Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law & Technology

A Celebration of Opera via Art, Costumes & Crafts: "Turandot and the Fantastic East by Puccini, Chini and Caramba" @ The Textile Museum, Prato, Italy

It is always a pleasure to follow a project from the early stages till its completion. In a previous post published in October 2019, we announced that Prato's Museo del Tessuto (Textile Museum) had launched a crowdfunding campaign on Eppela under the title "The Lost Costume" (Il Costume Ritrovato). The campaign hoped to restore the newly-found costumes from the première of Puccini's Turandot. The costumes, inspired by the Orient, were designed by legendary La Scala costumier Luigi Sapelli, better known as Caramba, and were considered lost. 

The museum reached its goal a month later thanks to contributions from almost 170 private individuals from eight different countries, as well as local companies and associations, but kept the campaign open to gather more funds to restore the stage jewels accompanying the costumes and the goal was again met. In 2020, while museums closed because of the Coronavirus campaign, the Prato Textile Museum focused on the restoration process, while announcing the exceeding funds of the crowdfunding would be used for an exhibition. 

The event was finally launched yesterday with a Zoom press conference that revealed how the original planned display of the restored costumes and accessories has now become the centerpiece of a temporary exhibition about Puccini's Turandot, a wonderful project celebrating opera and the Orient through costumes, artworks and interior design pieces.

"Turandot e l’Oriente fantastico di Puccini, Chini e Caramba" (Turandot and the Fantastic East by Puccini, Chini and Caramba; planned dates, that may be subject to Coronavirus restrictions: 22 May - 21 November 2021). 

The inspiration for the event came from the restored costumes and accessories and from the beautiful story behind them. In 2017, the museum got a phone call from Sardinia where a trunk of costumes, wigs and jewellery had resurfaced: investigations led the curators to realise the costumes had belonged to the famous Pratese soprano Iva Pacetti and were the long-lost gowns for Puccini's Turandot opera was first staged at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 25th April 1926.

Daniela Degl'Innocenti, curator at the Textile Museum and co-curator with Monica Zavattaro of the "Turandot" exhibition, explained during yesterday's press conference that Iva Pacetti had the costumes because sopranos often kept their own wardrobes or personal archives of costumes and accessories to facilitate their casting in a specific role. Pacetti probably received the costumes in 1939 and the curator found a photograph from 1942 in which the soprano was wearing the costume and the crown (but originally the costumes were worn by Rosa Raisa, the first soprano in history to interpret the role of the Ice Princess, for the opera's world premiere of Turandot in 1926).

One of the two Caramba costumes was in a particularly bad state with various parts of the beautiful woven fabric decorated with metallic thread presenting holes and lacerations as well as dirt. Degl'Innocenti highlighted that the more resistant metallic threads had damaged the delicate silk parts and that there were sections more deteriorated than others, in particular the flowy, floor-touching sleeves, the train and sections of the neckline. So these parts were reinforced with needle and thread and with special support fabrics like tulle. 

The lavish crown is inspired by Oriental accessories, but also features elements borrowed from Art Deco, and it is a genuine artwork of costume jewellery, decorated with flowers, butterflies and pearls. Among the pieces there is also a brass hairpin with multi-coloured gems and with two long pendants decorated with pearls and red and blue rhinestones. The jewels were very fragile and they lost some beads and pearls; some sections were oxidised, others lost their shape, and a few parts needed soldering. The lavish crown was badly damaged, only the tiara was intact, and some butterflies and peonies had detached from the main structure. The jewels were cleaned and repaired and visually enhanced with multi-coloured gems from Milan-based company Corbella, an official supplier of La Scala that originally made the pieces in 1926.

The costumes were restored by the Consorzio Tela di Penelope in Prato, while the jewellery pieces were entrusted to the care of Elena Della Schiava, Tommaso Pestelli and Filippo Tattini, who restored them to new splendour. 

The curators turned the costumes into the heart of the exhibition and wove around the restored pieces the story of the events that led to the design of these costumes, analysing the genesis of the opera and the artistic partnership established between Giacomo Puccini and his friend, the Italian painter, decorator, graphic artist and ceramicist Galileo Chini (1873-1956), and their subsequent collaboration with the Teatro alla Scala’s costume designer, Caramba.

Puccini wanted indeed to make sure that an artist with a first-hand experience of the East worked on the opera to recreate real Eastern atmospheres and Galileo Chini had spent three years, from 1911 to 1913, in Siam (present-day Thailand). Chini was commissioned to paint the Throne Hall of the Palace of King Rama VI, and had witnessed the funeral of his predecessor and the incoronation of the new king. Fascinated by the art and culture of the country, Chini started collecting Chinese, Japanese and Siamese artifacts, that he then brought back to Italy and that influenced him in his work, inspiring him also the set designs for Turandot.

In 1950 the artist donated his collection to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in Florence: only a few of the preserved objects from this precious collection are usually on display to the public, but the exhibition at Prato's Textile Museum will allow visitors to see some of these tresures as the institution borrowed over 100 objects from the Chini Collection for the "Turandot" exhibition (other loans for this exhibition came from the Uffizi Galleries and the Museo Teatrale alla Scala and the Teatro alla Scala).

The narration starts in the Museum's Historical Textile Room where visitors will be able to admire precious textiles, cotton and silk sashes for men and women's costumes made in India and produced for the Thai market; Indian shawls and Japanese fabrics; textiles for altars and wooden bowls for incense offerings decorated with mother-of-pearl inserts; porcelain pieces, musical instruments, sculptures, weapons and artefacts of Thai and Chinese production, such as an opium pipe with tassels or a porcelain headrest (also known as "opium pillows" - opium users claimed that, after smoking opium for a while, even a hard pillow felt as soft as a cloud).

These pieces became starting points for Chini, inspirations for his numerous paintings: the curators of the exhibition invite indeed visitors to make comparisons between the objects and Chini's still lives and see how the Buddha statues or moon guitars and monochord lutes often appear in these works.

Chini admired the natural landscapes, the vegetation, flowers and cultivations of Siam; he was struck by the boats carrying goods across rivers and was enthralled and enchanted by dance and theatre. Quite a few objects in his collection relate indeed to the stage, from papier mâché masks to puppets and exquisitely refined costumes. The exhibition features for example a woman's costume with intricate embroideries made with metal threads, accessorised with a crown in lacquered carved leather.

Among the most beautiful objects there is a Psyche table mirror that may have belonged to Turandot, but there are also more humble pieces such as shoes and sandals, glass bead necklaces and rattan and wicker balls, proving that Chini wasn't just attracted by luxury pieces, but he was also interested in the popular aspects of the local culture.

Another section of the museum will be dedicated to the set designs - from the Ricordi Historical Archive in Milan - for Turandot that were influenced by Chini's experience in Siam and by the local celebrations he took part in. Some paintings in this sections, on loan from the Gallery of Modern Art of Palazzo Pitti, such as a large canvas depicting Chinese New Year in Bangkok are juxtaposed to objects like a striking dragon head from the Chini Collection.

