Earth Day, an event to increase public awareness of the world's environmental problems, was first established on April 22, 1970. But saving our planet and working together to fight climate change has never been more urgent as it is now.
Coronavirus prompted us to realise that there may be a new pandemic era around the corner, hastened by climate change. So, while the Covid-19 health emergency is not over yet, we must take care of our natural resources that are under severe pressure from current rates of consumption. An example? Water resources are dwindling and a report released by the United Nations in March 2021, stated that five out of 11 regions have water stress values above 25%, including two regions with high water stress and one with extreme water stress.
Pollution and climate change are also having an impact on oceans, as increasing greenhouse gas emissions threaten entire coastal and marine ecosystems.
The Maritime Museum in Helsingør (Elsinore), Denmark, has got a timely exhibition celebrating the oceans through fashion. Entitled "Oceanista", the event launched yesterday as the museum reopened after it was shut down due to Coronavirus like many other institutions all over the world.
The event, extended until 28th November, tries to reshift the attention from just fashion to the ocean as an energetic, strong and powerful inspiration, almost an obsession for designers throughout the decades, hence the word "Oceanista".
A derivation of the Latin suffix -ist, the -ista suffix (borrowed from the Spanish language) denotes a specialist of a certain topic. With the word "Oceanista" the museum, in collaboration with fashion researcher Maria Mackinney-Valentin, hopes to capture the attention of its visitors via fashion and turn us all into maritime connoisseurs.
It is true that if we mention the words "maritime style", most of us will conjure up in their minds visions of sailors, but in the exhibition sailors' styles are filtered through the minimalist vision of Coco Chanel or the extravagant imagination of Jean Paul Gaultier who radically transformed the Breton jersey into a layered, ruffled, pleated and fantastic item for sirens rather than sailors, while sailors' tattoos were transformed into halter tops assembled with embroideries based on the designs of American tattooist Sailor Jerry in Maison Margiela's S/S 2014 collection.
Talking about sirens, the exhibition also includes Iris van Herpen's 2016 ethereally delicate dress made of silicone coated hand-blown glass spheres and Simon Rocha's pearl inspired designs.
Mysterious stories about the sea and ghost ships are instead told via Philip Treacy's hat shaped like a sailing ship, but also calling to mind elaborately opulent 18th century hairstyles such as the one called À la Belle Poule that commemorated the victory of a French ship over an English ship in 1778 (remember Marie Antoinette's tall ship hairdo?).
If you like the Navy, you won’t be disappointed as the exhibition features Thom Browne's reinvented uniforms and Balmain's jacket with frogging, reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix'.
But if you're more interested in adventures, you can check out designs by Craig Green for Moncler, evoking heroic expeditions full of hardships, but also marked by the joys of new discoveries.
There's the proverbial everything for everybody on display among the corals designed by award-winning scenographer Julian Juhlin, an innovative artists mainly working for the stage in Denmark.
Films, photos and interviews complete this exhibition that also features quite a few Danish brands and designers as well, among the others Henrik Vibskov, Kvadrat and Nikoline Liv Andersen.
While "Oceanista" also invites visitors to consider sailors' and fishermen's crafts, from knitwear to knots, the exhibition may have also benefited by adding a chapter about how traditional styles launched by fishermen have been rediscovered in some countries and have even become the object of copyright cases when famous fashion houses borrowed from them (remember the recent camisola poveira Vs Tory Burch story?). Yet there are designs to discover (or rediscover) here and the museum was also designed by Danish star-architect Bjarke Ingels and his BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) architectural firm, hence a visit is a must for architecture fans as well.
So, if you're in Denmark (or may be going there once the pandemic allows us to travel more freely) set your sails and land at Elsinore's Maritime Museum: it may be your chance to stop being called a "fashionista" and adopt the inspiring title of "oceanista".
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