One of the most poignant and truly personal contributions to A#8 is a letter to Riccardo Tisci from the eternally fabulous and debonair lady, the true fashionista’s fashionista – Anna Piaggi. A veritable style icon, Anna has been a writer and stylist in fashion since the 1960s, working predominantly with Italian Vogue and the defunct Vanity magazine, producing over 7,000 editorial pages in her lifetime. Anna is the muse of milliner Stephen Jones, as well as an avid follower and friend to Manolo Blahnik, Vivienne Westwood and Karl Lagerfeld among many others, and was given an entire exhibition dedicated to her fashion archive, wardrobe and life’s work at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Anna’s wildly colourful personal style has no contenders to its vivacious attitude – with nonsensical clashes of pattern and palette and rich displays of embellishment and texture that render the poutish, petite woman as her very own work of art.
To Riccardo, Anna has written most warm-heartedly, speaking of his own poetry within his designs and the way that he is able to verbalise this in private to her. She likens his puns to ‘ex-votos’, religious votive offerings to Gods and saints that offer thanks, and has included an image of her own symbolic ‘ex-voto’ – an embellished eye on crude leather.
Read her kind words below:
“GIVENCHIC!
Dear Riccardo, the hints you give me after each one of your shows are always a surprise, an amusement, something to remember… a concentrate of the collection in a very few words, quick, light, spontaneous. And always with a very happy accent, a play with words, which I am always looking for. A little miracle each time, like a ‘grazia ricevuta’ (a received grace?), which is the meaning of each religious ex-voto, like the heart embroidered on a black dress in your spring-summer? NO, no, no, autumn winter collection 2008. I love ‘ex-voto’ (ex-votos?) and I have been even using the eye (see photo) as a jewel with a ribbon around my neck, with your beautiful ‘peep’ coat. My favourite quote of yours was ‘maori, fetish, baby doll’ and it stayed in my head for quite a long time. How great to have a bouncing relationship with fashion, to feel it as a pretext for free poetry, nursery rhyme… looking for your, your next collection-expression
yours,
Anna Piaggi”
No comments:
Post a Comment