A film is a powerful medium able to stir people’s imagination, but so is a catwalk show.
In Italy fashion entered the world of cinema through the creations of important designers and tailors, while costume designers involuntarily launched new trends by using particular materials, fabrics and accessories.
As the years passed, Italian directors showed a greater attention to detailed costumes and saw them as essential elements to highlight particular actions and moments in a film: the cut, folds and fabrics of a dress or a suit had to be perfect to give the actors an impeccable image on screen.
For fashion fans it became compulsory to get inspired by their idols: men copied Marcello Mastroianni’s elegance; women got their inspirations from Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Monica Vitti.
The exhibition "Peroni Collection – Italian Style on the Silver Screen", co-curated by Rankin and myself and opening in London on Wednesday, looks at iconic costumes born out of the fantasy of legendary directors in collaboration with their magnificent art directors, excellent costume designers and skilled artisans.
The exhibition sifts every image and photograph through the sieve of imagination and style, revealing how the cinematographic genius of many directors inspired the imagination of other artists and how film creativity rained down on fields of expression quite distant from those of cinema proving an inexhaustible source of aesthetic suggestions for the fashion industry.
"Peroni Collection – Italian Style on the Silver Screen analyses 60 years of films, trends and fashion, paying a tribute to those fashion maisons, tailoring houses, costume and fashion designers who contributed to create the magic of Italian cinema.
Among the films included there are also Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di Biciclette (Bycicle Thieves, 1948), Giuseppe De Santis' Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice, 1949), Michelangelo Antonioni's Cronaca di un Amore (Story of a Love Affair, 1950), Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (Beautiful, 1951), Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accattone (The Procurer, 1961), Federico Fellini's 8 ½ (1963), and Sergio Leone's C’era una volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968).
The collection has been sourced from different historical archives including the Florence-based Ferragamo Museum and Archivio Storico Foto Locchi, the Archivio Storico Fernanda Gattinoni and the Archivo Storico del Cinema, with exclusive images from the Fondazione Micol Fontana chronicling the connection between the historical Italian house of the Sorelle Fontana and Ava Gardner (and in particular the friendship between one of the Fontana sisters, Micol, and Gardner).
The exhibition brings together over 50 images to tell the story of Italian style in celluloid from the past half-century of film-making and also features exclusive accessories, such as the legendary “paparazzo shoes” designed by shoemaker Alberto Dal Co’ in 1953, a selection of hats by Borsalino, the historical hat manufacturer founded by Giuseppe Borsalino in 1857 in Alessandria, and shoes from the Ferragamo's Creations line, reproducing the original footwear Salvatore Ferragamo created for Ava Gardner and Marilyn Monroe.
"Peroni Collection – Italian Style on the Silver Screen" is at Proud Gallery, 161 King's Road, London, from 9th to 19th March 2011 (the private viewing event is tomorrow evening 6.30 pm-8.30 pm).
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