Salvatore Ferragamo: is fashion art?

The first section of the exhibition is devoted to Salvatore Ferragamo and his shoes, which were considered genuine works of art as early as the Thirties, in accordance with a concept of art focused as much on technique as on conceptual creativity. Ferragamo used the Renaissance artist’s bottega as the model for his work, and Florence offered myriad examples of these. Moreover, the shoemaker proudly embraced the role of the craftsman/artist central to Italy’s artistic tradition. A video installation shows shoes with their source of inspiration: the Classical world, the Orient, the avant-garde art movement of the nineteen hundreds and Surrealism, as well as the city’s culture of craftsmanship. This room also includes the original sketches for advertisements that the Futurist painter Lucio Venna designed in the Thirties for Ferragamo shoes, the styles created for intellectuals and artists and Kenneth Noland’s painting from the late Fifties that inspired Ferragamo for the decoration of a shoe and its name.

Art and fashion often play off of one another today and have done so in the past. While artists are fascinated by clothing as an essential tool for bringing realism to their creations, tailors have often taken inspiration from the world of art and acted like artists themselves. Art historians use the clothing in a painting to date the work of art and, vice versa, fashion historians use the clothing in paintings to study the way garments moved, how they were held and how they fell. The history of modern Italian fashion began with the very first debates at the turn of the 20th century on the need to give Italian clothing production a national identity, and referencing Italian art was seen as a way to distinguish Italian fashion significantly from the French fashion that prevailed at the time. Rosa Genoni, a dressmaker and dressmaking teacher at a professional school for women in Milan, played a key role in this process. At the 1906 Milan Expo, she had two dresses made as manifestos for her ideas: one was inspired by a drawing by Pisanello at Musée Condé in Chantilly, and the other was a dress inspired by Botticelli’s Primavera. 

While Ferragamo’s atelier was modelled after a Renaissance artist/craftsman’s bottega, in which technique was as fundamental as creativity, Germana Marucelli’s atelier in the Sixties was a gathering place for fashion players, artists and intellectuals united in their search for new forms of expression that could interpret the spirit of their time. This section recreates Marucelli’s atelier/salon and shows the original works of art that hung on the walls, pieces by Pietro Zuffi, Getulio Alviani and Paolo Scheggi, along with the clothing created through the collaboration of these artists. Including documents, photographs, promotional brochures and publications, this section of the exhibition also documents the years leading up to this time, i.e., the post-war period, when the dressmaker established the San Babila poetry award, and writers and poets, including the most influential poets of the Italian 20th-century, like Ungaretti, Quasimodo and Montale, frequented her salon every Thursday

This section moves from the atelier to the mood board to show how fashion designers are increasingly storytellers through the images that emerge from a flow of information, as they seek to stimulate the public’s attention and memory. Produced thanks to A MAGAZINE CURATED BY, this space provides the public with the imaginary, visual universe of brilliant creative minds, like Haider Ackermann, Martin Margiela, Yohji Yamamoto, Iris van Herpen, Dries van Noten, Giambattista Valli, Stephen Jones, Rodarte, Jun Takahashi, Kris van Assche, Martine Sitbon, Proenza Schouler and Riccardo Tisci, in a kaleidoscope of art, music, poetry and photography.

Connected to the fourth section at Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, the exhibition at the city’s national library shows how the relationship between art and fashion is depicted in the press, beginning with the early nineteen hundreds and focusing on Italy in particular. It includes the fashion illustrations published in magazines before the advent of photography to the work of avant-garde artists – the Futurists in particular – in the debate on clothing and the reassessment of craftsmanship in fashion. It goes on to explore the role that important names in fashion have played in fine art printing and art events and, vice versa, it also shows how fashion magazines have published articles on art exhibitions and other themes closely related to art, or even used artists themselves as models and spokespeople for fashion collections.

It was in the 19th century, with the rise of the bourgeoisie and industrial production, when fashion ceased to be the privilege of the ruling classes and aristocracy alone, that the exchange between art and fashion intensified. In the paintings of the early part of the century, the focus on clothing coincided with the conception of taste extended to every aspect of living and of appearance, reflecting the democratic climate fostered by the French Revolution.Women dressed in linen and cotton, preferably white, contrasting the ornate ostentation of the ancient régime with an ‘elegance’ based on the light, essential and simple forms reminiscent of classical sculpture.

In the nineteen hundreds, art, fashion and textile design intermingled and fed each other ideas, tones and styles that could be expressed through the new materials created by industry or discovered by experimenting in ateliers. A number of events helped them exchange ideas and grow, first the Monza Biennale expos (1923- 1930), followed by the Milan Triennale expos (from 1933 on), where artists and architects highlighted the need to give the decorative arts a function, a concept that is now considered an integral part of a design. This principle began to be applied in the post-war period when, as part of the necessary reconstruction, the reorganisation of Italian industry and flourishing arts movement led to interesting interactions between art, fashion and design.

The boundaries between art and fashionThe boundaries between art and fashion became less clear in the Eighties, when the forms of relationship between the two worlds grew on an International level. Art institutions opened their doors to designers, such as the Metropolitan A new category of exhibition curators and dedicated museums emerged.