Castel Sant'Angelo brings 1960s fashion on display

From March 27 to May 21, 2023, the National Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo is hosting in the Superior Armories the exhibition-performance The Sweet Sixties: Narratives of Fashion, curated by Stefano Dominella and Guillermo Mariotto.

Swinging London, Mary Quant’s miniskirt, Ossie Clark’s wearable visions, the colorful storefronts of Carnaby Street in Soho, and the moon landing: the legacy associated with the aesthetic imagery of the 1960s constitutes a semantic reservoir that can be reinterpreted in many ways. A violently revolutionary age only in its epilogue, the scenario of the 1960s actually acts as a tutelary deity of the visual contaminations typical of the fashion world.

Hence the desire to investigate the extraordinarily sweet side of the “floating” decade (as the weekly Time magazine called London in 1966), through an anthology made up of atmospheres and quotations that are refinedly Sixties.

After the chapters Robotizzati - Experiments in Fashion (Palazzo Wegil 2020), Favole di Moda (Teatro Torlonia 2022) and Roma è di Moda - Via Veneto edition (Via Veneto 2022), and after apainstaking research that took place in important historical archives such as AnnaMode Costumes, Modateca Deanna, Max Mara and Ken Scott archives, Doria 1905 archives, Stefano Dominella, curator of the performance together with Guillermo Mariotto, draws on fashion once again by presenting the exhibition at the National Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome.

“This is not the first time that the famous Roman Monument has opened its doors to present one of the most interesting manifestations of our creativity, Fashion, with its ability to cross and interpret historical eras and evoke their atmospheres and suggestions,” commented Mariastella Margozzi, director of the National Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo. “In the case of this exhibition, the representation of the 1960s through the styles of clothes and their creators allows us to relive one of the most dense periods of innovation and transgression in our most recent history, to grasp the enthusiastic identification of young people with a way of dressing that tells of the need to broaden their cultural and geographical horizons.”

Therefore, fifty looks are presented that throughupcycling combine historical garments, true style icons, with clothes and accessories recovered from flea markets and vintage stores which represent at this moment the real trend in international fashion, adopted especially by the younger generations who love to recover from the past to make it contemporary. With set designs by Virginia Vianello, the protagonists are once again the clothes. Bold and naturalistic hues signed by the creative genius of Ken Scott, defined as “the gardener of fashion” precisely because of his floral prints. And then the flaps of skin covered only by 40 centimeters of fabric by Mary Quant, to the futuristic patterns designed by Courrèges, Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin. And how not to mention Max Mara’s colorful coats, stolen from the men’s wardrobe and reinterpreted in bright hues. The fashion of the 1960s rewrote and reimagined the silhouette of an entire generation. Dresses, shoes, records and accessories became poetic manifestos to tell the sweetnesses of those years.

“This is the decade in which young people discovered themselves as such for the first time,” says Stefano Dominella. “A strongly bourgeois dimension suddenly came to terms with the British effervescence of the sixties, the rhythm of the Beatles, the glamour of James Bond, Mary Quant’s miniskirts and the fashion trends of Soho and Kensington. And then the movies with Doris Day, Brigitte Bardot in Saint Tropez, Catherine Deneuve, Jane Fonda in Barbarella.” These are the years when the hosiery and pantyhose industry was born, when backcombing was replaced by the sharp linearity of the bob, when high fashion began to draw from the bottom. These are also the years when the multifaceted Elio Fiorucci invents (and sells) a lifestyle of jeans and T-shirts with little angels and hearts, giving birth to a true international subculture. A subculture that, starting with the stylized target of the British Royal Air Force (s)sewn on the Parka jackets of young Mods struggling with blues and beat music, in Italy intercepts the wavelengths propagated by the colored mirrors of scooters, Vespas and Lambrettas. In the background are the nights spent dancing in night clubs and the songs Uno dei Mods (1965) and Vi saluto amici Mods (1966), both written by Franco Migliacci.

Fifty creations for five chapters, five rooms, five narrative strands intended to tell the lighter, dreamier side of the 1960s. An experiment that, making the language of visual contamination andupcycling its own, looks at the fashion of those years as an archive to be consulted and enhanced by actualizing the cultural identity of a complex and multiform decade.

It all begins at Carnaby Street, in the first room, with two looks created and curated by Guillermo Mariotto, co-curator of the performance, that stand out in the center of the room. Here are the passers-by, whose outfits reproduce the look of young women grappling with a shopping session in London’s cult boutiques.

The second chapter, on the other hand, aims to reflect on free clothing associations: on the one hand, naturalistic prints, lush even through Ken Scott’s colorful plumage, on the other hand, denim and Fiorucci’s avowedly pop angels. Thus we arrive at the third room, a reality in which it is the lunar atmospheres of Courrèges, Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, and Valentino Garavani that are rediscovered in the form of metal, pvc, and helmet-like hats.

Then it was the turn of the colors and embroidery with which haute couture dressed the bourgeois for grand occasions. Bold hues, glamour and iridescent sequins come alive thanks to a selection of archival gowns, including those from Battilocchi tailoring, Jole Veneziani, Gattinoni, Lancetti, Mila Schön and Carosa.

Finally, in the Optical room, the pace of the Sweet Sixties slows down and lingers on the geometric juxtaposition of the two colors (not colors) par excellence: black and white. It ends by celebrating art ( Giuseppe Capogrossi ’s creative testament and the work of the Pittori maledetti of Rome are cited) and by recalling the extraordinary evocative power of fashion, which this project-in-progress uses as a system of investigation and research with shifting and blurred contours to reread an era suspended between a thousand possibilities.

“An exhibition-performance that powerfully restores one of fashion’s innate abilities: to make culture. The work of selecting the looks and the path of the five narrative strands succeed perfectly in the objective of representing all the creative charge of a decade that marked history and whose voice is able to resonate even today,” commented Undersecretary of State for the Ministry of Culture Lucia Borgonzoni. “In fact, it knows how to mix with the voices of contemporaneity and hook trends that interpret new consciousnesses, such as those related to ’vintage’ purchases and respect for the environment, an area in which Italian fashion has already been working for some time with results of excellence at the international level. At the Ministry we are working so that fashion is increasingly valued precisely as culture and so that it has the tools to win the challenges of the future. In order to foster the sustainability of cultural and creative enterprises - including precisely fashion companies - and encourage a green approach throughout the supply chain, as well as more responsible behavior towards the environment and climate, we have decided to allocate NRP funds (we will publish calls for a total amount of 30 million euros) to accompany the sector’s green transition.”

Castel Sant'Angelo brings 1960s fashion on display

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