There are moments when fashion and art can become entwined. Art uses fashion and makes it its own, with brilliance and a sense of scandal. This was the case with the Surrealist movement when Salvador Dalì drew models whose heads had been transformed into flowers for the covers of Vogue and shoe-shaped headgear for Elsa Schiaparelli. Man Ray photographed small hats to illustrate a script by Tristan Tzara, while Magritte even designed fur coats for Maison Samuel of Brussels. Moreover, Elsa Schiaparelli herself believed that designing clothes was an art as opposed to a mere profession, and noted, ”I consider it a very challenging art”. But the underlying attraction and mutual passion between fashion and art can become the distinctive trait of a brand and the most incisive element of its personality. This is true of the history of Borbonese - an elegant and inventive brand that adheres naturally to art through a common thread of DNA. Thus, in order to celebrate an extraordinary birthday – a century since its founding through a collaboration with the Lichtenstein Foundation, the Maison presents an exceptional project and continues to look to the future with a retrospective of the artist in Milan’s Triennale. The exhibition is curated by critic Gianni Mercurio, who met the artist and spent time with him when he was a guest of the American Academy in Rome. The exhibition recounts the visionary journey of the man whose revisitations of artists, from Cézanne to Picasso, created reproductions that were new originals and which transformed the language of cartoons and advertising into style. This is one of the reasons why Lichtenstein would have approved of the Art Bags: a small precious collection of 12 pieces, featuring details taken from some of his most important works such as Sunrise, Yellow Brushtrow and Girl with Tear. Three models, two shoppers and one clutch bag, in a limited edition of 100 pieces per design, make up this Lichtenstein Foundation approved collection. |
It is the very first time that the Foundation has approved a project of this type and it was actively involved in each step of the production and in ensuring that the colours exactly reproduced the stunning shades of the original on materials other than canvas. To accompany and comment on the exhibition, during the course of the fashion week (24th February – 3rd March), Borbonese’s boutique in via della Spiga will display unique pictures and videos from the life of Lichtenstein in its windows. It is not the only occasion in which the windows of the boutique in Milan’s Quadrilatero have been used as testimony to the profound connection between Borbonese and art. In 2009 Amedeo Martegani, the Milanese artist, reinterpreted the Maison’s symbols with an installation in which seven samurai, involved in different actions and exercises, worked the material that was to become a bag against a background of sounds and noises devised and modulated by maestro Giuseppe Ielasi. Borbonese’s interest for art has always been varied and liberal and even extended to Futurism, when the famous bag designed by Giacomo Balla was displayed in the Futurist Futurisms exhibition. It was small in size and its rounded form was obtained using small suede inserts in different hand-painted colours. The artist’s original design was used to create a one-off model in 1986. The brand has experienced thousands of changes during the course of its lengthy life, but has always retained the revolutionary need to shake up the present in order to look towards the future with a dynamic approach. Today is the turn of Francesca Mambrini, the Creative Director, who supported the Botero exhibition in Milan back in 2007. Just as in the past the then-owner Umberto Ginestroni had befriended Carol Rama, a painter with a breathtaking narrative power who was – despite her isolation – a central figure of Turin’s intelligentsia. She was a strange woman, who was at once attractive and abrasive. As Ginestroni would stop to speak to her at the entrance to her studio the people of Turin would look on in astonishment. |
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