The exhibition La camicia bianca secondo me. Gianfranco Ferré, by Daniela Degl’Innocenti, hit Milan and it is shown until the 1st of April at Palazzo Reale.
“It hasn’t been that easy to bring the exhibition in Milan – says Rita Airaghi, Director of the Gianfranco Ferré Foundation – It is a matter of pride to me to make this important step. We are not talking about a simple transfer from one place to another one, it’s about overcoming a series of obstacles, in fact, we began to talk about the show in Milan last April and we got here just in January of this year”.
After the first stage at Museo del Tessuto in Prato, the exhibition attains the historical Sala della Cariatidi, deeply craved by Rita Airaghi: “Because there is a lot of poetry, there is creativity and I would say that, in this case, the exhibition complies a quotes that Gianfranco Ferré used to repeat to his assistants and students when he was teaching in some fashion school: ‘Fashion is also dream’. Moreover, evoking a quote of another architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: ‘With both feet firmly on the ground, wanting to reach with the head the clouds’, we can say that in this exhibition we can find both of them, there are clouds, there is fantasy, poetry and dream but at the same time there is ability to plan, there is research, there is scientific rigor”.
From the 1982-2006 ready-to-wear collections of the Architect, twenty-seven shirts or perhaps it should be better to say twenty-seven sartorial masterpieces stand out in strict lines just like sculptures, illuminated by striking lights that create shadows and contrast on taffeta, crepe de chine, organza, satin, tulle, silk or cotton fabrics, lace and embroidery mechanical.
As Filippo Del Corno, assessore alla Cultura explains: “The exhibition is not only amazing for its beauty, its richness, but also because you can finally see the white shirts with a three-dimensional perspective. It’s easy to go around them, to see all the construction complexity, the volume, which is an architectural volume, and this impact can combine and put together, in a definitive way, the absolute coincidence between the creative gesture and artisanal competence”.
An enchanted atmosphere that welcomes from the beginning where long sheets of tulle show macro-images of some autographed drawings by Ferré and keeps surprising in the exhibition area where materials from the Ferré Foundation archive, like original drawings, sketches and advertising photographs, follow guests through the show. Each corner is enriched by elements belonging to the story of Ferré, including the ceiling, it’s enough looking up to admire the rx photographic projections of the shirts, edited by Leonardo Salvini.
“It’s not just an exhibition that shows the key piece of Ferré and it’s not an exhibition about Ferré, this is an exhibition that retraces the stylist creative process, it is an exhibition that tries to explain how he used to work – explains Domenico Piraina, Director of Palazzo Reale – Gianfranco Ferré was an extraordinary mix of creativity and rigor, simplicity and grandeur and this is one of the reasons why we decided to realise the exhibition in the Sala della Cariatidi, because this hall is closely related with Gianfranco Ferré. In fact, analyzing the 27 white shirts, everyone can see all the meticulous attention that Ferré had for cutting, fabrics, manufacturing and geometry. This exhibition proves ones again that, before being manufacturing, fashion is culture. As man of culture was Gianfranco Ferré, a man that used to love reading, travelling and art”.
“Fashion is culture, this is the strongest and most imporant message that should be passed down especially to young people – continues Rita Airaghi – Fashion is research and passion, it’s nothing ephemeral and superficial”.
So fashion and culture, a combination that is perfectly described through this journey into the world of the white shirt of Ferré, an icon, a symbol, a piece of our history that is our culture and represents for Ferré: “A practise of many different things, for sure a design ones, there is also a whole world of poetry and fantasy that was part of his dna, and there is his culture too. Just reading the names, Contrappunto, Sineddoche, Milonga, Napoleon, it’s all about evoking countries, worlds, cultures, rhetoric and culture. So, despite being only one piece taken from the entire wardrobe of Ferré, it is definitely the element that represents him in toto“, word of Rita Airaghi.