Fashion fans will fall in love with the 30 original costumes (lost for a while, but then found again in the '70s) from the Sartoria Devalle archive in Turin included in this section: if you're an opera fan you may recognise costumes for the Emperor, Calaf, Ping, Pong and Pang, the Mandarin (this one features an astonishing embroidery of a lion), as well as the minor roles of the Priests, Handmaids, Guards and Citizens (these costumes will definitely inspire to more expert visitors comparisons with designs donned by the Ballets Russes dancers).  

The exhibition is completed by the original costume designs and pochoir prints created for the opera by the extraordinary illustrator Umberto Brunelleschi, the artist Puccini initially appointed to the task, plus the original poster from the opera's premiere and the piano and vocal score illustrated with the famous image of Turandot created by Leopoldo Metlicovitz, one of the most iconic images of Italian opera of all time and the main image for this exhibition as well.

"Turandot" was planned as a multidisciplinary and wide-ranging exhibition and it is a genuine celebration for the senses: your eyes fill with beauty when you contemplate these pieces and each object reveals a piece of the puzzle behind the artistic genesis of the opera. Last but not least, the exhibition is also an indirect tribute to the Asian community of Prato, the city with the second largest Chinese immigrant population in Italy.   

Visitors who may have time or who may be spending a few days around Prato and Florence can complete the itinerary with a tour of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in Florence that is also organising its own exhibition to showcase additional treasures from the Chini Collection. 

Images credits for this post

1.
Luigi Sapelli (Caramba)
Costume for Turandot [Act I]
Prato, Textile Museum

2.
Luigi Sapelli (Caramba)
Costume for Turandot [Act II]
Prato, Textile Museum

3.
Corbella, Milan
Crown for Turandot [Act II]
Prato, Textile Museum

4.
Galileo Chini
External view of the Imperial Palace
Sketch for Turandot
Act III Scene II (fourth and final version)
1926
Milan, Archivio Storico Ricordi

5.
Galileo Chini
Great Forecourt of the Palace
Sketch for Turandot
Act II Scene II (fourth and final version)
1924
Milan, Archivio Storico Ricordi, ICON000206

6.
Theatre mask
Thailand, early 20th century
Galileo Chini Collection, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, Florence

7.
Pots with lids
China, early 20th century
Galileo Chini Collection, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, Florence

8.
Dragon mask
Chinese community in Thailand, late 19th century
Galileo Chini Collection, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, Florence

9.
Leopoldo Metlicovitz
Poster for Turandot
Milan, Archivio Storico Ricordi

10.
Carp dish
China late 19th century – early 20th century
Galileo Chini Collection, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, Florence

11.
Leopoldo Metlicovitz
Cover for the deluxe edition of the piano-vocal score, 1926
Milan, Archivio Storico Ricordi

3D Printing on Fabrics: A Recap

Let's continue the technology thread (pun intended...) that started yesterday with a focus on 3D printing on fabrics. In the previous post we looked at two projects by Yuchen Zhang about textiles and conductive threads, but the designer and educator also developed experiments with 3D printed fabric.

After several trial and errors, Zhang realised the best way to succeed in this case is not printing directly on a mesh fabric, but sandwiching the fabric between the PLA filament. In this way the 3D printed material is safely anchored to the fabric that assumes more structure while retaining its flexibility.

The main problem with 3D printed garments is indeed the fact that up until a few years ago they were entirely 3D printed and therefore they were conceived as sculptures rather than dresses, or were assembled with fabrics after the 3D elements were printed.

In 2019 threeASFOUR worked with Stratasys, the global leader in 3D printing and additive solutions (a company very interested in these fashion and technology collaborations also thanks to the Creative Director of its Art, Design and Fashion department, Naomi Kaempfer) and with designer Travis Fitch and, using high-end printers, they created designs inspired by the iridescent and microscopic colours that the light generates when filtered through fragile butterfly and insect wings and by their movement and geometrical patterns.

In this case Stratasys developed 3D printed lenticular lens, small translucent photopolymer domes or cells with a strip of colour inside that bounces light through the lens, so that looking from different angles allows you to see different colours. 

The tiny domes engineered by Stratasys were then printed on pieces of polyester fabric that were employed to create threeASFOUR's dresses made up of 27 parts and thousands of these 3D printed cells (3D printed using Stratasys' multi-color and multi-material J750 PolyJet machine).

As you may remember from a previous post, the designs were showcased as part of threeASFOUR's S/S 20 collection and were characterised by unique colour combinations and striking luminosity. In this case 3D printing directly onto textiles allowed the designers to achieve a new functionality and perfectly reproduce the insects' camouflage skills.

Printing directly onto fabrics has different benefits since it allows to create new forms of embroidery, machine-made rather than hand-made, but equally intriguing and striking for what regards colours and configurations. 

Displayed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s "Designs for Different Futures" exhibit that then travelled at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, threeASFOUR's designs were part of Stratasys' "Chro-Morpho" collection, that also includes Julia Koerner's "Setae" jacket (2019).

Koerner, founder of JK Design GmbH, is better known for making the costumes for Ryan Coogler's "Black Panther" (2018) with Ruth E. Carter using 3D printing and for collaborating with Iris Van Herpen on the "Voltage" collection.

Produced on a Stratasys J850 3D Printer using Vero Multi-Material, Koerner's "Setae" jacket was inspired by the Madagascar Sunset Butterfly. This is a perfect example of a biomimicry design based on 2D macro scans of butterfly wings digitized into an algorithm and translated into 3D patterns.

The photographs were divided into thousands of thin pixels that mapped out the butterfly wings and colors. The butterfly pattern was then replicated into 3D-printed strands on flexible fabric. 

One of the most recent applications of 3D printing on textiles came courtesy of Ganit Goldstein. The Israeli designer spent a period in Japan and, after her studies and researches into ikat weaving there, she created a collection entitled "WeAreAble". 

The pieces included in the collection call to mind for what regards their colours traditional Japanese textiles while their shapes points at kimonos, but Goldstein added a high-tech twist to them keeping firmly in mind the concept of sustainability. 

Goldstein teamed up with Stratasys that 3D printed directly on textiles a series of multi-coloured motifs using PolyJet Technology, the final shimmering effect was added thanks to VeroClear transparent.  

Once the textile was 3D printed, Goldstein took measures with a body scanner (by Haratech) and crafted precise pieces without wasting any fabric; the collection focuses indeed on a sustainable approach using 3D printing without any support or waste materials.

Goldstein showcased the pieces last year with a Virtual Reality fashion exhibition (made in collaboration with her brother Yoav Goldstein, a senior computer vision and game developer at Intel Corporation): the garments, made using 100% recycled filament and fabric made from ocean waste yarn production, are conceived by the designer as an alternative to fast fashion and the relentless rhythms of the industry. According to the young designer, this could be an eco-friendly system that allows creative minds to personalise garments and focus on developing fewer and bespoke pieces. 

