The Victoria & Albert Museum is getting ready to launch a new exhibition in April. Entitled "The Glamour of Italian Fashion 1945 - 2014", the event focuses on the birth of "Made in Italy" fashion starting from Giovan Battista "Bista" Giorgini.
The period covered is extremely long and this makes you naturally wonder how carefully it will be explored, also considering that one first slight imperfection is linked to one of the images that has circulated to promote the event since last year.
The image in question shows Elizabeth Taylor in a rather fancy headdress and it's described as "Elizabeth Taylor wears Bulgari jewellery at a masked ball, Hotel Ca'Rezzonico, Venice, 1967" and was obviously picked to pay homage to Bulgari, one of the main sponsors of the V&A exhibition.
Yet it's a shame the description doesn't say more about the rather bizarre ensemble Taylor is wearing in the image: the dress she is portrayed in it is not a carnival costume or a catwalk show outfit, but one of the main costumes that appears in the film Boom! (1968) directed by Joseph Losey.
In the film the actress wears a lot of Bulgari jewels (she was a well-known client of the jewellery maker), but the costumes are, well, not strictly Italian.
But let's start from the beginning: Boom! is actually considered by many critics as a terrible flop or a moment to forget in the career of Taylor, the cinematic icon.
Directed by Losey, and starring Taylor's then-husband Richard Burton, the film was adapted from a Tennessee Williams play, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963; Williams also did the script for this film).
In the film Taylor plays the role of Flora 'Sissy' Goforth, a wealthy and terminally ill widow living with her servants in a villa on a secluded island (the film was shot in Sardinia and at the Dino De Laurentiis studios in Rome) and spending her days taking medication, drinking alcohol and dictating her memoirs to her secretary.
Sissy's life takes an unexpected turn when the mysterious poet and metal mobile sculptures maker Christopher Flanders (Burton) arrives at her villa. Sissy is indeed sexually attraced to him, but things change when, during a dinner, her friend known by the nickname "The Witch of Capri" (an irresistibly and annoyingly sarcastic and witty Noël Coward) reveals her Flanders is also known in some circles as “l'angelo della morte” ("The Angel of Death").
Chris usually appears at the door of a wealthy woman who is about to die, and basically waits till death gets her before relieving the rich victim of her valuables. Though ill, Sissy is definitely not accepting the idea of death, may it be delivered by sudden destiny or announced by attractive Chris.
Taylor and Burton had appeared in successful film versions of other Tennessee Williams’ plays including, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1956), Suddenly Last Summer (1959) and The Night of the Iguana (1964), and producers thought they may have repeated the success with Boom!
The film marked instead their decline: both actors were indeed addicted to alcohol at the time of filming, while Taylor relied on prescription drugs making her naturally look and feel exactly like the main character in the film (Sissy also speaks about her previous husbands, and a true love, a mountain climber who fell to his death; Taylor at the time was troubled by the unexpected death of her previous husband, Mike Todd).
The movie was criticised for its slow rhythms, for Taylor's over-the-top acting and for its 10 million budget spent to hire Taylor and Burton and dress the actress in a lavish style.
While Douglas Hayward provided the suit for Noël Coward, the house of Tiziani came up with the costumes for Taylor, all accessorised with Bulgari jewels (Taylor's hairstyles were designed and created by Alexandre of Paris and executed by Claude Ettori).
Rome-based Tiziani was founded by American designer Evan Richards, and its collections were designed at the time of shooting this film by Karl Lagerfeld.
Drawings and sketches by Lagerfeld for Tiziani plus photographs and coorrespondence from favoured client Elizabeth Taylor (Tiziani was popular with celebrities and actresses who loved excessively glamorous outfits, such as Gina Lollobrigida) were actually auctioned in January 2014 during the "Tiziani: Lagerfeld + Liz" event at the Modern Auction house in West Palm Beach.
The costumes provide visually interesting moments in the film: Taylor wears white (apparently the actress insisted on this colour) gowns and long flowing dresses (and once she wears a sort of black abaya-like gown) that symbolise the fact she may be alive but she is already wrapped in a shroud.
The most sumptous dress matched with a spiky headdress decorated with metallic daisy flowers is the one that also appears in the Venetian party picture from the V&A exhibition: Sissy/Taylor opts for it when dining with the Witch of Capri/Coward and explains him this is a kabuki costume. Chris/Burton also wears a black kimono throughout the movie and carries a sword rather than a deadly scythe.
Boom! borrows a lot from kabuki, including costumes and make-up: the structure of the script and the original play represent a modern take on traditional Japanese kabuki plays as re-invented by Williams.
Yet the best thing about the film is actually the architecture: Losey is a real master when it comes to framing his characters.
For Boom! he enlisted set designer and artist Richard MacDonald (who also worked on Eva, The Servant and Modesty Blaise) to create the lavish sets: the villa with its curving stark white walls and round windows carved in the walls or with curtains and drapes fluttering in the breeze, points towards Le Corbusier, even though the interiors evoke the house of a modern art collector.
Paintings and abstract sculptures clutter the place, symbolising Sissy's isolation and projecting a dark and deadly aura around the spacious yet claustrophobic villa, filled at times by Taylor's booming voice dictating through the intercom system her memoirs to her secretary or shouting at her servants.
The title of the film makes finally sense when Chris the poet explains quite beautifully to Sissy that "Boom!" is the sound of "the shock of each moment of still being alive". This word becomes the very final connection between the dying Sissy and life, leading to the dramatic and easily foreseeable ending.
In a way it's a shame that the caption for the image used for press purposes for the V&A event doesn't tell you more behind the unusual attire Taylor is wearing. Knowing what hides behind it suddenly brings the dark shadow of "l'angelo della morte" into the picture, making us realise that - quite often - the most extraordinary glamour only hides the most incredible decadence.
With many thanks to Kutmusic for providing me with a copy of the film from its archives for the screenshots in this post.
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