before being pumped up as "the next big thing"?
Who knows. It's a shame though that nobody with a proper background in Florentine art and architecture sat down with Pugh and tried to explain him something about Florence as in this case I'm sure the results would have been a bit more exciting and coherent and they would have also displayed a bit more research.
No wonder then that senior fashion critics and journalists who know more about the technicalities of fashion and tailoring (think about Suzy Menkes) went around the Pitti event with a rather perplexed expression on their faces.
Will Pugh be back in shape for Paris Fashion Week?
Let's hope so, since, after the previous collections, the few designs created for the Pitti represented an anti-climax in his career, proving that everything that goes (very quickly) up must definitely come (very quickly) down.
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