It is exciting to see that 3D printing technologies have been progressing quickly, going from strength to strength. One area that has been developed a lot regards the colours available for 3D printed pieces: the Voxel print illusory technology allows for example to design everyday objects with complex distribution of colours and therefore unusual and unique nuances. Developed for designers, this technology allows users to define a colour for each dot (or voxel, a three-dimensional version of the pixel) and to come up with strikingly sophisticated visual effects very similar to those ones that so far have only existed in the digital world.

Textiles, Tech, Threads & Pleats

What will happen to artisanal techniques in the future and what kind of impacts will new technologies have on crafts? There are no certain answers to these questions and to the ever-present dilemma about crafts and technology, but, there have been designers and researchers who are trying to find ways to combine these two arts, among them there's also Yuchen Zhang.

A lecturer, designer and educator interested in the world of wearables (she co-founded the Wearable Media Studio), Yuchen Zhang started experimenting a while back with traditional techniques.

In 2018, together with artist and Parsons MFA textile graduate Jeremey Ripley, she devised a way to make tufted surfaces using a needle punch pen and a combination of highly conductive sewing threads and nonconductive threads.

The former are used to build sensors and by using them, designers may be able to integrate e-textile sensors into furniture, fashion designs, carpets and interior design pieces. Touch, pressure and gesture could trigger the sensing input.

While early tests done in 2018 with a multimeter showed that electricity flowed through the piece when the conductive thread was pressed (depending from the pile heights and the circuit diagrams employed) this technique needs to be refined, but the applications could be interesting from carpeting to sense foot traffic patterns and motion or integration into wearable pieces to interface with smart devices.

One of Yuchen Zhang's most recent projects relates to an interior colour changing heating panel: the textile on top of the panel is painted with thermochromic pigments that allow the fabric to change colour going from dark cherry to pink.

The designer added the pleated pattern to give volume to the panel that, by heating, creates more nuanced colour variations depending from the folds. You can follow the instructions in the YouTube video at the end of this post to make the panel or you can maybe use the video as starting point to develop an entirely new project.

How Do We Care About the Planet & About Textiles: Spotlight on Multidisciplinary Artist & Designer Jacob Olmedo

There is a textile piece made by multidisciplinary artist and designer Jacob Olmedo that incorporates densely appliqued opaque oblong beads.

Olmedo posted a brief film of the textile on his site to show how the beads - that at times look like feathers - move on the body, calling to mind the tentacle arms of a sea anemone moving under water.

If you analyse the piece carefully, though, you realise that there is something trapped inside the beads - a seed. The beads aren’t indeed made of plastic, but of isomalt, a sugar-based material and are made following a 3D printing process. 

Inspired by indigenous beadmaking and the notion of circularity, the textile piece is part of Olmedo's "Endangered Identity" project and could be considered as a wearable "armor" about the power of life: the isomalt fossilized seeds, symbols of resilience, tell stories of migration and, once released and planted, they will generate life. Olmedo calculates that one garment equals 70 square feet of regenerative soil creation.

Based in Brooklyn, NY, Olmedo, a Parsons School of Design MFA Textile 2020 Graduate, is inspired by the climate crisis, but also by his identity as a queer artist and activist.

Other pieces included in the "Endangered Identity" project include indeed a second skin-like hand-beaded machine knit bodysuit that looks like the liquid-cooled garments worn by astronauts under their outer spacesuits, and that symbolizes the process of externalizing internal feelings.

Other textile installations part of this project – including disembodied human parts and topographical landscapes – tackle instead the relationships between the land and the environment and minority bodies.

Olmedo opted for cream colored wool and silk fibers for this project so that the viewer can focus on the actual textiles, on their tactile power (touch is one of the senses that has suffered the most during the Coronavirus pandemic) and on how caring for the environment also means caring for one another and caring for innovative yet sustainable textiles as well.

In the last few years Olmedo has been carrying out in-depth researches in hydroponic systems: inspired also by the geotextiles of German artist Diana Scherer who creates rugs and tapestries hacking the root system of plants, Olmedo engineered a 100% biodegradable hydroponic textile that grows fresh plants from which he constructed the clothes for his "And The World Will Be As One" collection.

For this collection the plants grew from seeds implanted into his wool textiles that integrated layers of beeswax for waterproofing, a blend of fibres that held moisture and wood pulp that held the seeds and stored the nutrients needed for the plants to flourish. In this way he created veritable wearable gardens with tufted effects made integrating yarns and grass.

As a materials student Olmedo won the first BFA Fashion Future Textiles Award in 2017 and a year later he was honored to be the first Liz Clairbone Graduate Scholar from The Council of Fashion Designers of America during his time in the inaugural MFA Textiles program at Parsons School of Design.

Last year Olmedo won the Dorothy Waxman International Textile Design Prize. Part of Li Edelkoort and Philip Fimmano's talking Textiles initiatives to promote textile education and creativity, the prize honors Dorothy Waxman, the original driving force behind Trend Union and Edelkoort Inc. in the United States and a contributing reporter to the magazines View on Colour, Textile View and Viewpoint.

The 2021 competition has actually just been launched, so if you're currently enrolled in an educational institution teaching textiles, fashion, interior or lifestyle textiles or if you're a 2020 or 2021 textile or fashion graduate, you can still take part in it with projects revolving around sustainability and innovation. Submissions (you will have to send the story behind your textiles and images of your work) must be emailed to: talkingtextiles@edelkoort.com by June 30, 2021. You can find the complete submission rules and the application form here.

Know Your Ethnography, Avoid a Copyright Infringement Case: Tory Burch Vs The Camisola Poveira

Appropriation in fashion is - unfortunately - very common, but at times it is accompanied also by geographical ignorance as proved by a recent case involving Tory Burch and a Portuguese sweater.

A few weeks ago a woman contacted Ricardo Silva, president of the Junta in Póvoa de Varzim, a coastal resort half an hour north of Porto, to point out the similarities between a sweater from Tory Burch's S/S 21 collection and their traditional embroidered camisola poveira.

Originally made 150 years ago, the camisola poveira is a sweater made of thick white wool from the Serra da Estrela area, decorated with black and red cross stitched motifs. Traditional embroideries included assorted naval symbols such as boats, anchors and oars, and coats of arms like the Portuguese national shield.

Besides, the sweaters featured rune-like symbols that were also painted on boats (in the same way the "guernsey" sweaters incorporated patterns that varied from village to village and from family to family and that allowed to identify the fisherman in case of shipwreck and death).

Knitted in a nearby town, the sweaters were embroidered by retired fishermen from Póvoa de Varzim who told their stories in stitches; mothers, wives and brides of fishermen then continued embroidering the sweaters throughout the decades.

Protecting fishermen from the cold, but also employed in festive occasions, the camisola went out of fashion after the tragic shipwreck of February 27, 1892, which killed more than a hundred fishermen. Putting away their white sweaters, fishermen opted for mourning black.

