A Fashion Exhibition that Encourages to Go Beyond Fashion “Memos: on Fashion in This Millennium”

04/19/20

Organized by the National Chamber for Italian Fashion, investigates the questions and uncertainties in an exhibition prepared for the languages of the future.

Like a notebook full of notes, digressions and reflections, Memosdeals with the new themes of contemporary fashion through a celebration made of inlay works, embroideries and structures. Clothes, magazines and other objects are collected in a “treasure chest” permeated by history – the Poldi Pezzoli house museum.

Among wonderful paintings of Lombard painters and memorabilia of all kinds, including glass and ceramics, we find the people who in recent years have taken fashion into another dimension. Alessandro Michele’s embroideries on the clothes he designed for Gucci speak of feminism; Giorgio Armani with his androgynous line introduces the genderless theme into contemporary fashion by implementing the revolution of “radical sex”; then Karl Lagerfeld and his ability to digress; Francesco Risso, a young talent, who questions the classic forms of the wardrobe and raises questions about the body and its contradictions through a true declaration of freedom.

Memos takes as its starting point Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, a series of lectures that the author wrote for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard in the autumn of 1985; Sadly, he never delivered these lectured because he passed away before leaving Italy, but his wife Esther managed to publish the written text. The exhibition was curated by Maria Luisa Frisa and Judith Clark. The timeless garments on display create an elegant dialogue with the museum’s collection, hinting at a pleasant conversation between present and past, contemporary and experienced, art and fashion.

 

Memos

Inside the “Memos. On fashion in this millennium” exhibition.  Francesco De Luca

 

Memos, aiming to “ask questions, offer proposals, not closure”, explores, marks and dissects the fashion process, preparing it for further critical analysis, with the intention of generating a series of reflections in a historical period in which fashion is redefining the contemporary society. On the occasion of the inauguration of the exhibition, Domus interviewed critic and curator Maria Luisa Frisa to better understand the background of an inclusive fashion.

 

Clothes MSGM, Marco De Vincenzo, Arthur Arbesser, Marni and Prada. Photo Francesco De Luca.
Memos displays many objects from different historical backgrounds, how was the collection of items on display organized?
It was a complex process, because every garment and every object on display has great value. There was great cooperation and availability on the part of the museums and institutions involved. This means that when you create something beautiful you move in complete harmony. We were interested in the centrality of the clothes and above all in staging fashion attitudes in order to give back an idea. This is not an exhibition that closes but an exhibition that opens up; an exhibition that invites you to go further.

The starting point of the exhibition was Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium. How did you manage to translate a literary work into a fashion exhibition?
We did not translate the method of Calvino, but rather the ability to create questions; the very creation of the Memos. What are the permanences of the century and its qualities? What are the fashion values of the last millennium? What are the design paradigms? The more time passes, the more we notice a diversification of reflection that is increasingly similar to the needs of artists. Virgil Abloh, for example, theorized “the shortcuts”, he himself claims that you only need to change a design by 3% to make it fresh and original. Memosfocuses on how the expressive territory is expanding.

Who better represents the vision of fashion of the last 20 years?
I can’t choose just one, there are many people with a strong identity and a “difficult” flair. Among the many there is Maria Grazia Chiuri, who provocatively questions the meaning of dressing up and the rules of haute couture, emphasizing the construction of the feminine, thus recalling the importance of questioning its definition before wearing it. Alessandro Michele also explains very well the relationship with the body that disappears under a dress; he designed a soft white dress embroidered with a uterus and blooming with flowers, which is a powerful message to send in a historical period where women’s rights are being questioned; he celebrates femininity. In this sense, the author’s gesture has a value, thus reaffirming the quality of communication through the work. Memos is an exhibition that openly addresses the theme of inclusiveness by dealing with characters who take fashion into a wider dimension, a fashion that explodes and changes the paradigms of design. A fashion that does not want to inherit a single story, but evolves.

Dress Gucci. Photo Francesco De Luca.
 

Milan is Fashion and Design, what do you think are the differences between these two worlds apparently very similar to each other?
Fashion and design are two complementary systems that look out for each other and live together. Fashion has different rituals than design, it has influenced design. Fashion is not only creativity, but above all communication, culture and business. Probably, compared to design, fashion has the ability to reach society first, also because of a matter of consumption, I think design is more cryptic, it needs to be analyzed and understood. Fashion, on the other hand, has become accessible to everyone.

In the last twenty years, the city of Milan has changed a lot, how do you see the change of the metropolis compared to fashion?
Milan is the city of fashion, here all the forces that act on it converge. The city has transformed as it should, change is part of the process and the same has influenced the fashion that has evolved and will continue to evolve.

MFW