New anti-Coronavirus measures to contain the contagion in Italy will be announced later on today and, while the main point seems to avoid a general lockdown, it looks like museums and cultural institutions will be closing down again. For today, though, as the Italian government hasn't yet issued an official decree enacting new health measures to restrict the spread of Covid-19, some museums are still open. So, if you happen to be in Rome, you may be lucky enough to find the Ara Pacis Museum still open and check out the event "Romaison" (until 29th November; hopefully it will be extended).
Curated by fashion historian and critic Clara Tosi Pamphili, the event, set in the basement of the museum, introduces visitors to the work of local tailoring houses and maisons and to their most iconic productions for the fashion and film industries.
In the foyer of the event, a map shows visitors the locations of the various ateliers, so that they can get more familiar with them and then explore the designs on display. The setting for this exhibition is rather basic, almost clinical, perfect for design students and people with a real passion for the technicalities of the fashion discipline.
The absence of grand settings, in part inspired by the current trends dictated by the Covid-19 pandemic that has pushed us to go back to the core of things and to focus on what really matters, allows to concentrate on the clothes and accessories on display without being visually distracted by the surrouding decor.
There is a continuous dialogue between fashion and costumes in the exhibition: visitors can rediscover designs from Charles Frederick Worth and Paul Poiret to Maria Monaci Gallenga (the wooden blocks employed by the designer to print her silver and gold motifs on velvet are also displayed here), Madame Grès, Christian Dior, Cristóbal Balenciaga, and local ateliers such as Emilio Schuberth and Zecca.
These designs engage in a dialogue with creations made for the big screen by Annamode, Costumi d'Arte-Peruzzi, Sartoria Farani, Laboratorio Pieroni and Sartoria Tirelli.
When Cinecittà was founded at the end of the '30s, a few local ateliers started making costumes for the film industry. These tailoring houses became a key part of the industry in the '50s as lower production costs attracted to Rome many American directors who transformed in this way the Italian capital into the so-called "Hollywood on the Tiber" (Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "Cleopatra", shot in 1963 and starring Elizabeth Taylor featured costumes for the male characters by Vittorio Nino Novarese, while Renié Conley designed the costumes for the female characters that were then made locally).
These tailoring houses made extraordinary costumes for iconic films, such as Bernaldo Bertolucci's "L'ultimo imperatore" (The Last Emperor, 1987) and "Il Conformista" (The Conformist, 1970). The latter became throughout the decades a constant reference for many international fashion designers (in 1998 the house of Versace restored it for the Florence Biennale).
The costumes for Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salò" (1975), created by Danilo Donati and made in Italy by the Farani tailoring house are on display here again after they were forgotten for a long time.
These designs were employed by Pasolini to symbolise the perversions of wealth and power and in the exhibition they find an echo in the Victorian horror/fantasy series "Penny Dreadful" that featured visually striking costumes by Gabriella Pescucci ("Penny Dreadful" fans may remember the "Madame Pescucci" reference in the series).
But there is more to discover between costumes by Piero Tosi, Milena Canonero and Franca Squarciapino, and by designers who are considered part of a new generation, such as Massimo Cantini Parrini who also designed the costumes (on display here) for Susanna Nicchiarelli's "Miss Marx" (2020; fans of the paisley motif will love these costumes).
As you may imagine, there is something for everybody in this event, from Barbarella's costumes made by the Farani tailoring house to the sensual tunic worn by Donyale Luna, the first Black model to appear on a Vogue cover in 1966, in Fellini's "Satyricon", and the jewels like the Bulgari sets donned by Silvana Mangano in "Ritratto di famiglia in un interno" (Conversation Piece, 1974) . Yet maybe the most important points about this exhibitions are not the single costumes or accessories, there are indeed some stories to learn here.
First of all, there is a constant dialogue between fashion and costumes: visitors are invited to consider the importance of using original vintage pieces in new ways in films as it happened when Florinda Bolkan wore an original design by Gallenga in Elio Petri's "Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto" (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, 1970), but also to ponder a bit more about the exchanges between the big screen and fashion collections.
For example there's an emerald green dress by Canonero for Mariangela Melato in the play "Mourning Becomes Electra" directed by Luca Ronconi in 1997 that was reinterpreted in a dress in a taupe shade by the Zecca tailoring house. The two dresses wouldn't look out of place on a modern runway, but their juxtaposition opens your eyes and your mind to questions about infringements of copyright by fashion designers who borrow specific looks and moods seen in a film and reproduce them in their collections.
The other point that visitors may want to take into consideration is how these costume designers and tailoring houses found solutions to a director's needs by coming up with alternative materials and constantly experimenting with new techniques: Danilo Donati employed very humble materials in Fellini's "Satyricon", but he did so to maximum effect (his mosaic made with Charms candies entered the history of Italian costume and set design and the costumes for that film became an inspiration for quite a few contemporary fashion collections).
The show becomes therefore a laboratory of ideas and an occasion to showcase artisanal crafts while it reminds us all that thanks to the passion of visionary people like Umberto Tirelli, who considered himself not only a tailor but a collector and "a fashion archaeologist", directors can still benefit from vast collections of costumes and designs (Tirelli's archive is stored in a 5,000 square metre warehouse outside Rome with 170,000 costumes available for research, study and exhibition).
Other highlights in the exhibition include the personal archive of costume designer Gabriele Mayer, and a section dedicate to Mensura's artisanal mannequins that looks at the connection between sculptures and dummies.
The exhibition is supposed to last only till the end of November (but closures due to Coronavirus will probably extend it), but there is an event linked to "Romaison" that will take place next year, a performance at the Mattatoio di Testaccio entitled "Embodying Pasolini" starring Tilda Swinton and directed by Olivier Saillard, fashion historian and previous director of the Palais Galliera fashion museum in Paris.
Swinton and Saillard, who is a fan of Danilo Donati's experimental approach to costume design, have teamed up in the past in the performance pieces "The Impossible Wardrobe" (2012), "Eternity Dress" (2013) and "Cloakroom" (2014). This new collaboration will be similar to the previous ones, but will be performed using costumes created for the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Italian writer, poet and director who was killed 45 years ago.
Hopefully, this story will not be overshadowed by the fame of its protagonist and its director, but it will shine a new light on the materials, volumes, colours of the designs featured in Pasolini's films and on the symbols they represent, something that may also reshift the attention on the connections between Pasolini's costumes and contemporary designers and collections.
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