VANESSA AGOSTINI
The body to talk about clothes, clothes to talk about the body. The image of how one is, never objective even in front of a mirror, of how others are, of how one could be, of how the other sees us.
According to Bernard Rudofsky, famous architect and author of "The Unfinished Body", reality has shaped the very body of man, incomplete by nature, in ways that are often different depending on the era. Clothes play a key role in this process, reworking and sometimes denying the body, often resulting in an almost grotesque stranger to it. This work has a key role in questioning forms and methods, inspiring me with an autonomous design process starting from the body, which never loses its reference to the body and for which it is intended.
The result is clothes in which the body is the protagonist but at the same time indefinite and which underline its performative dimension in everyday life. They are also, literally, the starting point of the project as shapes, silhouettes and impressions are obtained either from the movement of naked bodies captured by the camera or from the use of pre-existing garments reworked on the body. The resulting photographs were used to define the prints of the collection, in which the naked body emerges to the surface, converting nudity into pure decoration, stripping it of any meaning, positive or negative, eliminating ulterior motives.
If on the one hand it is the protagonist of my research and my creative process, on the other it is particular volumes that make it almost inconsistent from the point of view of its physical dimension.
This represents the paradox of the dress designed on the body and with the body that hides its shapes, equalizing the differences between bodies. This takes place in a private space, the one between the skin and the fabric and gives fundamental importance to movement as an interaction.
The material takes on a fundamental expressive charge strictly linked to the sensory experience of the garment and is part of the design starting from its earliest stages: this material-like approach is influenced by the modalities of Informal Art and the artistic production of Alberto Burri. The gesture and the material become a method of representation of existence and the weighted improvisation of the case.
In this regard, the reflection on sustainability is fundamental: the companies that supplied the fabrics for the collection comply with the highest standards and, at the same time, the fabrics used are recovered from stock. There is the intention to restore dignity to the flawed material through particular attention in the cutting and packaging phase and in the choice of finishes. YKK zips and snaps are the protagonists of a reflection on the concept of accessory itself, becoming a structural part of the garment, used as a material to be molded on the body or to give meaning to particular finishes and openings on the garment. Every detail is the result of an obsessive study of the high quality production tradition of Italian fashion and at the same time of an approach similar to that of jazz improvisation: gestural and instinctive.
