Between the end of the '40s and the beginning of the '50s, the Italian fashion scene was taking shape. Though the first fashion magazines had already been around for a few decades, fashion photography as a profession was in its early days.
One of the key figures in developing this discipline was Pasquale De Antonis who often photographed models in art galleries, among paintings and sculptures, or in the Roman streets and parks, among ruins or inside museums. It was De Antonis' idea to dress up in a white fox fur coat designed by Balzani Antonio Canova’s statue of Pauline Bonaparte portrayed as Venus Victrix displayed at the Borghese Museum and Gallery in Rome.
As the fashion decades passed, this particular image (View this photo) turned into an iconic and surrealist vision, the result of a combination between two disciplines - art and fashion.
Pauline Bonaparte's statue and many other artworks at the Borghese Gallery currently act as the perfect set and setting of a recently opened exhibition - "Azzedine Alaïa. Couture/Sculpture".
Alaïa's fans may have already seen some of the designs included in this event in previous exhibitions about this designer or featuring his garments, but the unique location will offer them the chance to make more comparisons not just between art and fashion, but also with disciplines such as architecture and sculpture.
The exhibition - curated by Mark Wilson, in collaboration with the Director of the Gallery Anna Coliva - was actually developed from the ongoing relationship between Alaïa and the Galleria Borghese.
The statues from the Borghese collection - Canova's "Pauline as Venus Victrix", Gian Lorenzo Bernini's "David" captured as he concentrates and summons his strength aiming his slingshot at the giant Goliath, and "Apollo and Daphne" with the latter turning into a laurel tree, her fingers bursting into leaves and bark enveloping her legs - and Caravaggio, Antonello da Messina, Raphael and Tiziano's paintings, engage indeed in a dialogue with Alaïa's dresses.
The three main figures in Bernini's "Truth Unveiled by Time" and "Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius Fleeing Troy" are vertical compositions; in the same way, Alaïa's dresses made using scissors rather than a chisel, create a spiralling movement, turning into vertical columns that alter the body and its lines.
The various materials of the statues from the permanent collection – pure marble, white plaster and smooth bronze – create contrasts with the soft yet solid materials – luxurious knitted textiles, fabrics and leathers - employed by Alaïa to create his own wearable sculptures, pieces that shape a hyper-sensual female silhouette, while reminding of Bernini masterfully conveying his scenes of great tension with bodies twisting and muscles bulging.
Unbelievable degrees of continuity and harmony are therefore established between the designs and the works of art on display: artists seduced through the smooth surfaces of their materials of choice and via the draped motifs of the fabrics that covered their subjects; Alaïa seduces by enhancing the shapes of the body and giving it a mythical quality, just like Canova who turned Pauline into an unreachable goddess.
Yet there is a fundamental difference: while the artworks on display are static, you know that the designs could display all their dynamic qualities as soon as a wearer would put them on.
Rome was the protagonist of a Haute Couture Renaissance after last week's Valentino show, but this exhibition - on until October - promises to stretch even further the Renaissance of the Eternal City, while giving a chance to visitors to develop more historical and philological connections between art and fashion.
"Azzedine Alaïa. Couture/Sculpture", Galleria Borghese, Piazzale del Museo Borghese 5, 00197 Rome, Italy, until 25th October 2015.
Image credits for this post
Images 1 - 8: Azzedine Alaïa - Galleria Borghese © Ilvio Gallo;
9. Azzedine Alaïa - Bonnet et caleçon long époinglés, 1997 © Jean-Baptiste Mondino;
10. Azzedine Alaïa dans son atelier, 1998 © Prosper Assouline.
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