In yesterday's post about Max Mara's exhibition arriving in Moscow I mentioned Nanni Strada.
There is actually a very interesting connection between Italian fashion designer Strada and Russia that also proves the incredible vitiality of the Italian fashion industry in the early '80s.
One of the pictures in the Max Mara post shows an electric blue coat from Sportmax's A/W 1971-72 collection.
That collection was actually considered as a revolutionary one because it was made using machines created by the Rimoldi company.
The pieces of outerwear included in that collection were actually the first ones designed and assembled employing seams technically conceived for jersey-based fabrics.
In the '80s Rimoldi's director Marcello Delfino went to Moscow where, supported by the Soviet government, he organised a workshop about the Rimoldi machines.
The event was aimed at showing what the machines could achieve production-wise (Delfino was trying to secure a contract with Russia against the Italians' strongest competitors on the Russian market at the time, the Japanese manufacturers...) and the workshop was accompanied by a Nanni Strada collection (in the first picture in this post Strada is posing on Moscow's Red Square wearing one of the designs from her Russian collection).
Produced in 24,000 pieces and distributed at the GUM department stores, the collection was functional and practical and mainly featured separates and outerwear such as linear capes with decorations created by automatic machines (the capes inspired in later years to Strada the chasuble that architecture and fashion fans may have seen at the "Skin + Bones" exhibition organised at London's Somerset House a few years ago).
Interestingly enough, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, rather than launching workshops about fashion, technologically advanced machines and such likes, Italy mainly managed to flood the Russian market with heavily embellished garments and accessories covered in sequins, crystals and gems, or in uproarious animal prints, designs that, quickly adopted by the new super rich, were and are used as symbols of wealth and opulence.
I wonder, will one day Italian companies start again exporting their know-how and maybe focus on a less glamorous but more functional fashion produced thanks to innovative and advanced technological means?
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