(ANSA) - Caraglio, August 16 - An unusual show celebrating
Italian fashion in the revolutionary 1920s is offering visitors
the chance to snoop around the personal wardrobe of a woman who
embraced the daring trends of the time.
Over 60 items on display in the Piedmont town of Caraglio
highlight the figure-hugging styles and creeping hemlines that
scandalised older generations and prompted the Archbishop of
Naples to declare a 1925 earthquake in the resort town of Amalfi
the expression of God's wrath against short skirts.
Underwear, silk stockings and glamorous evening gowns that
once hung in the unnamed woman's wardrobe have been reunited for
the first time for the show thanks to loans from her family,
Palazzo Pitti in Florence and the Passoni State Art Institute in
Turin.
"It's rare to be able to exhibit in its entirety a personal
wardrobe of the time, especially when it's a 'perfect' wardrobe,
complete with everything one would need for every occasion and
moment of the day: daywear, afternoon wear, evening wear, dance
wear, underwear, obviously all made to measure," said show
curator, Anna Bondi.
Organisers say the woman was from the banking
middle-classes of Turin - Italy's fashion capital at the time -
and was at the cutting edge of fashion, shopping at the city's
best tailors and making regular trips to Paris to scout out the
latest styles.
"The (1920s) are the years in which the idea of fashion
spread," said Bondi.
"There was an explosion of magazines, especially French ones, and the birth of the first department stores". The clothes on show here demonstrate styles that reflected the new role women were assuming in society after the First World War, when boyish 'flappers' in the United States, London and Paris helped give the period its Roaring Twenties label. In Italy, fashions began giving greater freedom of movement to a class of women who, even if they weren't working, were travelling, playing sport and driving cars. The exhibition opens with the woman's underwear and accessories, which include mauve, yellow, pink and grey silk stockings , long evening gloves, driving gloves and tight-fitting cloche hats that were worn over fashionably short, bobbed hair. Also on show are small handbags with wrist straps bought from Paris and a selection of Art Deco 'sautoirs' - long, tasselled rope-style necklaces that swung with the movement of the body. The new trend for sleeveless capes is highlighted with several examples, including an evening cape in flower print that was once edged with red fox fur. But the highlights of the exhibition are the woman's evening dresses, which include a corn-yellow floor-length silk gown as well as a skimpy silver number that would not look out of place in modern shops. "Some of the clothes on show look like they were made today, like the dress in yellow silk, which could be signed Armani," Bondi said. The fad for wearing an intense shade of orange known as 'tango' is also documented by several items in the woman's wardrobe, including a formal day coat, a hat and a spectacular long velvet evening dress. Fashion in the 1920s: A Turin Lady's Wardrobe runs at the Filatoio Rosso, a former silk spinning mill, in Caraglio until September 19. Photo: Chantilly lace silk gown from Turin's Passoni State Art Institute collection.
"There was an explosion of magazines, especially French ones, and the birth of the first department stores". The clothes on show here demonstrate styles that reflected the new role women were assuming in society after the First World War, when boyish 'flappers' in the United States, London and Paris helped give the period its Roaring Twenties label. In Italy, fashions began giving greater freedom of movement to a class of women who, even if they weren't working, were travelling, playing sport and driving cars. The exhibition opens with the woman's underwear and accessories, which include mauve, yellow, pink and grey silk stockings , long evening gloves, driving gloves and tight-fitting cloche hats that were worn over fashionably short, bobbed hair. Also on show are small handbags with wrist straps bought from Paris and a selection of Art Deco 'sautoirs' - long, tasselled rope-style necklaces that swung with the movement of the body. The new trend for sleeveless capes is highlighted with several examples, including an evening cape in flower print that was once edged with red fox fur. But the highlights of the exhibition are the woman's evening dresses, which include a corn-yellow floor-length silk gown as well as a skimpy silver number that would not look out of place in modern shops. "Some of the clothes on show look like they were made today, like the dress in yellow silk, which could be signed Armani," Bondi said. The fad for wearing an intense shade of orange known as 'tango' is also documented by several items in the woman's wardrobe, including a formal day coat, a hat and a spectacular long velvet evening dress. Fashion in the 1920s: A Turin Lady's Wardrobe runs at the Filatoio Rosso, a former silk spinning mill, in Caraglio until September 19. Photo: Chantilly lace silk gown from Turin's Passoni State Art Institute collection.
