In yesterday's post we looked at a designer upcycling second-hand garments to create demi-couture pieces. Let's continue the eco-friendly theme with a juxtaposition that looks at retreating glaciers and devastating fires.
Milan Fashion Week is currently on, but those who are in town for the event and would like to learn more about the current conditions of glaciers, have a passion for photography and want to take a break from the runways, should head to the Triennale for the exhibition "Sulle tracce dei ghiacciai" (On the trail of glaciers; from today till 17th October). The event is part of the Triennale's programme of events focused on the environment and on the impact human beings and urban lifestyles have upon it, and it is perfectly timed with Greta Thunberg's visit, scheduled for next Friday.
The event features pictures of glaciers taken by Fabiano Ventura and a video installation by Paolo Scoppola. Ventura's photographs are juxtaposed to archival images that the photographer meticulously researched, taken by explorers and photographers from the end of the 1800s to the early 1990s.
Vintage pictures taken 100 years ago are compared to images taken by Ventura on the same spot and around the same period of the year the original pictures were taken.
The images included show missions to Karakorum (2009), Caucasus (2011), Alaska (2013), Andes (2016) and Himalaya (2018). The results are shocking: you don't need to be an expert in glaciology to realise that the situation is dramatic and that the landscapes have radically mutated.
Concentrations of greenhouse gases have reached higher values over the past 800,000 years, mainly due to emissions from human activities.
This is the predominant cause of global warming, which has led the increase of the global average temperature by about 1°C compared to pre-industrial levels and that caused an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events since 1950. Among the different impacts, one of the most obvious is the reduction of the glacial mass on a global level.
The serious health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has absorbed most of the global efforts, redirecting the political and economic attention to the containment of the contagion on the one hand and the economic recovery on the other. But it is necessary to increase the level of attention on the climate crisis, the consequences of which are already evident and visible on a daily basis.
Among the most significant events this summer, there were the serious fires which affected many regions (USA, Europe and the largest islands in Italy for example) and the high temperatures recorded throughout Europe and particularly in Sicily, where the 48,8°C were touched (highest temperature ever recorded in Europe).
But while Milan's Triennale is inviting visitors to consider the effects of retreating glaciers, Sardinian designer Antonio Marras is exploring with his S/S 22 men's and women's wear collections the consequences of devastating fires.
Showcased digitally during Milan Fashion Week with a film and a photoshoot, the collection was photographed in Sardinia in an area that on 24th July this year was destroyed by a large fire.
Unfortunately, strong winds, high temperatures and dry vegetation, allowed the blaze to spread rapidly, reaching Cuglieri and destroying secular plants such as an olive tree believed to have lived for a millennium, a rare example of botanical archeology.
Within days the fire burnt over 11,000 hectares, roughly the size of around 20,000 football fields. Homes and farmland were also damaged and hundreds of people had to be evacuated.
In the area where Marras shot the video and photoshoot, Santu Lussurgiu, only 100 hectares escaped the flames. In both the images and the video the burnt soil covered in a sand-like black dust and the skeletal trees, contrast with the white and ivory clothes, covered with delicate appliqued flowers, vintage embroideries and lace. The aerial images are particularly shocking as they show what was once a green area reduced almost to a desert.
Gradually colours start reappearing in the collection, from aqua details in the knitwear or dresses to the delicate pink or vivid red rose prints, from the leopard inserts on the parkas and jackets to the colourful patchwork motifs on shirts. They hint at rebirth, a concept symbolised also by the wisp of grass that can be seen at a certain point in the film.
Fragility is instead echoed through the faded floral prints, the tulle and lace encrusted frocks, the see-through slipdresses and lingerie matched with blazers fastened with ribbons, designs with a strong artisanal quality that is missing in many contemporary collections by young and hip designers allegedly producing demi-couture.
Destruction is evoked instead in this collection by the black and faded dark grey designs, their charred beauty perfectly matching the surrounding lunar landscape of rocks and desolation.
Some of the motifs included in this collection were created by Marras during lockdown: after the designer found the fabrics used by seamstresses for the prototypes, he started painting on them, in an almost therapeutic process.
In the film entitled "I had a wound in my heart", a voice talks about stitching a wound (a metaphor for the destruction in Sardinia, but it could be intended as a metaphor for many other things, including the pandemic), a process that triggers a healing process and doesn't leave a scar, but a delicate embroidery at the bottom of the heart.
In the video this concept is symbolised by a red string that a model wraps around his finger, a vague reference maybe to the blue ribbon of Marras' beloved Maria Lai that united an entire village. And while in the film accompanying the previous collection there was an energetic end with a fun twist, here there is a poetic message of hope.
The possibility of a genuine renaissance is indeed evoked in the final tableau with models in white shirts (inspired by Marras' installation at the Sassari-based Giovanni Antonio National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography?) with inserts of lace dipped in tea to create a vintage-like effect.
Yet, as the runways are rebooting and IRL fashion is coming back after the Covid-19 pandemic, we must remember that there won't be any renaissance for our planet and we won't get back a healthy global ecosystem if we don't act now and restore climate stability, rebuilding deteriorated ecological systems.
So, while attention to climate-related issues is laudable in any kind of forms it can manifest, from exhibitions to fashion runways and collections, let's hope that global warming and climate change do not remain themes we discuss and debate about without bringing any real changes.
Image credits for this post
1. The Ameghino Glacier, Alberto Maria De Agostini, 1945 - © Museo Borgatello
2. The Ameghino Glacier, Fabiano Ventura, 2016 - © Associazione Macromicro
3. The Muir Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, William Osgood Field, 1941 - © Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks
4. The Muir Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, Fabiano Ventura, 2016 - © Associazione Macromicro
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