Trade fairs are a bit like chocolate boxes: you always end up finding some unexpected yet lovely surprises, but there is always that nasty one that leaves you with a bad taste afterwards. This somewhat superficial comparison perfectly describes what the Pitti has been so far.
Among the best surprises there was Claire Malcolm at Hardy Amies, who came up with a very coherent collection that tied in Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1933 with what she dubbed a sort of Deco-Tron (Art Deco + future scapes) mood (more about it later – in the meantime, I'm posting here a video of the event that doesn't make this collection justice because you obviously miss a lot of details, plus the lights ruin all the grey shades in the collection...). There are actually quite a few connections with womenswear and fashion in the film (from Orry-Kelly's costumes to the quote: "I can remember not so long ago a penthouse on Park Avenue. With a real tree, and flowers, and a fountain, and a French maid. And a warm bath with salt from Yardley's. And a little dress that Schiaparelli ran up"?), but Malcolm turned them around and reused her cinematic inspirations for men in a clever way.
Among the "bad" ones there was Emiliano Rinaldi with high quality clothes presented in a rather terrible way in a crammed disco with a live performance in which men looked like pimps/criminals and women like stylish prostitutes that ended up with a final and silly jealousy murder (dear oh dear – bring back the Dario Argento psychopath killer on the runway - now!).
The obnoxious behaviour of the title in this post? That has got to go to Valentino. You couldn't get in the preview unless you were an Italian journalist writing for an Italian newspaper (because 'they' have deadlines to go into print; but what about the foreign press?) and you couldn't get in if you didn't get invited or if you weren't on the list (yes, “the list is life” at the Pitti), though how you managed to convince them you were a journalist and therefore deserved to be on the list remains for many of us a bloody mystery.
Ah, who knows, maybe the Valentino press office is full of bastards, maybe Maria Grazia Chiuri e Pier Paolo Piccioli were too embarrassed to show to a wider public (apart from their 600 guests...) what they came up with, or maybe - more understandably - when they finished their collection the young Jedi Knights, rather than having a glass of champagne, just dipped their straws into the bone marrow of Emperor Palpatine's obnoxiousness and sucked it all. Looks like their cloning process is almost complete now...
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I just want to say I love all the chocolates in my chocolate box ;)
Your experience at the trade fair sounds pretty bad.. It usually happens because of bad and very unprofessional organizers..
The cloths look amazing, so at least they succeeded in that!
Posted by: Dresses | April 29, 2012 at 10:15 AM