After a pause of 20 years, the Triennale di Milano will resume its international exhibitions. 2016 will offer a new and improved version of the Triennale as the exhibition will no longer be limited to the Palazzo dell’Arte but will be spread all over Milan engaging with more visitors and more participants. As the first edition of this century, the 2016 event will be held under the theme “21st century, design after design.”
Over 100 of the most important Italian companies on the contemporary fashion scene participate in “The New Vocabulary of Italian Fashion” exhibition celebrating the present Italian fashion world as well as its protagonists. The brands and creative minds included in the retrospective at the XXI Triennale International Exhibition Milan 2016 have renewed and recovered their traditional cultural, technical and technological DNA over the past 20 years, rewriting it in a language that is completely original.
“The exhibition is an accurate staging of the stretch of the Made in Italy label’s recent history since 1998, the year that marks the concrete transition to a world interconnected by the web and new forms of communication. This was 10 years before the great global crisis of 2008, which affected Western economies and undermined the economic, social and cultural paradigms of post- modernity. The year 1998 is the watershed year between the “before” and “after”: those who had gone through the crisis and regenerated themselves, and those who found it to be a driving force in taking an independent path,” say the organizers.
Why “vocabulary”? To summarize, explain and define the fundamental characteristics of modern Made in Italy products that are still in the process of being written and developed.
“While “Made in Italy” is renowned worldwide for its excellence, it is typically represented by brands and designers who
established themselves up until the nineties, in a way denying its ability to regenerate. Yet, in confirmation of the historical
Italian attitude towards self-organization, a new generation has long been writing a reconfigured language of Italian fashion. This is thanks to the development of accessible resources in Italy that have disappeared elsewhere: the widespread attitude as regards design, the assets of material culture, small networks of workshops and peripheral manufacturing”, explain curators Paola Bertola and Vittorio Linfante.
“Vocabulary”, therefore, in its meaning of “repertoire of terms and phrases,” is the means to define and crystallize the new
language of the Made in Italy label.
To enhance the design content of garments and accessories, as well as to strongly express the concept of “vocabulary”, the
exhibition is structured in a path composed of keywords that each summarize a typical concept that is renewed by Made in Italy products. For example: Material, Construction, Adornment, Detail, Workshop… each characterized by installations that illustrate the product and its creative process, from the pattern to accessories and trials of working components.
The exhibition is divided into three main sections: Vocabulary, Narratives, and Biographies.
Vocabulary: products are organized around key concepts in order to represent the different design approaches that recontextualize the archetypal elements of Italian products.
Narratives: an outline is drawn of the system of cultural and communicative production that revolves around fashion: photography, illustration, new media, publishing and video-art.
Biographies: a focus on the narrative stories of individual designers and brands who have created the new language of Made in Italy fashion.
Il nuovo vocabolario della moda italiana
Triennale Milano
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Closed on Monday
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