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Milan and New York between the “18th century!” and Christian Dior.



The exhibition of "Palazzo Morando" entitled "SETTECENTO!" continues; exhibition whose two curators, Prof. Enrica Morini and Prof. Margherita Rosina, lead us to discover how the taste of the Age of Enlightenment can contaminate our contemporaneity.


The absolute protagonists of the Milanese exhibition are 3 18th-century dresses that belonged to a noble Garda family and have come down to us miraculously intact, which, thanks to the philanthropic spirit of the "Amichae" association, were donated to the historic Milanese museum of costume, fashion and image.


The three garments are inspired by the dictates of "Robe à la Française" and "Robe à l'Anglaise", styles that characterized European fashion from the 1830s up to the French Revolution, declined in various configurations but characterized with fenced bodices and full skirts.


The fabrics in which they are made can only arouse admiration and interest from us designers for the skill and ingenuity with which they were made. Entirely produced in silk, they have an apparent finished reduction of about 75/80 threads per cm (!) and slightly lower in the weft. The weave structure is very complex, but, simplifying, they can be assimilated to double warp fabrics intertwined with both lanced and bobbin wefts.


The museum itinerary suggests how this combination of charm and technical refinement has influenced subsequent eras up to the present day. In fact, the 3 dresses have been combined with generous loans from the archives of Dolce&Gabbana, the Gianfranco Ferré Foundation, Max Mara, Versace and Vivienne Westwood, underlining her suggestions.



On the other hand, the exhibition "Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams", which retraced the 70 years of the Maison, has just ended at the Brooklyn Museum (New York). The exhibition highlighted both the iconic style of the founder and the stylistic code of the various designers who have followed one another as artistic directors.

In addition to underlining the union between the French fashion house and the United States, the exhibition highlighted how Christian Dior's pioneering ideas created a revolution in the post-World War II fashion world, and how some of these creations can be considered a reinterpretation of the stylistic elements of eighteenth-century fashion.



Farid Chenoune, fashion historian, argues that Dior is the anti-Chanel and picks up the thread of post-war fashion where Madame Coco left off. We return to bustiers and corsets that highlight the anatomical parts of the body, creating harmonious waist-buttock-breast compositions that hyperfeminize the silhouette and present it in an extremely refined way.


The exhibition exemplifies many of the French couturier's legendary silhouettes, including the lines "Corolle" (the skirt shaped like a floral corolla) and "En Huit" (in which he proposed a feminine figure 8 shape) which debuted in Spring Summer 1947 Haute Couture collection.



Within this line Bar emerged, a complete afternoon suit composed of an ecru natural shantung jacket and a pleated wool "crepella" skirt.





Rossano Bisio


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