The camisola was rediscovered and relaunched by ethnologist and journalist António dos Santos Graça who, in 1936, also founded the group Rancho Folclórico Poveiro, that allowed the camisola to find a new life as a folk costume. The style became popular again also thanks to the romantic docufilm "Ala-Arriba!" (1942) by Leitão de Barros.

Included in several ethnographic museums in Portugal, the camisola was also featured on stamps about regional costumes in 2007.

As the decade passed, artisans added more symbols to the embroidered elements available and, in 2006, designer Nuno Gama used motifs from the camisola poveira in his collection, made in collaboration with local embroiderers.

Tory Burch's sweater, on sale for around 700 euros, looks identical to the camisola, from the white coarse wool to the embroidered motifs, including crabs and the coat of arms of the Portuguese monarchy. 

So Ricardo Silva, who has been promoting the local culture and the artisanal traditions for quite a few years, decided to write Burch. At first he didn't get any answer, even though the description of the sweater defined as "Baja inspired" (Baja California is in  Mexico) and showing  ome geographical and cultural confusion, was changed into "Sweater Tunic".

Eventually the brand acknowledged the error in a post on its official Twitter and Facebook accounts that stated, "We sincerely apologize to the people of Portugal - it was brought to our attention that we mis-attributed a Spring 2021 sweater as Baja-inspired. It was a misstep that we did not reference the beautiful, traditional fisherman's sweaters as represented by the city of Póvoa de Varzim. We are correcting this error immediately and will note and honor that this sweater was inspired by Portuguese traditions. We want to further acknowledge this important tradition and are working with the municipality of Póvoa de Varzim on how best we can support local artisans. Tory Burch stands for inclusivity and celebrating diverse cultures, and we will strive to do better in the future. Please take a moment to visit www.cm-pvarzim.pt. "

The Mayor of Póvoa de Varzim confirmed he was contacted by representative of the company Tory Burch who, on behalf of the brand, acknowledged the seriousness of the episode and the damage caused to the local community by this act of cultural appropriation and apologised.

Yet an apology doesn't seem to be enough as Aires Pereira, chairman of the Municipal Chamber of Póvoa de Varzim, demands the recognition of intellectual property.

The Municipality of Póvoa de Varzim has indeed stated on its site with a document entitled "Camisola poveira é nossa!" (The Camisola poveira is ours!) that a fair reparation to the local community and the local artisans who have elevated this garment using time-honoured and handcrafted techniques, is due. The Municipality of Póvoa de Varzim therefore first asked the Tory Burch company to establish direct contact with the artisans of Póvoa de Varzim to promote joint initiatives in the future, sharing good practices and building an institutional relationship between the municipality and the company.

The Municipality also asked that a new model or version of the sweater or any other item or piece of clothing with symbols, references or inspirations in the local culture which the company Tory Burch intends to sell in the future, to be made in Portugal, by local artisans based in Póvoa de Varzim.

Among other requests there is also the financing of a handicraft training center dedicated to the professional manufacture of the camisola poveira and the continuation of the disclosure of origin, historical importance, cultural contextualization and direct link to the hyperlink on the CMPV website in the description of the sweater by Tory Burch marketed with the reference of camisola poveira. 

In case such requests will not be met and an agreement will not be reached, the Municipality stated it will proceed with a legal action. 

But while we wait for updates, there may be new worries for Tory Burch as Portuguese ceramic manufacturer Bordallo Pinheiro also accused Burch of copying some of its trademark pieces like their signature lettuce crockery sets.

Comments of Portuguese Facebook users on the Tory Burch pages showing the interior design pieces aren't very positive and go from "This is really embarassing, you should be ashamed for copy paste work" to "The Portuguese Mr Bordallo Pinheiro must be turning around in his grave with such theft of intellectual propriety and plagiarism. I don't know where you've studied or how long you've been in the field but by this time you should be aware that this is an issue to that any creative professional should respect!! Did you at least pay for the rights to reapropreate and modify his creations?"

Maybe Tory Burch really likes Portugal, but you just wish the company would be more respectful. It seems indeed that fashion designers often borrow and copy designs from other countries thinking they may have the right to do so, as if nobody would notice or as if the heritage of another country was just there to be exploited and turned into profit for somebody else. In the case of the camisola the confusion with Baja in Mexico also proved that, quite often, we describe something that looks "traditional" to us in a careless way, without even bothering to check if what we are saying is correct. 

It will be interesting to see what the brand will do regarding the requests of the Póvoa de Varzim Municipality. Until then let's just hope that the Fair Island sweaters by Tory Burch do integrate patterns in public domain rather than exclusive arrangements of patterns by other designers, otherwise the fashion company will have to deal with several copyright infringement cases this year. 

 

Balancing Act: The Fashion Industry Vs Major Powers

A while back H&M and Nike issued statements on their sites about forced labor being used to produce cotton in China's Xinjiang province. Human rights groups and activists and United Nations rights experts previously accused China of using mass detention camps, forced labor and sterilization of women on Uyghurs in Xinjiang. But the Chinese government always stated the Uyghurs camps are education and training centres designed to fight extremism.

Last year also Swedish clothing giant H&M expressed concerns about the issue and decided it will no longer source cotton from Xinjiang, ending relationships with a Chinese yarn producer over "forced labor".

In a report now removed from its site, the company stated "H&M Group is deeply concerned by reports from civil society organisations and media that include accusations of forced labour and discrimination of ethnoreligious minorities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). We strictly prohibit any type of forced labour in our supply chain, regardless of the country or region."

The American sportswear multinational stated on its site: "Nike is committed to ethical and responsible manufacturing and we uphold international labor standards. We are concerned about reports of forced labor in, and connected to, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Nike does not source products from the XUAR and we have confirmed with our contract suppliers that they are not using textiles or spun yarn from the region."

While these statements weren't issued recently (Nike’s statement isn's even dated), both the companies and other Western brands are currently facing a backlash from China.

The backlash first hit H&M: on Wednesday H&M products were removed from Chinese e-commerce platforms Tmall, Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo. Its mobile app was banned on Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo and Tencent's store, while physical store information was removed from providers like Baidu and also from Didi, the equivalent of Uber.

Thursday it was the turn of Nike, Uniqlo and Adidas: Nike was for example removed from Taobao and Dewu. Yesterday the topic was trending on China's social media Weibo that condemned the statements, but more backlash followed as celebrities - among them Chinese actors Wang Yibo and Tan Songyun - cancelled contracts with brands.

China Global Television Network (CGTN) stated on Twitter that actor, dancer, singer and rapper Wang Yibo, who had a contract with Nike, had announced he opposed "any act to smear China". Actor Huang Xuan and actress Song Qian, brand ambassadors for H&M since last year, also stated they would no longer work with the company.

All the celebrities who have deals with Adidas including Eason Chan, Angelababy and Jackson Yee among the others, and Chinese ambassadors for Uniqlo, Converse, Puma, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and New Balance also terminated their contracts. 

