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I
SUZY MENKES MARCH 31, 2014

Italys High Fashion on the Factory Floor

LONDON A cathedral-like structure soars overhead in fitting grandeur to the
gorgeous gowns below: Valentinos black silk, Dolce & Gabbanas Sicilian flowers,
Capuccis sweeping geometry in grass green and shocking pink.
But what is that rhythmic sound, penetrating the background music? It is the hum and
click of a factory sewing machine.
The Glamour of Italian Fashion: 19452014 at the Victoria & Albert Museum from
Saturday to July 27 is a rare show that chronicles the birth of an industry and celebrates
its beating technological heart.
It would have been easy for the curator, Sonnet Stanfill, to fill the museums rooms with
splashy fashion from the 1980s and with todays red carpet gowns. But she chose,
instead, to measure Italian fashion as it moved from the ruins of the postwar period and
the sartoria, or dressmaker wardrobes, to what is still even after the invasion of
Chinese factories into the heartland of Prato the most effective industrial fashion
machine in the world.
A mannequin in a Pucci tunic and leggings from 1966 next to a Vespa scooter. Credit
Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Because this subject hasnt been done, it offered us the V&A an opportunity to tell
it in broad chronology, focusing on points of influence, Ms. Stanfill said. What we
dont have is a chronicle of Armanis career or of Prada. Its about key examples that help
move the story along.

Italian fashion history started in Florence, and the exhibition begins there with a
photograph of ruined buildings after the Second World War. That morphs into displays of
dresses against a background of twinkling chandeliers in the Sala Bianca, where
couturiers, little known outside their Italian habitat, created dresses for contessas.
In Ms. Stanfills chronology, the kickoff point for Italian fashion was 1951, when the
Florentine buying agent Giovanni Battista Giorgini opened up his home to American
retailers like Bergdorf Goodman and I. Magnin, seducing them with a dolce vita of
society balls and parties in his citys Boboli gardens.
This was a period when the Parisian couturier Pierre Balmain sneered, Let the
Americans play around with baby bonnets in Italy theyll come to us for their serious
buying.
Yet Rome became a beacon for movie stars from the 1950s, and a striking section called
Hollywood on the Tiber includes movies on giant screens, dresses worn by Ava
Gardner or Audrey Hepburn and an image of Liz Taylor with glinting Bulgari emeralds.
The Italians had been smart enough to diversify from ball gowns to a postwar sporty
glamour, represented in this exhibition by Irene Galitzines famous palazzo pajamas
and Emilio Puccis beach and ski wear. A Pucci display has a mannequin in a patterned
shirt and matching hose mounting a silvered green Vespa scooter, that symbol of youthful
sexiness and postwar freedom.
Although Ms. Stanfill said that it was quite daunting to concentrate on 70 years of
fashion production, the exhibition advances at a crisp pace save a display of the dull
wardrobe of a bourgeois wife.
The show embraces tailoring with verve, demonstrating that the differences between the
seductive Neapolitan style and the elegant Milanese look are all about the sexual charge
of the Alpha male. (John F. Kennedy chose a sensual suit from the Roman designer
Angelo Litrico.)
Photo
A multilayered silk gown with velvet stole by Roberto Capucci from 1957. Credit
Andrew Testa for The New York Times

But it is the exhibitions second half that gets to the point: how Italy, for all its regional
variations and often disputing designers, managed to make high fashion on the factory
floor.
Visitors can gaze at Krizias knitted cat on the breast of a sweater or the intricacy of
Missonis stitches. They will wonder at Trussardis laser-cut leather, Romeo Giglis
romantic drapes, Moschinos cheeky, iconoclastic designs and Gianni Versaces sexually
charged menswear. And so they should, since this section is labeled The Cult of the
Fashion Designer.
That cult is defined by Anna Piaggi, the late and much lamented fashion oracle, as a
secret society, made up of pioneers, a few inventors and a few poets. They are the new
phenomenon and the new elite.
Some of those featured like Walter Albini and Fiorucci are fading names. And even
with the early work of Giorgio Armani on display and a vitrine devoted to the textiles that
helped create the extravagant gestures of Gianfranco Ferr, the real story of Italian
fashion is in a digital map showing the areas of production: silk from Como, wool from
Biella and leather goods from Tuscany, made famous by Gucci and Prada.
The exhibitions accompanying V&A book, edited by Ms. Stanfill and including essays
with rich illustrations, also sets out the story of the rise of different areas of Italy.
A later display underlines the importance of Italys material world, with a sexy outfit
from Tom Fords last collection for Gucci, and a focus on Pradas accessories, rather than
the clothes not forgetting Fendi furs.
The subtext of the exhibition is the rise of Milan home of magazine and book
publishing and of the advertising that produced the iconic mixed-race ads from Benetton.
These ads are displayed at the show, among the work of the photographer Paolo Roversi
and the Gian Paolo Barbieri image of a Ferre white blouse, which is used as the
exhibition poster.
But is Milan now on the wane? This Italian story ends with a video debate about Milans
current position in fashion, including Angela Missoni, Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria
Grazia Chiuri of Valentino and Franca Sozzani, editor in chief of Vogue Italia.

It is to the curators credit that the exhibition can raise questions for the fashion
cognoscenti about the state of the Italian industry, while allowing a more general
audience to appreciate La Bella Figura.
(A version of this article appears in print on April 1, 2014, in The International New York
Times)
II
By Julie Baumgardner ,August 27, 2013 6:33 pm.

The United Colors of Benetton, and the World

Luciano Benetton, the father of the Italian sportswear label the United Colors of
Benetton, embraces and encourages a multi-culti global perspective through his
companys clothes and ad campaigns, and, now, through art. I have always been a strong
believer that people may not speak to each other because of economic or political issues,
but Im pretty sure that even those countries which arent speaking to each other can
through art, said Benetton, who recently curated the exhibition Imago Mundi
(Images of the World) at the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice. The show is an
extension of the Venice Biennale and includes over 1,000 works from his personal
collection, by artists from Australia, India, Japan, South Korea and the United States.
This started as kind of a game, said Benetton, who began collecting art in 2008. From
there I got this idea to map out the situation of art in all countries. And so he began to
commission original pieces while traveling. Despite being from different countries, the
art all shares a common denominator: it measures 10 centimeters by 12 centimeters. We
were in Latin America at the time, and one artist sent me a painted business card,
Benetton said, about the first piece to inspire this size of all the commissioned works. His
personal goal is to cover 50 countries for his private collection, and he continues to work
with art experts and curators to track down artists from the parts of the world he has yet
to reach, like Africa, Afghanistan and Tibet. Some of the artists Ive been lucky enough
to meet in person! he said. So far, those include the likes of Laurie Anderson, David

Byrne, Steven Soderberg and Carmen Herrera, who is currently working on her
miniature.
The exhibition at the Biennale runs through Oct. 27, but Benetton plans to install Imago
Mundi permanently at a later date. In keeping with our corporate philosophy, he said,
the next step will be to completely refurbish the ancient burial church in Treviso, from
the 1300s, which will become the venue to host all of the artworks once the itinerant
exhibitions are over.
Correction:

August

28,

2013

An earlier version of this post misstated the number of works in the exhibition "Imago
Mundi." It includes more than 1,000, not 200.
(A version of this article appears in print on 09/01/2013, on page ST3 of the NewYork
edition with the headline: On View: Tiny Art.)