A journey inside a myth: when Rome became the world capital of fashion. In 150 photographs, films and original garments, an explosion of creativity that still influences the planet today.
The photographic, multimedia and masterpiece tailoring exhibition Moda in Luce 1955-1975 – Roma fra glamour e innovazione industriale brings back to life a season of an explosion of ideas, names, brands, creativity and industry, a legacy of material and immaterial goods, a “big bang” of the fashion imagination that still reverberates today with its success, its charm and the magic of its forms.
The exhibition is the “second chapter” of the exhibition Moda in Luce 1925–1955. Alle origini del Made in Italy, hosted at the Museo della Moda e del Costume di Palazzo Pitti in Florence. The Roman exhibition, entirely new in its works, installation and themes, continues the story of a myth as it moves towards its consecration and explosion.
THE CONTEXT
At the beginning of the 1950s Italy is changing at the speed of light and entering the boom and modernity. It runs on new infrastructure, motorways and vehicles. On new professions and new social dress. Two fields in particular visibly mark this historic upheaval: fashion and cinema. Rome is their great lively container and content.
In Rome there is Cinecittà, the city of cinema which, after the epochal revolution of Italian Neorealism, is transforming into the “Hollywood on the Tiber”: the city where the American majors and the star system find the offshoot seat of the American dream. The result is overwhelming: Italian cinema will become the cinematography with the greatest number of Oscars won, after the United States.
Something similar happens in fashion. A world of tailor shops, small workshops and ateliers, which studied at the school of Paris and over embroidery tables and Italian art books, finds itself projected onto the summit of catwalks, magazines and clients around the world, in America, Europe, Russia and Japan. Haute couture from the 1950s until today must count the language of Made in Italy among its tongues.
From Rome, Italy achieves two unexpected miracles: it shows that films can be made at Cinecittà as in America, and that haute couture can parade down via Veneto. It is a long journey, which the exhibition at the Centrale Montemartini shows vividly.
THE EXHIBITION
The protagonist of Moda in Luce 1955-1975 – Roma fra glamour e innovazione industriale is the heritage of memory, photographs and films of the Archivio storico Luce. The foundation of knowledge of the twentieth century in Italy and Europe, a UNESCO-protected asset, the Archivio Luce is a very rich source of testimony on fashion and entertainment. Luce immortalises fashion at the moment when Rome becomes its reference point, between the 1950s and the mid-1970s. An extraordinary season in which the synergy between fashion, cinema, industry and creativity allowed Italy to exert a profound cultural influence internationally, redefining the standards of taste and style.
The exhibition route immerses visitors in 150 period photographs, mostly from Luce, five video stations with films often rare and until now unavailable to the public, objects, documents, fabrics and 27 original garments, mostly unpublished, created by legendary names such as Valentino Garavani, Karl Lagerfeld for Fendi, Federico Forquet, Sorelle Fontana, Giovanna Caracciolo-Carosa, Simonetta Visconti, Irene Galitzine, Fernanda Gattinoni and also Roberto Capucci, Maria Antonelli, Patrick de Barentzen, Renato Balestra, André Laug, Emilio Federico Schuberth, Gabriellasport, Antonio De Luca, Angelo Litrico, Domenico e Agostino Caraceni, Pino Lancetti, Laura Biagiotti.
Works of art of great historical and aesthetic value, from the maisons’ archives, including Mantero Seta, Taroni and the Ermenegildo Zegna group, historic film costume houses such as Farani, museums such as the Boncompagni Ludovisi, from which also comes a sumptuous evening suit once owned by Franca Bettoja, which engages in dialogue with contemporary garments worn by names such as Silvana Mangano, and also the CIAC-Centro internazionale Arti e Costume of Venice. Significant is the loan of the most important private collection in Italy, owned by a protagonist of Italian cinema, Massimo Cantini Parrini, a costume designer of international fame, nominated for the Oscar several times and winner of countless awards, which shows the extent of a talent built on a deep knowledge of art history and costume.
Organised in the style and colours of an elegant Roman tailor shop of the 1950s and 1960s, the project by architect Dario Dalla Lana concludes in a library-room that presents a selection of precious textile sample books owned by the archives of Mantero Seta, Taroni and the Ermenegildo Zegna group, as well as rare volumes and magazines owned by the curator, a scholar of costume and fashion publishing since its beginnings. The route is enriched by invitations, memorabilia and an album amicorum once belonging to Angelo Litrico, which includes drawings and dedications by the most important tailors and artists of the era, from Emilio Pucci to Valentino and Novella Parigini.
A multimedia and physical journey into the imagination, between history, style, costume, society and dream, a time machine that transports us into the myth: when Rome and Italy explained to the world how to dress, and how to live.
The images tell of catwalks, ateliers, reportages, interviews, the jet set, work and glamour, craftsmanship and art. Alongside, cinema, which makes Rome a temple, and provides fashion with dreams and bodies. Those of: Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Liz Taylor, Lucia Bosè, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Sean Connery, Elsa Martinelli, Anita Ekberg, Anna Magnani, Ingrid Bergman, Gabriele Ferzetti, Rod Steiger.
The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Moda in Luce 1955-1975. Roma fra glamour e innovazione industriale, published by Silvana Editoriale, edited by Fabiana Giacomotti.