Award-winning Chinese actress Zhou Dongyu and actor and model Song Weilong also quit their roles of Burberry ambassadors. The company was then removed from a prominent digital space: the label’s trademark plaid was indeed erased from the skins available for the characters in Tencent's video game "Honor of Kings" (and this happened merely 48 hours after the skins were released...). Burberry is currently the first luxury brand to be caught in the political row, but may not be the last.

All the companies that faced backlash - such as Adidas, New Balance, and Burberry - are members of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI). The group promoting sustainable cotton production announced last year it was suspending its approval of cotton sourced from Xinjiang, mentioning concerns about human rights issues.

While on Weibo Chinese companies stating they are using Xinjiang cotton were praised by the social media users, stock prices of many Western companies sank and shares of Chinese domestic companies such as Li Ning and Anta Sports (that issued a statement saying it will continue to use cotton from Xinjiang and announced it started the procedure to withdraw from BCI), went up.

The backlash against these companies may not have been triggered by their statements about imports coming from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). After all Nike’s statement doesn’t even have a specific date and seems to have been issued a while back.

The decisions against these brands may then be linked with the US-China tensions: last July the US government had issued an advisory to warn businesses about forced labor in Xinjiang; then, in December, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that, with a "Withhold Release Order", the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel at all U.S. ports of entry would detain shipments containing cotton and cotton products originating from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) and its subordinate and affiliated entities as well as any products made in whole or in part with or derived from that cotton, such as apparel, garments, and textiles.

In the past week, the US, Canada, the UK and the European Union placed new sanctions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. China issued its own measures then, sanctioning European lawmakers and institutions, so the backlash against the apparel and fashion companies this week may be the consequence of the current relationships between these entitles and China.

As the number of fashion companies and mass-market brands facing such backlash may grow, the industry is treading a fine line. Fashion companies and groups have indeed turned into the protagonists of a difficult balancing act to keep happy multiple entities.

Large fashion companies doing business all over the world must be careful about goods made in Xinjiang as they will not be accepted in the US; the same companies may aspire to make business in China, but may face further backlash there for their positions on Xinjiang's cotton. Besides, companies also have to keep consumers happy, releasing trendy products, but nowadays consumers want to buy products with a message that may speak to them about sustainability and social issues, so ignoring appeal to human rights may mean losing consumers.

In a nutshell, some fashion companies – that in previous occasions were rarely transparent when it came to exploiting workers in countries where they manufacture their garments, from China to Vietnam, from Myanmar to Bangladesh and India – are finding themselves in rather difficult positions. China irepresents a key country for these brands that have already been badly hit by Coronavirus and who can’t afford losing this market.

There may be different consequences to this backlash: some companies may be retreating from specific initiatives or stop expressing their critical views or removing statements about not condoning any form of modern slavery among its suppliers, including forced, bonded or involuntary prison labour.

At the moment some groups remain silent (Amazon never expressed its opinion about the issue); Hugo Boss issued a statement highlighting the quality of the materials from China, and in particular from Xinjiang; Japanese retailer Muji began to advertise products made with "Xinjiang cotton"; Inditex removed its policy against forced labour from its website and the BCI Shanghai Representative Office issued a statement today claiming that China strictly abides by the BCI audit policy and has never found a case of forced labour. As consumers remain vigilant, the story makes you realise that in the modern battles for political and financial hegemony, fashion may have a (key) role too. 

Rediscovering Regina Cassolo Bracchi, Queen of Tin & Aluminium

There are artists who can turn into an inspiration for both fashion and jewellery designers.

Regina Cassolo Bracchi, better known simply as Regina (her name means "queen" in English), one the least known artists of the 20th century, is a perfect example.

This year the artist will be rediscovered thanks to the first major retrospective dedicated to her at Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAMeC) in Bergamo.

Inspired by the purchase of a major set of Regina's works by GAMeC and the Centre Pompidou of Paris, "Regina. Della scultura" (Queen. Of Sculpture) will be open from April (date to be confirmed as GAMeC is waiting for updated Covid-19 guidelines issued by the Italian government) to 29th August and will bring together two hundred and fifty works from a fifty-year artistic career.

This year Regina will also be honoured at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in the collective exhibition "Women in Abstraction: Another History of Abstraction in the 20th Century" (May 5 - September 6) curated by Christine Macel and Karolina Lewandowska.

Born in 1894 in Mede Lomellina, near Pavia, Italy, Regina was the daughter of a butcher and was orphaned at a young age. She studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan and then in Turin with the sculptor Giovanni Battista Alloati.

She started producing artworks in the '20s with realist portraits and sculptures that conformed to the fashion of the time, even though some of her heads showed different inspirations, pointing at African sculptures and artifacts.

In the '30s, moving away from her personal academic and naturalistic research, Regina focused on experimental materials, making pieces with aluminum, iron wire, sandpaper, tin and tinplate, evoking mechanical worlds à la Fortunato Depero.

Her folded aluminum shapes liberated forms from the restrictions of volumes of traditional sculpture and some of her pieces also showed connections with the spatial studies of avant-garde sculptor Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko and Lucio Fontana.

In 1934 Regina undersigned the Manifesto Tecnico dell'Aeroplastica Futurista (Technical Manifesto of Futurist Aerosculpture) and took part in events about aeropainting.

In 1951 Regina approached the "Movimento Arte Concreta" (MAC; Concrete Art Movement) through Bruno Munari and she adopted a geometrical aesthetics using circles, ellipses and the interplay of triangles or lozenges pieced together with grace and balance in vibrant mobile compositions, while still experimenting with modern materials such as Plexiglas that allowed her to suspend multi-coloured sculptures inside this transparent material.

In the '50s Regina, who also created works inspired by new scientific and space discoveries and who summed up the mirage of the race to the moon in her works exploring the void, was invited to take part in the Bienal de São Paulo, the first Concrete Art exhibition and the Milan Biennial.

She continued her experiments in abstract art in the '60s, developing also an interest in themes borrowed from nature and the landscape.

Curated by Chiara Gatti and Lorenzo Giusti, the event in Bergamo will feature complex, experimental, poetic and versatile pieces, including sculptures, mobiles, drawings, paper models and notebooks on loan from the Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection and Archive, other private collections and the Museum of Mede Lomellina.

All these pieces will form a journey through Regina's lightness of materials and dynamism of forms, and through her language based on geometric synthesis and lyrical abstractions.

There are different artworks by Regina Cassolo Bracchi that may prove inspiring for fashion designers: as usual drawings, sketches like the ones representing the wild vegetation or the natural world, could be employed as the starting point for prints and patterns.

But her mechanical pieces in tin and aluminum could be used for a variety of experiments: they could indeed be employed as inspirations for jewellery pieces, but also for fashion.

If you disassembled the sculptures made with aluminum sheets and reduced them to flat pieces you'd realise that Bracchi worked like a tailor.

