The exhibition, entitled “HABITUS. Wearing freedom”, analyzes how, in the twentieth century, the most significant stages of fashion innovation often coincided with moments of liberation of the body, especially the female, from physical and social constraints. The review presents those iconic garments that have contributed to the emancipation of social customs, from Paul Poiret's anti-corset to the first trousers created by Coco Chanel for women, from miniskirts to hot pants, from bikinis to jeans, from sportswear to deconstructed jackets by Giorgio Armani, accompanied by photographs, videos, music.
The review is part of the festival programphilosophy2021 on the Freedom, which will be held in Modena, Carpi and Sassuolo from 17 to 19 September 2021.
The exhibition itinerary develops in four steps, each of which will be introduced by photographs, videos and music which will contextualize the period under consideration.
The first, Free the body, begins at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the creators of fashion set themselves the main objective of freeing the female body from the constraints of clothing (busts, lace, long dresses) and therefore from the social conventions that confine women in cliche predefined. This innovation goes hand in hand with the appearance of some figures who conquer hitherto traditionally male roles and rights, from the aviator Amelia Earhart to Marie Curie to the suffragettes of Emmeline Pankhurst or the heroine of animation Betty Boop.
It was the French fashion designer Paul Poiret to have determined, with his anticorset of 1914, the first revolutionary choice to free the woman's body, both physically, sexually and socially. It was instead Coco Chanel, pioneer of emancipated fashion, to design, immediately after the Great War, comfortable and very elegant garments and to clear the use of the pants.
Closely related to this item of clothing, Marcel Rochas creates in 1932 the power suits, or the female jacket and trousers, which became a symbol of equal rights between the sexes, especially in the workplace, which will then be taken up and relaunched by stylists in the 80s.
Inextricably linked to the evolution of the female condition, the history of bra underwent the real modern breakthrough around 1920: although corsets were still used, the latter began to be shorter, entrusting the containment of the bust entirely to the bra, which at the time was similar to a slightly shaped band. This garment, as we know it today, originated in 1922, when Ida Rosenthal, a seamstress at the small New York shop Enid Frocks, noticed that each model should fit every woman more, and began producing them for every shape and age.
Discover the body introduces the visitor to the post-war years, when women, also thanks to the diffusion of cinematographic images, affirm their freedom also by discovering their own bodies.
Silvana Mangano of Riso amaro (1949) dresses in the film exactly like the weeders who left Carpi for the Piedmontese lands and the miniskirts were not very different from those that the factory workers of Carpi sewed for themselves in the sixties.
Iconic in this regard are the bikini, who freed women from uncomfortable beach shirts, the hot pants born between the forties and fifties which allowed to finally discover the legs and, above all, the miniskirt, leader-symbol of the feminist battle which, thanks to Mary Quant, spread from Swinging London around the world in the XNUMXs.
With section Work, sports, cool, the review goes into the seventies and eighties, a period in which fashion becomes unisex, and the designer dress, typical of artisan tailoring, gives way to ready-at-porter with mass-produced garments.
Examples of this period are the t-shirt and jeans, both born as work leaders, but who became icons before the rebellion (James Dean and his Wasted Youth) then about the new way of casual dressing, or lo sportswear, new symbol of modern luxury. And it is the sweatshirt, especially from Carpi's Best Company, that represents this change of pace and mentality that also affects the role of young people in society.
The exhibition closes with Deconstruct, a passage within the fashion of the seventies characterized by two garments that have become iconic, such as the Wrap dress by Diane von Furstenberg and the Unstructured jacket by Giorgio Armani, which impose a new concept of "deconstructed" suit, i.e. without padding and lining, with the buttons positioned in another point of the fabric and the proportions completely revised, with an innovative easy and essential closure method, to create, as he stated Giorgio Armani, a "relaxed, informal, less rigorous fit that lets you perceive the body and its sensuality".
The exhibition is accompanied by a collateral project by the Fashion Research Italy Foundation, a non-profit created to support fashion manufacturers through training and consultancy activities on strategic issues such as heritage, sustainability and digital innovation. In conjunction with the exhibition Habitus. Wear freedom, a series of 29 drawings inspired by nature, part of the Foundation's Archive of Textile Design, will be presented to the public at Palazzo dei Pio.
