It was June 2017 when I was reading about Vetements and their recent launch of the DHL logo tee sold out in a few hours on the web. I started to reflect on the decision-making power of Fashion and its ability to impose trends on the market. Fashion says people buy.
Through its collections, Vetements seems to propose an anti-fashion paradigma, a sort of parody that mimics the underlying dynamics of the fashion system.
Starting from this reflection, I immediately thought of Moschino's collections with which he catapulted onto the catwalks logos and mass products brands that, estranged from their original context, acquired new values becoming fashion fetishes.
Through its collections, Vetements seems to propose an anti-fashion paradigma, a sort of parody that mimics the underlying dynamics of the fashion system.
Starting from this reflection, I immediately thought of Moschino's collections with which he catapulted onto the catwalks logos and mass products brands that, estranged from their original context, acquired new values becoming fashion fetishes.
So, if Moschino's choice can be compared to Warhol's Pop Art, from which it borrowed the same dynamics, so Vetements' collection could be considered inspired by the critical art of Jasper Jones?
Starting from here my mind inevitably went to the covered faces of Margiela's models in 2009. That decision was a stance, a statement against the so-called super models, symbols of a rapidly growing superficiality in society.
Today, as in Warhol's time, people are still guided in their purchases mainly by the strength of logos and by what they represent. The possession of those brands embodies the desire to communicate to others a message, a status, a belonging. Fashion has always been an aesthetic code through which it was possible to build and express personal stories, taste and cultural references.
Starting from here my mind inevitably went to the covered faces of Margiela's models in 2009. That decision was a stance, a statement against the so-called super models, symbols of a rapidly growing superficiality in society.
Today, as in Warhol's time, people are still guided in their purchases mainly by the strength of logos and by what they represent. The possession of those brands embodies the desire to communicate to others a message, a status, a belonging. Fashion has always been an aesthetic code through which it was possible to build and express personal stories, taste and cultural references.
But today the power of logos is stronger, establishing itself as depersonalizing uniforms that flatten the critical sense on predetermined levels of taste defined by marketing logics, emptying fashion from what it was its primary function.
The body therefore becomes a simple support, a vehicle through which to spread and amplify the seductive and symbolic power of logos.
And this is where super-models come into play, IT-girls on loan to fashion (eg Cara Delavigne, Kendall Jenner) who in turn become a brand themselves capable of enhancing the attractive appeal of the logo.
Perfect incarnation of the mechanisms that Margiela wanted to break down and avoid.
Perfect incarnation of the mechanisms that Margiela wanted to break down and avoid.
The “faceless” stylistic choice, made by Margiela, that is the antithesis of the concept of supermodel, preserved the anonymity of the model, effectively annihilating her personality and focusing attention and expressiveness on the looks on the catwalk. This choice was shared and re-used, after him, by other fashion designers, starting from Richard Quinn and Marine Serre to get to Viktor & Rolf, Armani and Riccardo Tisci.
“Faceless” becomes in this sense a socio-political state of being, which through my work I try to claim.
By covering the bodies and faces of the models with brushstrokes or splashes of color, I would like to underline the over-exposure to brands, to a wisely constructed artificiality and to an “overdose of beauty” to which we are perpetually subjected through the media and which become impossible canons. on which to measure and shape oneself.
My figures with faces and bodies blurred, masked, distorted, made invisible, hidden, sometimes denigrated, become a manifesto of denunciation towards increasingly pervasive and manipulative forms of marketing in which the only message is the exaltation of the possession of brand and of a fashion system increasingly obsessed with sales objectives and which, exhausting itself in the logic of the market, gives way only to the brand.