Once disassembled, Regina's dynamic aerosculptures, made of layers of tin, aluminum, metal or celluloid sheets, or her bas reliefs such as "L’amante dell’aviatore" (The Pilot's Lover, 1935), lose their three-dimensional quality and become pieces of flat materials.

When analysed in that format these pieces resemble a tailor's pattern cutting, as proved by the preliminary studies Regina made with paper (she also made some variants in aluminum) that will also be part of the exhibition in Bergamo.

Held together with pins, in keeping with a sartorial practice applied to the aerial vocation of her figures, these patterns were used by the artist to shape metal without uncertainty, with both energy and softness.

Regina died in 1974 and her husband, the painter Luigi Bracchi, donated her works to the city of Mede Lomellina, yet they remained largely unknown. Now the time has come to rediscover her as she has got more stories to tell us, especially about materials and sculpting like a tailor.

Image credits for this post

Regina, Aerosensibilità (Aerosensibility, 1935)
Aluminum
Comune di Mede - "Regina" Collection
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, L'amante dell’aviatore (The Pilot's Lover, 1935)
Aluminum
Comune di Mede - "Regina" Collection
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Danzatrice (Dancer, 1930)
Aluminum
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Maschera (La donna e il fiore) (Mask, The Woman and the Flower, 1930)
Aluminum
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Piccola italiana (The Little Italian, 1930-35)
Aluminum
Comune di Mede - "Regina" Collection
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Fiore (Flower, 1946)
Plaster
Comune di Mede - "Regina" Collection
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Scultura concreta a tre piramidi (Concrete sculpture with three pyramids, 1950)
Concrete
Comune di Mede - "Regina" Collection
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Composizione concreta 1 (Concrete composition 1, 1955)
Coloured velvet paper collage
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Composizione concreta 2 (Concrete composition 2, 1955)
Coloured velvet paper collage
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta e Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Suono delle campane (serie) (The sound of the bells (series), 1963)
Mixed technique on paper
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Omaggio a Charles P. Conrad e Alan Bean (Homage to Charles P. Conrad and Alan Bean, 1970)
Multi-coloured Plexiglas and drawings on paper
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Scultura multicolore cerchi e fili (Sculpture with multi-coloured circles and threads, 1968)
Multi-coloured Plexiglas, coloured tape and nylon threads
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Struttura (Structure, 1950)
Multi-coloured Plexiglas
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Struttura (Structure, 1953)
Iron
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Struttura (Structure. 1955)
Iron wire and metal net
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Model for mobile sculpture, 1960s
Paper and pins
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Paper project for Aerosensibility, 1935
Paper cuttings
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Struttura (Structure, 1962-65)
Multi-coloured Plexiglas
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Studio per scultura (Study for a sculpture, 1967)
Pastel on paper
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Notebook sketch, undated
Ink on paper
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

Regina, Portrait of the artist in a notebook, undated
Ink on paper
Gaetano and Zoe Fermani Collection-Archive
Photo by: Alessandro Saletta and Piercarlo Quecchia - DSL Studio

The Timeless Beauty of Minimalism: Elsa Peretti, Idomitable Spirit & Designer (1940-2021)

"There is no new design, because good lines and shapes are timeless", Elsa Peretti (1940-2021)

One of the stars of the documentary "Halston" (2019) by Frédéric Tcheng is definitely Elsa Peretti, the Italian-born jewellery designer and philanthropist who first joined Halston as a model, becoming his collaborator and then a designer for Tiffany & Co. Peretti passed away last week on March 18 at her home in the Spanish village of Sant Martí Vell, as announced by the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation.

On the web page of the Foundation there is a simple message dedicated to her, that perfectly describes the indomitable Peretti, "woman of extraordinary generosity, philanthorpist, and world-famous designer. A free, strong, courageous visionary. Her legacy will be remembered forever."

Born in Florence in 1940 from a conservative family (her father was Ferdinando Peretti, founder of oil company Anonima Petroli Italiana - API), Peretti studied in Rome and in Switzerland.

She then went to Milan to study interior design and work for the architect Dado Torrigiani. In the early '60s she moved to Barcelona to work there as a model (she also posed for Salvador Dali) and, in 1968, she relocated to New York.

Here she modelled for Halston, Oscar de la Renta and Giorgio di Sant’Angelo and, together with Karen Bjornson, Alva Chinn, Pat Cleveland, and Pat Ast, she became one of Halston's favourite models – the Halstonettes – and a lifelong friend.

A regular of Studio 54, Peretti was portrayed in 1975 in an iconic photograph by Helmut Newton (with whom she became romantically involved in the '70s) showing her in a bunny costume by Halston amongst the towering skyscrapers of New York. By then Peretti had already started designing jewellery for Halston.

The first piece she made was inspired by something she had seen at a flea market, but also by the carefree moods in Portofino where she had seen women wearing Pucci walking with a gardenia in their hands. So she created a small sterling silver vase to be worn as a pendant on a leather cord. The vase could contain a flower so that the wearer could take a little bit of nature with them even when walking around the city. The pendant appeared on a Giorgio di Sant'Angelo runway and was just the beginning of Peretti's career in design.

In 1974, helped by Halston, for whom she designed also a globular bottle for his first fragrance, Peretti joined Tiffany & Co. as an independent designer, but by the end of the decade she became the firm's leading designer. 

Peretti designed over thirty collections for Tiffany, mainly using silver in her creations characterised by modern and timeles forms, elevating this material. Her inspirations were often drawn from everyday items - a bean, a bone, an apple could be transformed into cufflinks, bracelets, vases or lighters - but she was also inspired by modern art and in particular by Alexander Calder and Henry Moore's sculptures.

She created several iconic and minimalist pieces often inspired by the shapes of flora and fauna, such as her 1973-74 articulated snake necklace (her house in Sant Martí Vell in Catalonia, Spain, that she bought in 1968, proved a great inspiration in later years - her 2007 scorpion necklace was directly inspired by the scorpions she saw there). Her kidney bean, open heart, bottles and mesh designs are well-known around the world.

The mesh was developed in collaboration with Prof. Samuel Beizer at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York; Beizer and Peretti acquired old machines from Whiting and Davis, a Massachusetts-based company that used to make mesh and studied how the mesh was machine-knitted like a stocking. Peretti created with the mesh a series of intriguing pieces, including a scarf necklace and a mesh gold bra and a halter top.

She also came up with the diamonds and pearls "by the yard" concept: pieces with small diamonds pr pearls unevenly spaced along a chain to keep prices low, but also to give women the chance to wear a precious piece without attracting too much attention when out in the streets. 

The most famous design she created remains the "Bone Cuff", a fluid piece incorporating organic forms that pay homage to the human body.  Available in its small, medium and large version, this piece moved from anatomy as it consisted in a wide metal band with a protuberance that allows the bracelet to fit comfortably over the wrist bone. The piece was inspired by the bones of monks she had seen as a child in a 17th-century church crypt in Rome.

