The New Vocabulary of Italian Fashion

The exhibition The New Vocabulary of Italian Fashion, dedicated to Elio Fiorucci, was created from the need to recognize and celebrate the present Italian fashion world as well as its protagonists: brands and creative minds that have renewed and recovered its traditional cultural, technical and technological DNA over the past 20 years, rewriting it in a language that is completely original.

The New Vocabulary of Italian Fashion analyses this language and the new nature of Italian fashion through the work of its protagonists and their various expressions. From ready-to-wear and streetwear to footwear, eyewear, jewellery and hats, it is an original vocabulary of style and productivity.

The exhibition is an accurate staging of the stretch of the Made in Italy label’s recent history since 1998, the year that marks the concrete transition to a world interconnected by the web and new forms of communication. This was 10 years before the great global crisis of 2008, which affected Western economies and undermined the economic, social and cultural paradigms of post-modernity. The year 1998 is the watershed year between the “before” and “after”: those who had gone through the crisis and regenerated themselves, and those who found it to be a driving force in taking an independent path.

Over 100 of the most important companies on the contemporary scene will participate in the exhibition with their products and projects. They are designers and brands, selected with the scientific-educational approach of a system with subsequent phases by curators Paola Bertola and Vittorio Linfante, together with the exhibition’s Scientific Committee (chaired by Eleonora Fiorani and composed of Silvana Annicchiarico, Gianluca Bauzano, Patrizia Calefato, Enrica Morini, Domenico Quaranta and Salvo Testa), with the help of a large group of advisors, experts in the world of fashion (communicators, designers, journalists, producers, distributors, etc.).

Why “vocabulary”? To summarize, explain and define the fundamental characteristics of modern Made in Italy products that are still in the process of being written and developed.

“While “Made ​​in Italy” is renowned worldwide for its excellence, it is typically represented by brands and designers who established themselves up until the nineties, in a way denying its ability to regenerate. Yet, in confirmation of the historical Italian attitude towards self-organization, a new generation has long been writing a reconfigured language of Italian fashion. This is thanks to the development of accessible resources in Italy that have disappeared elsewhere: the widespread attitude as regards design, the assets of material culture, small networks of workshops and peripheral manufacturing”, explain curators Bertola and Linfante.

“Vocabulary”, therefore, in its meaning of “repertoire of terms and phrases,” is the means to define and crystallize the new language of the Made in Italy label.
To enhance the design content of garments and accessories, as well as to strongly express the concept of “vocabulary”, the exhibition is structured in a path composed of key words that each summarize a typical concept that is renewed by Made in Italy products. For example: Material, Construction, Adornment, Detail, Workshop… each characterized by installations that illustrate the product and its creative process, from the pattern to accessories and trials of working components.

The exhibition is divided into three main sections:
Vocabulary: products are organized around key concepts in order to represent the different design approaches that recontextualize the archetypal elements of Italian products.
Narratives: an outline is drawn of the system of cultural and communicative production that revolves around fashion: photography, illustration, new media, publishing and video-art.
Biographies: a focus on the narrative stories of individual designers and brands who have created the new language of Made in Italy fashion.