New York capital of fashion (No longer Venice)

Published: 2008 - December/2009 - January, Viewpoint

When one talks about the capital of fashion thoughts run naturally to Paris, for ever the cradle of elegance but also a way of understanding the industrialization of fashion that has allowed France to monopolize – at least until the middle of the last century – the entire concept of fashion in the world. From the 1950’s to the 1990’s Italy however has begun to move with the ease of impact that the country of the ‘bel sole’ has always had with everything to do with artistic expression. The collection of Italian fashion in the twentieth century began officially in Rome, with the shows run by the burgeoning ‘Camera della Moda Italiana’ (taking the place of ‘Ente Italiano per la Moda’) and following also in the pret-à-porter, that is no longer couture fashion but mass produced divided between luxury and large distribution.
Promoted by the famous Sala Bianca di Pitti, ready to wear Italian fashion aimed towards young stylists such as, to name but a few, Walter Albini, Alberto Lattuada, Valentino, Giorgio Armani, Krizia, Missoni. The escalation began in Florence, still in the starting phase of winning competition, which continued with the Cnmi Milan fashion shows aimed at young designers, to the fortune of Florence’s ‘Pitti Uomo’ to the renowned ‘Alta Moda’ in Rome, while Paris – always in pole position – found itself having to contend not only with a fiercer Italian fashion business but also the creative London shows and recently – only recently – the exhibitions that are seen today at the New York Fashion Week, needed to settle the overseas buyers and support the powerful ‘dome’ of Vogue America (dominated by the more or less hidden powers of the infamous Anna Wintour), in the team of the great fashion capitals. In fact nothing to fear in the creative profile of the ‘designer labels’ that show in Paris of Milan or the new comers of London, the city that has always been associated with the temple of the new. The greatest designers in fact, starting with John Galliano (artistic director at Dior), came out of the great English schools and began in London with creative shows, without the need to satisfy the market. A characteristic that makes London one of the major points of reference for innovation but is penalized under the high profile of the large circulations monopolized first by Paris and then Milan.
What role does – or did – a city like Venice play, lighthouse of creative intelligence for the world for centuries, queen of elegance, refinement and luxury in fashion?
One detail needs to be underlined that not everybody knows, negative for the lagoon capital in such that it doesn’t give the honor of universal capital which today is held by fashion in general, the trends, tastes, the intelligent creativity referred to the routes of costume.
Not many know that it was actually in Venice, in 1939, when only Paris still held first place in fashion in the world, and well before Rome, Florence and Milan the first Italian high fashion show was held. Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, creator of the Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Venezia (that was held on the Lido), wanted something to entertain the wives of the many employees (defined by everyone as the ‘wives of the hierarchy’) accompanying them during the Festival. It took place in the hall of the Excelsior Hotel, a short distance from the Palazzo del Cinema and presented for the first time models on the runway with the most beautiful clothes from great Italian couture houses. The Venetian intelligentsia, however, were still closed in the defense of a culture of nobility, held down by laws of judgment that were very well defined. A conservative culture already upset by the discussed arrival of the Biennale d’Arte wanted in 1896 by enlightened Venetians held at first to be almost subversive but encouraged by the sensibilities that in Venice accompany even the most conservative. Yes, therefore to modern art, an art that can cause scandal with expressions so far unimaginable (such as the famous canvas by Grosse shown and censured at the Biennale); no however to all that could appear to be indefensible because of frivolity, mundanely, and not within the codes of high culture. This was the Venice that in 1934 had unwillingly accepted the Cinema festival held – like the rest of Photography – to be a minor art (in fact a ‘non art’) and for this reason moved to the Lido, isolated. In fact the beginnings of the Mostra were in Venice (at the time not called the ‘Centro Storico’historic center), in the rooms of the Doges Palace. The least they could do to be able to tolerate this new ‘modern’ creature, Cinema, was to export it to the Lido which as a seaside location was allowed to host what the great Temple preferred to carry out ‘outside the walls’ A determination which also influenced the selection of the title which should not have been ‘International Festival’ (as with that of the Theater and Music already grown with the Venice Biennale and dedicated to expression of art already consolidated as such). ‘Theater’, ‘Music’ already existed but not ‘Cinema’ which only got the right to exist as ‘cinema graphic art’. The new collection at the Biennale dedicated to Cinema had to call itself (and still does) Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica.
With precedence like these it’s easy to imagine the scandal raised by the 1939 shows at which the Venetian establishment rebelled with a categorical no to fashion “an uncultivated expression of frivolity and banality unworthy of a context such as Venice.”
It was thus – also as a way out – that the first shows were born in Rome following gloriously up until the great show, the mega-show at the Trinità dei Monti, to the days in Florence and Milan that involve the world aimed at other considerations towards the superfluous art, the creative digressions that have brought fashion at its highest expression parallel with those pictorial or of art in general.
Venice was the capital of these expressions in the past centuries, open to every possible journey to the universe of beauty, but after the 19th century the city closed herself in a form of ‘moralism’ in the face of the esthetic: a moralism hard to die if we consider the various attempts to re introduce the city among the great fashion capitals of the world (one of these were proposed for years with the label of creativity for Wedding clothes the last remaining field not yet monopolized by the various cities in search of bigger spaces also in fashion).
Triumphant exceptions however played entirely with private contributions. It was around the 1970’s when the prestigious institution of the ‘Palazzo Grassi’ was wanted by an enlightened Italian businessman, Franco Marinotti, as a repository for fashion, with halls for shows, meetings, seminars, conventions and a library perhaps amongst the most important in the history of costume, including books, and rare examples of textiles (details not missed luckily by Giandomenico Romanelli, director of the Venetian Civic Museums, who when ‘Palazzo Grassi – bought by Fiat – lost its home as Centro Internazionale delle Arti e del Costume, (International Center for Art and Costume), bought a large part of the volumes, costumes and materials).
There were attempts with the Venetian craftsmen of the CGIA to put on shows in the memorable environment of St.Marks Square. But Venice reacted with condescension to these courageous attempts even refusing a request made in the 1980’s – by the undersigned – from the Camera Nazionale della Moda to the city to hold in St.Marks Square the first television spectacular dedicated to great Italian fashion which every year would have brought to the world this idea within a spectacular and impacting form. The then Assessor for Tourism refused stating that “Fashion could not enter St.Marks Square in respect of the culture”. Fashion decided to choose another capital, Rome, for it’s great show, taking off spectacularly as a chapter of beauty, of the beautiful world, but also with an economic drive for tourism and culture for the city, the most beautiful clothes from our designers on the steps of the Trinità dei Monti in Piazza di Spagna (The Spanish Steps).
Venice is not – only because it didn’t want to be – a fashion capital in today’s meaning of the word, and it can’t consider itself ‘fashion’, able to establish a guarantee to join the already complete panorama of exhibitions, an occasional show without real innovation presented in an unedited way or designers with national impact. What remains however is witness of a great culture within the Venetian DNA the recognition of a strong culture which – if not appreciated for the quickness continually overlapping cultural expressions, the changing of values, the laws which sometimes trap every possible opening to modernity in a conservative faith, to the ‘easy’ – is the confirmation of a style that has in the past left many traces in costume history that Venice imposed with its inimitable textiles, damasks, lampassi, velvets, the sumptuous crinolines, the pouffes, the panniers, the luxurious elegance imitated in all the great Courts, the pleasure of beauty enjoyed always looking for the possibility of perfection and individuality which today, unfortunately, presents the bill.