An exhibition curated by Olivier Saillard.
A novel is a story easier to tell.
30 years of fashion through the eyes and the platform of Pitti Uomo isn’t the full universal history of fashion, it’s a shortened version, the evolution of menswear, the Made in Italy and its guest designers, a story made of its principal characters, what Saillard considers the authors, or actors.
Garments are abandoned like what we do after we wear them, we hang them, we throw them on the floor, they have been worn, used, animated, left and they wait to be worn again. They are like books to be discovered: without the reader a book doesn’t exist, a garment without the wearer is like it didn’t exist. Whether the designer or the wearer, the author, the man or woman that finds the garment and gives it life, affection, care, attention.
If this is a novel the author is the 30 years of men’s fashion and their creators, it’s Pitti Uomo that served as the book cover and created the calligraphy of the novel and the visitors that will give with their participation, memories, thoughts and experiences a new life to all these garments.
A wish: after this Short Novel exhibit and the Ephemeral Museum, I think that Italy should invent the museum of fashion it doesn’t exist in any other part of the world, is the place of the museum of fashion societies, where, without taking away from the designer and the collections, the clothes exude the life of men and women.
““Many of the men, but also the women, who transformed men’s clothing into creative works have passed through Florence. In constantly changing settings, classic or bold, and hand-in-hand with the city of Florence and its prestigious locations, these creators of fashion were able to conceive the most over-the-top fashion shows to best serve their collections.””