From 17^th of September 2011 to 8^th October 2012, at Reggia di Venaria, Turin, an exhibition about fashion to celebrate Italian 150th anniversary.

A chronological section revolving on cinematic and historical costume, by the Oscar Prize Gabriella Pescucci, lead the visitors in a journey to the Fifties high fashion shapes through the shocking world of prêt-à-porter, a reality that made the handicraft of the end of Seventies transform in industrial system.


Source: Consorzio La Venaria Reale

This section, by the editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia Franca Sozzani, contrasting for its different nature from the first one, sets a dialogue between two different realities and at the same time puts light on their differences without pointing the finger on a presumed best one.



Source: Consorzio La Venaria Reale

The frame for this dialogue is a theory of mirrors and has been drawn by the architect Michele De Lucchi. By the mirrors the dresses from the films by Luchino Visconti or the dressing rooms of the actress of silent cinema or, again, from the Italian’s nobility – and here the mantle of Queen Margherita di Savoia or the evening gown belonged to Countess of Castiglione are real examples of speaking dresses – are enhanced; in the last rooms mirrors are unstructured as it happened to fashion itself. Mirrors also put the visitors in relation with a different code-system that is far from the modern one and, at the same time, bring them inside the world from where they belonged.


Source: Consorzio La Venaria Reale

There is also a parallel route inside the exhibition: the olfactory one; from an idea by Laura Tonatto, it is maybe the most subtle and the less tangible. The perfumes that were symbols of each period touched by this display are running in the air of the rooms (not in all the rooms, for giving the nose the time to perceive the passages from an essence to another) together with the music that has been the soundtrack of Liberty Style, of Futurism, of the First and the Second World War, of the rise and of the Reconstruction of Italy.

Source: Consorzio La Venaria Reale

This exhibition, together with the responsibility of telling an intricate story, has the merit of being honest with the unfamiliar ones with the fashion world and it also has not the presumption to say the last word about the origin of it, especially in the last room. “By telling the social and economic layers where it moves, there I to represent the euphoria given by the industrial production and to show how the idea of trend is nowadays outdated leaving to fashion the personal freedom of expression: fashion is a world of transition”, word of Franca Sozzani.



Source: Consorzio La Venaria Reale