If you’re in or around Philadelphia and you’re into fashion, you shouldn’t miss Roberto Capucci’s exhibition (on until 5th June) at the local Museum of Art.
The event is organised in collaboration with the Fondazione Roberto Capucci and features some of the most interesting designs he created throughout his career.
The exhibition is very aptly entitled “Roberto Capucci: Art into Fashion” and looks at the career of the Italian designer analysing the inspirations behind his most famous designs.
Moving from the ‘50s, that is the early days of Italian fashion with “Bista” Giorgini organising the first catwalk shows in Florence, the exhibition is divided into different sections.
The first one looks at Capucci’s early standout designs such as the innovative Nove gonne (Nine Skirt) silk taffeta dress (also known as the "Dieci Gonne" - ten skirt - dress depending on where you start counting the skirts...).
This design, created in 1956, featured tiered curving circular skirts enveloping a knee-length sheath.
The dress became so iconic at the time that it was chosen for a 1957 Cadillac advert and also appeared in an Alfred James and Mel Casson comic strip featuring a blonde Marilyn Monroe lookalike (View this photo).
This part of the exhibition also includes the designer’s first experiments with the boxed line that brought him to develop an architectural and sculptural approach in his creations, but also attracted some heavy criticisms with journalists claiming he was encasing the female body into rigid volumes that hid away and denied its natural silhouette.
The second section of the exhibition focuses instead on the ‘60s and Capucci’s experiments with transparent plastic, glow in the dark rosary beads and dizzying patterns such as the ones used for his 1965 woven silk satin ribbons and ostrich feathers dress designed as a homage to Op artist Victor Vasarely.
The next two sections look at the incorporation of unusual materials such as bamboo, pebbles, straw, and raffia in silk georgette dresses (1972) and at the construction behind some of his designs that take inspiration from nature, art and architecture.
The connection with art is developed further in the last part of the exhibition that includes Capucci’s fashion sculptures, that is dresses in which he reinterpreted the forms, materials, techniques and themes that inspired him throughout his career (note for Capucci's fans: this exhibition doesn't feature any of his costumes for the opera).
People familiar with Capucci may have already seen some of these designs in other exhibitions or at the Fondazione, and this is actually one of the weak points of the exhibitions organised in the latest few years about Capucci.
It’s indeed about time that Capucci’s works were exhibited next to those made by contemporary designers (Christopher Kane, Comme des Garçons, Viktor & Rolf, Rodarte and Gareth Pugh included) to show where specific colour combinations, volumes, constructions and deconstructions in current fashion collections are actually borrowed from.
It would also be interesting to see an exhibition about Capucci’s construction techniques.
Such an event (or even a workshop) would be particularly interesting for young fashion students who too often spend time sitting in front of their computers screens looking at series of blown up pictures taken by bloggers without any formal fashion education showing random details of contemporary fashion collections taken in showrooms or in the backstage of catwalk shows (try to do some in-depth researches in pattern cutting rather than passively spending time in front of your computers believing people who do not even have the qualifications you're studying for...)
The best thing about the exhibition - accompanied by a catalogue edited by Dilys E. Blum, Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Senior Curator of Costume and Textiles at the Philadelphia Museum of Art - is that it is also connected to a series of tours, events and a film programme.
Tomorrow’s film (Van Pelt Auditorium, 2.00 p.m.) is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (Theorem, 1968), featuring Silvana Mangano and with a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.
The film revolves around the mysterious visit of a guest (Terence Stamp) to a wealthy middle-class family.
The young guest manages to seduce all the members of the family, from the maid to the father, ending up changing their lives once his visit is over.
Silvana Mangano starred in the film as a devoted wife and mother, Lucia.
After meeting their guest Lucia's life is completely turned upside down and, as soon as he leaves, she starts a series of relationships with different young men attempting to live again the moments of passion she had with the mysterious guest.
Pasolini explained that the guest represented a sort of divine messenger whose main purpose was depriving the upper middle classes of the sense of personal safety and security they had.
The loss of identity of the middle-classes was symbolised by the costumes Capucci created for Mangano who became the embodiment of the designer's feminine ideal. The ethereal dresses in delicate nuances that Mangano wore in the film were also a metaphor for the loss of corporeality of her character.
“In 1970, Pasolini asked me to design the clothes for the film Teorema,” Capucci explained in an interview with L’Unità in 1994.
“He came to my atelier and quickly explained what the film was about in his calm and amiable manner. He asked me, quite correctly, that the characters should not be dressed too fashionably so that twenty to thirty years later the film would not appear too dated. And he also asked me to dress the main character in pale hues and only put some colour into her clothes at the end when she discovered love (and that’s what I did, beige and sandy colours at the start, then at the end coral red). When I learnt that the actress was Silvana Mangano, I accepted enthusiastically. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever met and to dress her was a dream. She was very difficult, silent and shy and she made me uneasy. Pasolini said to me, ‘Break the ice and you will discover an extraordinary woman underneath.’ And it was true. We became great friends. She was so beautiful, fascinating and evanescent. She had something more than other women, something I wouldn’t know how to explain. I put her in a black sheath, straight and very simply made, and it seemed as though she was wearing something from haute couture. And when she wore an evening dress, she wore it with great instinctive naturalness as though she were wearing nothing at all. She had a magic like few others.”
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Good share..!!!!!
great collaboration of the art in the fashion.perfect work done by the Roberto Capucci.The clicks shows in post gives a vintage feel in manner of creativity.....
Really inspiring post.....
Posted by: Streetwear | May 19, 2011 at 12:05 PM
Very long post but i spent my time just to read it and its worthy. Great job Robert Capucci and thanks to this blog i've read inspirational post. :)
Posted by: Men solid suits | July 07, 2011 at 07:11 AM