Sarah Jessica Parker wore the cuff as Carrie Bradshaw in the first "Sex and the City" film (2008) and, more recently, Gal Gadot wore an 18-karat gold version in Patty Jenkins' "Wonder Woman 1984" (2020; Jenkins is a Peretti fan).

In 2001, to celebrate Peretti's 25th anniversary with the company, Tiffany & Co. established the Elsa Peretti Professorship in Jewelry Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the first endowed professorship in the history of FIT, in memory of Samuel Beizer.

In 2012 the long-time relationship between Tiffany (that had become the sole licensee for the intellectual property rights of the designer in 1974) and Peretti seemed to come to an end. The contract was instead extended for another 20 years and Peretti retained control of her name, designs, intellectual products and line of products, keeping on producing for Tiffany a wide range of jewelry and interior design and functional pieces including tableware, drinking glasses and leather goods.

This was a clever move for the company considering that Peretti's designs are timeless and always had an important role in Tiffany's net sales (after the new agreement Peretti received a one-time fee plus a basic annual royalty fee for use of Peretti Intellectual Property and 5 percent of net sales of Peretti jewellery).

As the years passed Peretti focused on providing support to cultural, medical, scientific, humanitarian and educational initiatives through her Fondazione Nando ed Elsa Peretti, a charity dedicated to her father, that promotes human and civil rights and initiatives on behalf of unrepresented people and oppressed minorities. Throughout the decades the foundation financed more than 1,000 non-profit projects in more than 80 countries, for a total investment of over EUR 57 million.

In the meantime, her designs became part of the collections in different museums including the British Museum in London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.

The recipient of multiple awards - among the others the Coty American Fashion Critics' Award for Jewelry (1971) and the Rhode Island School of Design President’s Fellow Award (1981), while the Council of Fashion Designers of America named her Accessory Designer of the Year in 1996 - Elsa Peretti was the first non-Catalan person to be awarded in 2013 the National Culture Award by the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CoNCA; Peretti acquited entire segments of the village where she lived, restoring and preserving further buildings including the church, and supporting the excavation of Roman ruins and the archiving of the village's history. She also established a working vineyard, which has marketed fine wines under the Eccocivi label since 2008). In 2019 the XII Florence Biennale assigned her the "Leonardo da Vinci" award for a career in design.

Last October the designer celebrated a double anniversary - 50 years since she created the Bone Cuff and 45 years of working with Tiffany. For the occasion limited pieces and a new assortment of bone cuff designs, more affordable than the ones in gold and silver, were also released. 

The LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton group, owned by Bernard Arnault, bought Tiffany in 2020 for about $15.8 billion, so who knows maybe at some point Peretti's iconic designs may even appear in some of the collections of the fashion houses owned by the LVMH group.  

In a retrospective film celebrating the legacy of Elsa Peretti's iconic designs for Tiffany & Co. (shot and premiered in Japan in 1990 and produced by Madoff Productions) in honor of her 15th year designing for the jeweler and her 50th birthday she stated, "For me to be a good designer is the simplest thing in the world. But to be a good human being, that is going to be hard. I'd like to try though. "

Let's hope there will be a film soon about this indomitable spirit who made jewelry for women who could buy the pieces for themselves (rather than being gifted them by men...) and who taught us that pure, minimalist and timeless designs are more important than endless yet mediocre collections based on passing trends. 

Making History & Honouring Your Heritage: Deb Haaland, First Native American Cabinet Secretary

Fashion weeks moved to the digital space with Coronavirus and, while that allows also ordinary people to enjoy the shows, the traditional four weeks of runways in New York, London, Milan and Paris have turned into an excruciatingly long runway, with collections popping up here and there every day in a never-ending circle, with the consequence that many of us are simply losing interest in it all. There are actually more intriguing fashion-related moments happening off the runway.

Last week for example Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo people from New Mexico and the first Native American Cabinet Secretary in US history, donned an indigenous dress at her swearing-in ceremony in Washington.

In 2018 Haaland made history winning, together with Sharice Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation from Kansas, seats in the House of Representatives. At the 2020 election Haaland was elected to serve her second term in Congress representing the First District and in December it was announced that president Joe Biden had chosen her as Interior Secretary.

At her swearing-in ceremony in Washington, Haaland donned a sky-blue ribbon skirt. Worn on special occasions, the ribbon skirt is a sacred garment and the ribbons often have special meanings connected with the wearer. In this case Haaland's skirt featured an embroidered decorative motif of butterflies, symbolizing an uplifting message, and a cornstalk, hinting at Haaland's enrolled membership of the Pueblo of Laguna, surrounded by four-pointed stars, representing the souls of the departed looking down and protecting their relatives.

The rainbow coloured-background represents instead a unity of people: when she testified in February at her confirmation hearing, Haaland stated indeed: "I hope this nomination would be an inspiration for Americans moving forward together as one nation and creating opportunities for all of us". 

Moccasin boots, dragonfly earrings by Pat Pruitt, a Laguna Pueblo metalsmith, and a turquoise bead necklace accessorized her look. The ribbon skirt was designed by Indigenous company ReeCreeations. Its founder, Agnes Woodward, Plains Cree from Kawacatoose First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, and the daughter of a Residential school survivor and a Sixties scoop survivor, was racially abused for being a Native as a young girl and felt ashamed about her identity.

As a grown up, she started making the ribbon skirts and integrating in their motifs, colours and ribbons the personal experiences of the wearer as a way to reclaim her identity. Woodward wrote on the company's Facebook page: "Photos of Deb Haaland proudly wearing the ribbon skirt I designed for her brings me so many emotions that are difficult to describe. It is such an honor to see an Indigenous woman be sworn in as the first Native American Cabinet head (…). The ribbon skirt reminds us of the matriarchal power we carry as Indigenous women. They carry stories of survival, resilience, adaption, and sacredness."

"As survivors of genocide we wear our ribbon skirts to stay grounded in our teachings, to stay connected to the earth and our ancestors. Wearing it in this day and age is an act of self-empowerment and reclamation of who we are and that gives us the opportunity to proudly make bold statements in front of others who sometimes refuse to see us. It allows us to be our authentic selves unapologetically. This is extremely important to me because when I was a little girl, the hate and racism I experienced as a First Nations person left me feeling shame."

Wooodward made a point: Haaland honoured heritage, while sending a message of matriarchal empowerment to Indigenous women. After the colonisation, Native American women went from being central figures and decision-makers in their tribal nations to victims of sexual and physical assault at the hands of white men. Traditional gender balance in the tribal nations was shaken, but in the last two years we saw some steps towards restoring it: all the Native American women running in elections, such as Ruth Buffalo who won a seat in North Dakota's House of Representatives in 2018, show there is definitely a movement for Native American women to reclaim their roles, almost reconnecting with an ancestral strength and power.

Haaland has the will to make indigenous women visible once again in power places and the possibility of representing through them all those people that history tried to erase.

