THE POWER OF LOGOS
Reading about Vetements and their recent launch of the tee with the DHL logo that sold out in a few hours on the web, I began to reflect on the decision-making power of fashion and the ability to impose diktats on the market. Fashion says people buy. Through its collections, the Vetements brand seems to me to propose an anti-fashion model, a sort of parody that mimics the dynamics that underlie the fashion system. Starting from this reflection, I rethought the Moschino collections and its catapulting logos and mass-produced products onto the catwalks which, estranged from their original context, acquire new value, becoming fashion fetishes. But if Moschino's operation can be compared to Warhol's Pop Art, whose dynamics it borrows, Vetements' is inspired by the critical art of Jasper Jones ?
From here then I also thought of Margiela and her models with covered faces, progressively more and more covered, from collection to collection, up to 2014.
So I thought that today as well as in Warhol's time, people are guided in their purchases mainly by the power of logos, by what logos represent, by the desire to communicate a message to others through the possession of those logos, a status, a 'belonging. Fashion is this, a code through which one builds one's own style and tells one's self, one's belonging, one's experience. But logos, when preponderant, end up becoming a uniform, a depersonalizing diktat that flattens people to pre-set levels of tastes defined by market logic. Fashion is thus emptied of one of its primary functions. At the same time the body becomes a support for these logos, a vehicle by which to spread and amplify the seductive and symbolic power of the logos. And this is where
the super-models come into play, the IT-girls who lend themselves to fashion (Cara Delavigne, Kendall Jenner) who in turn become brands capable of enhancing the seductive charm of the logo.
the super-models come into play, the IT-girls who lend themselves to fashion (Cara Delavigne, Kendall Jenner) who in turn become brands capable of enhancing the seductive charm of the logo.
THE MASK WE WEAR
How much difficult, tiring and painful is looking inside yourself and be listening to your inner voice?
How many of us really has the courage to do it?
And how liberating would be doing it?
We wear the most spectacular and showy plumage to attract the attention of others often without actually getting in touch with them, out of fear. So that plumage become a disguise, a mask that cages and hides our true self.
But sometimes we deliberately leave open some potential access’s doors through which showing and seeing traces of our true self, looking for a points of contact.
My masks speak about the unconscious desire to be really seen and the fear of being exposed, vulnerable to others' eyes.
How many of us really has the courage to do it?
And how liberating would be doing it?
We wear the most spectacular and showy plumage to attract the attention of others often without actually getting in touch with them, out of fear. So that plumage become a disguise, a mask that cages and hides our true self.
But sometimes we deliberately leave open some potential access’s doors through which showing and seeing traces of our true self, looking for a points of contact.
My masks speak about the unconscious desire to be really seen and the fear of being exposed, vulnerable to others' eyes.
How many of you have been felt in this way in their life?
MARNI: between fashion, art and pragmatic aesthetic
The use of fine fabrics, combined with the high craftsmanship and the extreme accuracy for every detail, make Marni a timeless luxury brand. Precisely because of this, the brand's distribution strategy aims, despite the pleasant interludes of the collaboration with H&M and Estee Lauder, at a niche target.
Everyone who conceives the dress as a tool of personal representation recognise himself in the brand.
A perfect definition for the brand is: “the way teachers of art would dress if they had enough money ". Marni is also the negation of marketing strategies. Since the founding date, the fashion house has grown without advertising and without red carpet fanfare. The stores and word of mouth from customers have further contributed to the success of the brand. For Marni, Art is an immense and infinite world of ideas, images, details, colours and solutions. In an interview with Dazed & Confused, the brand's creative director said that Art and Fashion are connected to each other and are an expression of the Zeitgest. A dress can be a piece of Art, but with two added values: functionality and high craftsmanship.
Design is alway been something focused on pragmatism: it’s made up of simple, sometimes elementary, shapes. Then the colour, the grain of the fabric, the incongruous combinations, charge them with new energy. A fashionable modularity with a modernist ad sensual flavour, in which touch sensations are important as the sight ones. In fact, color is evocation, it changes the look of things, defines the atmosphere, influences perceptions and sensations.
Consuelo Castiglioni, founder and designer of MARNI, always refers to her brand talking about a «silent elegance», and describing its style as a mix of «narration, construction, tradition, culture and instinct», earning the role of spokesperson the so called "European inflected Bohemianism " aesthetic.