From February 21 at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan the exhibition “Memos. On fashion in this millennium” opened: it is curated by Maria Luisa Frisa, with exhibition layout designed by Judith Clark and Tendercapital has collaborated as official partner thanks to its art incubator TenderToArt. A great project that of Memos, supported and realized thanks to the cooperation between the Museum and the Camera Nazionale della Moda, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ICE agency and the Municipality of Milan.
The title of the exhibition explains its content. The word “Memos” comes from Lezioni Americane – one of Italo Calvino‘s most famous books – in which the author traces six memos (hence the term Memos), six keywords that would recount the coming millennium. Following the same method used by Calvino, made of connections and cross-references, the exhibition wants to generate a question: can fashion be considered a literary, poetic and scientific practice, a source of reflection also for themes that go beyond its nature? Concepts to which, in today’s world, we can also add those of innovation and sustainability, which have become indispensable for those who seek and share an innovative vision of fashion with an approach aimed at new consumer models and new digital markets.
“Fashion is not just a matter of clothes: it is above all a discipline that deals with the contemporary, questions it, defines it without closing it.”
– Maria Luisa Frisa
The exhibition, through an incredible selection of objects, such as designer clothes, magazines and ephemera, wants to make explicit the idea of Calvino by recreating a very special, three-dimensional exhibition path, through which the user can ignite a reflection on fashion in continuous evolution. The aim of Memos is to build a real “discourse on the method”, starting from Calvino’s ideas and arriving to the notes of Diana Vreeland, former director of Vogue America. To give voice to some of the materials in the exhibition, there are also excellent interlocutors such as the writer Chiara Valerio and the director Roberta Torre, who describe the objects according to their respective imaginations.
The objects on display
How can we begin, then, this path of reflection on the fashion of our millennium? First of all, starting from the vision of the objects on display, which are part of the history of fashion: iconic clothes, for example, by Balenciaga, Burberry, Chanel, Dior, Fausto Puglisi, Fendi, Armani, Giambattista Valli, Gucci, Versace, Valentino, Ferragamo, Prada and many others.
In addition to couture creations, many “ephemera” also enrich the exhibition: accessories, famous magazines, photographs and curiosities, with more or less close references to the world of fashion. It is a collection of very varied materials: from the photo shoots selected by Stefano Tonchi – with pages telling the history of fashion publishing – to the catalogue of the exhibition Disobedient Bodies 14, curated by the famous designer J.W. Anderson, up to the photographic book of the spring/summer 1990 collection by Romeo Gigli, a journey through Byzantine atmospheres of mosaics from Ravenna and diaphanous female figures recalling Empress Theodora.
“The exhibition is both an open work and a scientific and poetic attitude, an exercise in research and design.”
The Museum
The Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan is the house-museum in Via Manzoni, located right between the Teatro alla Scala and the streets of the fashion triangle.
Founded in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Museum frequently hosts exhibitions, installations and fashion shows, such as the unforgettable “1922-1943: Twenty years of Italian fashion” – of 1980 – curated by Grazietta Butazzi. The exhibition, just like the current Memos, was intended to celebrate fashion and – at the same time – to enhance it as a cue for historical, critical and curatorial investigation.