This is not the first time Haaland opted for traditional dress: at the swearing-in ceremony in 2019 she donned a traditional Pueblo dress (a manta or cotton knee-length dress fastened at the right shoulder with a narrow woven belt wrapped around the waist with a cloth blouse underneath it). At Joe Biden's inauguration in January, she wore a yellow below-the-knee ribbon skirt with ribbons in green, red, and red shades, gifted by 19-year-old designer Bella Aiukli Cornell of Aiukli Designs. 

One trend that will definitely be emerging in future (well, actually it has been emerging for quite a while now), is the power of one's background and personal history, often acknowledged via bespoke pieces made by dedicated artisans.

By wearing these pieces or jewelry by Native American artists and designers often incorporating turquoise, a sacred gemstone for Native Americans, Haaland promotes them, making a statement about her roots.

But, while we should take a note about Haaland's style as expression of her identity and her will to empower other Native American women, we shouldn't forget that her political decisions will be more important than her clothes. Haaland has indeed showed a great committment to the environment: as a congresswoman, she sponsored and co-led bills addressing climate change.

Respecting Mother Earth, a feminine life source, is a key aspect of Native American culture and Haaland opposes all new fossil fuel infrastructure, oil and gas drilling on federal lands and supports renewable energy, positions that brought a few Republicans (mainly senators who have major conflicts of interests as they took campaign cash from the oil and gas industry, such as John Barrasso of Wyoming, who in his full federal career, received over one million dollars from oil and gas firms and their employees; North Dakota senator John Hoeven, who owns dozens of oil well interests and Senator Steve Daines of Montana who received a major boost from the oil and gas industry in his career) to ask her hostile questions at her confirmation hearing  

Her background and passion for the environment confirm that Haaland remains an excellent choice as Interior Secretary: the Department of Interior oversees nine bureaus and small offices, from the Bureau of Land Management, Fish & Wildlife Service, and National Park Service to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Indian Education, departments that impact Native Americans. The department is also responsible for overseeing Indigenous land held in trust by the federal government, defending tribal sovereignty, and running the Indian Health Service.

Stepping into The Roaring Twenties: San Francisco Ballet's Dance Film "Wooden Dimes"

Coronavirus brought to a halt most cultural activities, but also prompted us to realise the potential of digital events. Quite a few theatres all over the world started organising digital shows that can be enjoyed from home, at times from other countries as well, so that we are able to experience beauty even in lockdown, with shows filmed miles away from where we are at the moment. Some theatres and companies offer subscriptions to a series of shows or the chance to watch just one performance.

San Francisco Ballet offers packages or single programmes with multiple performances for example, such as Program 3 (until 24th March), that includes Alexei Ratmansky's Symphony #9, Yuri Possokhov's "Swimmer" and "Wooden Dimes", a celebration of the Roaring Twenties with some fashion connections. 

The title of the story is inspired by the American saying "Don't take any wooden nickels" meaning "don't be naive", "keep an eye open for yourself" and follows the vicissitudes of a married couple, Robert and Betty Fine.

As Betty rises to stardom as a chorus girl, Robert remains stuck in his repetitive job. Fame awaits the former, despair and depression the latter as their relationship shifts.

The process behind the making of the ballet is actually very intriguing: because of Coronavirus, rehearsals had to be organised following the San Francisco Department of Public Health guidelines. Director of Photography Heath Orchard followed via Zoom, thanks to a camera set in the front of the studio.

Choreographer and director Danielle Rowe, in the meantime, went around the dancers and filmed them with her iPhone, providing Orchard with her own unique vision, focusing on more intimate details like hands touching (an important element as considering that with Coronavirus we have lost the tactile dimension). From a piece for the stage, "Wooden Dimes" became therefore a work for camera lenses, with Rowe guiding the gaze of the audience to smaller gestures.

This view allowed Rowe to find new angles and realise how some scenes may have been shortened or cut. The number of dancers was also reduced, but Rowe introduced mirrors and fans that allowed to create visual illusions. The ballet was therefore turned into a proper dance film that may prove entertaining for its ebullient style also for those ones who aren't usually into this genre. "Wooden Dimes" is indeed a combination of Rowe’s experiences as a choreographer and dancer (she previously danced with the Australian Ballet, the Houston Ballet and the Nederlands Dans Theater, learning to "speak" the body language of different dance companies). 

There is a juxtaposition of spaces in this ballet: the real San Francisco Ballet stage turns into the fictional stage of the story with the chorus girls dancing, while the scenes shot in a fictional backstage where the performers get dressed transforming into the main characters of a story, hint at the many theatres that had to close down and at the many dressing rooms left empty for months during the pandemic. 

Fashion fans may want to check the costumes by Emma Kingsbury. The Australian designer has created designs for the ballet, opera, TV, theatre and film (the latest film she contributed to is Mark William's "Blacklight", due for release in late 2021).

For "Wooden Dimes" Kingsbury evoked the 1920s, a decade that marked many social, political, economic, and artistic changes. Among the inspirations for the costumes there are The Ziegfield Follies, the Egyptomania trend that started in 1922, the year that Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered and Erté's formulation of the modern female silhouette. There is also an arty touch and a few echoes of Sonia Delaunay in the colour combinations that replace the black and white moods in the costume Betty wears when she becomes more famous.

Last but not least, the costume designers tried to create contrasts between the passion for machines and technology of the Art Deco times and the more glamourous side of the Style Moderne (think the formal suits and gowns in a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' number) with the feather fans. These contrasts are symbolised by the joyful numbers with the Ziegfield Follies-like girls around Betty and the darker performances about Robert's desperation.

Rowe and Kingsbury had to work on the designs remotely, and together they picked fabrics, dyeing, finishing techniques such as pencil, crayon, gouache and watercolour applications, and headwear. 

The film could be considered as very pertinent to our times: the Roaring Twenties came after the Spanish Flu and quite a few people are looking at this period at the moment, highlighting how it came after a pandemic and was characterised by optimism, prosperity and ebullience, hoping this is what awaits us as well at the end of the Coronavirus tunnel.

In the same programme, you will also find Yuri Possokhov's "Swimmers", based on John Cheever's short story The Swimmer and on Yuri Possokhov's ballet.

This surrealist story about a man who swims home through his neighbors' pools was transformed in this case into a tour through American culture, art and literature with references going from J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye to Jack London's Martin Eden and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, from Edward Hopper's painting "Nighthawks" to Mike Nichols' film "The Graduate".

If you like literary references in ballet, you can also join the book club at the San Francisco Ballet: you will read a book that inspired a ballet and that will be discussed in a Zoom meeting during which the story will also be compared to clips from various performances.

While we all hope Coronavirus will soon disappear from our lives, so that we can start enjoying live performances again, some activities like the possibility of buying digital tickets for shows in other countries or join fun Zoom events should maybe continue also after the pandemic as they allow a wider audience to live innovative cultural experiences and appreciate performances recorded all over the world.