"FALLING IN LOVE WITH CASENTINO" AND "PERSONALITIES
BEYOND FASHION"
Two Polimda projects on display at the
Limonaia of Villa Strozzi
Polimoda International School of Fashion Desgin of Florence will hold
an exhibit and contest at the Limonaia di Villa Strozzi in Florence
on April 18. The exhibit will feature two projects that were ideated
and coordinated by Alberto Lattuada, who has been collaborating with
the Institute for years.
The first project - "Falling in Love with Casentino"
- was a chance for last-year students to be involved in the realization
of stylish garments that were a reinterpretation of the Casentino
tradition. According to the dictionary of fashion, Casentino is
a wool weave that is rough to the touch. Named after a mountainous
region in Tuscany in the high Arno Valley…" Casentino
evokes the idea of a poor (financially) way of dressing: initially
used for cloaks, capes and shepherds and farmers' capes. At the
end of the 1800s it was used for men's jackets until it was discovered
by lovers of elegance and women for classic sports overcoats that
were made noteworthy for the use of two primary colors: orange and
flag green. Kept warm by wolf, pine marten or beaver fur and by
checked flannel lining, they had their magic moment in fashionable
ski stations during what was known as "après-ski."
Today Casentino has been tamed. It is lighter and softer and has
added some color to its range. Natural beige, blue, black and -
very beautiful - white. Reinventing it, as Polimoda students have
done, does not mean turning it on its head or betraying its fundamental
qualities, but figuring out new uses for it, while respecting its
integrity.
The second project - Personalities Beyond Fashion - is a work of
research of images and atmosphere for focusing in on racy styles
that were later to be primary points of reference of menswear. Extraordinary
celebrities, from different times, of varying values, but with one
vice in common: obsessive research in clothing. Increasingly risqué
(when not yet inflated to the public at large): someone with an
elegance so apparently effortless and unbeatable that it became
codified into the chic male style, others purposefully at the limit
of ridiculousness and easy targets for caricaturists, such as Oscar
Wilde, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Filippo de Pisis, Ernest Hemingway,
Cary Grant and Elvis Presely.
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