It is amazing how realistic these images are. Who thought Andy Warhol’s 1967 screenprint versions of Marilyn Monroe would one day feature in a Lego kit?
I love the contrasts of colour between these two Lego art pieces – both as striking as the other!
Creative designer: Ron Harpur
A kitchen renovation wouldn’t be complete without a set of new china to display in the glass-fronted cabinets. I have in mind something of an Italian motif, and like the idea of this pattern from the Medici collection by Maxwell & Williams.
You can be a student of history, or you could be a student surrounded by history.
Imagine studying within the walls of a former monastery and cloisters adjacent to the 4th century Basilica Sant’Ambrogio: a site with historical pedigree that houses the relics of Milan’s first Bishop and Patron Saint, St Ambrose. Walking to lectures under the university’s stone portico and entering the gardens of the twin cloisters (designed by Bramante) was like entering an intellectual sanctuary of past saints and students.
I came to learn that St Ambrose was a force to be reckoned with in Milan: he famously refused to permit entrance into the Milan Cathedral (the original one that would have faced the current Cathedral if it was still standing today) of Emperor Theodosius until he publicly repented of having massacred 7000 people in Thessalonica. The Emperor ultimately bowed to St Ambrose’s request and the stand-off is captured in a painting by Camillo Procaccini within the Basilica.
Perhaps in keeping with St Ambrose’s warrior-like defence of Milan against Imperial heavyweights the saint lies at the junction of religious, civic and teaching institutions in Piazza Sant’Ambrogio, with the Basilica bordered by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and the State police barracks.
While Ambrose’s relics lie comfortably undisturbed between those of two other saints in the Basilica’s crypt, work on a new metro station nearby has unceremoniously unearthed further relics that are being exhumed and relocated to safer environs.
Around stone seats in the Piazza outside the university family groups gather at graduation time with their Prosecco magnums and paper cups to enthusiastically celebrate their graduands: the laurel wreaths on the graduands’ heads symbolic of the victor’s spoils after having successfully defended their final thesis.
This blend of every-day life, age-old traditions and historical heritage around Sant’Ambrogio is symptomatic, I think, of Milan: it’s a city where the past and the present co-exist while making room for the future.
Atrium of Sant’Ambrogio
I made it! Universita Cattolica!
Bramante cloister
The advice given to me that “after 2 weeks’ immersion in Italy you’ll be speaking that language with ease” was totally wrong! No-one had higher expectations than I when, after completing a year of Italian language classes in Australia, I planned to live in Milan for four months and continue to study Italian.
Well, needless to say, two weeks came and went without any marked improvement. At that point I was barely able to recognise any familiar words when overhearing conversations of fellow passengers on trams and metros or in cafes. Everyone spoke so fast and seemed to roll their words together so smoothly that it was hard to differentiate particular words. No wonder no-one could understand me when I was carefully and slowly pronouncing what verbs I had mastered and clumsily rolled them into a sentence or question.
Early on in my Milan adventure I realised I was not as proficient as I thought I was when I attempted to pay for a meal at a restaurant with an American Express credit card. My query to the cashier, “pago con American Express?” was interpreted as a request for an Americano espresso which the barista graciously made for me. In an attempt to rectify the misunderstanding, I paid the bill using Visa while the barista drank the coffee!
10 Corso Como
Undeterred, and still hopeful that my Italian was improving, I tried again in a boutique along the trendy Corso Como at Porta Nuova. I did my best in Italian to explain what I liked to wear and what colours I preferred and I was pleasantly surprised when the assistant said that she could understand what I was saying (although she had to repeat the phrase in English so that I could check my understanding of her Italian)! Finally I felt I was beginning to fit in. Not surprisingly I bought a dress from her. Why do I now believe it was part of a clever sales pitch? Because assistants in every boutique or store since then all asked me to “please speak in English.”
Bar Sempione
Massimo inside the eclectic interior of Bar Sempione
As I discovered, memorable acquaintances were formed without the need for fluent Italian. As my local barista, Massimo from Bar Sempione, became familiar with my daily visits to the cafe for a macchiato he would welcome me with ‘buongiorno madame,’ and he would blow me a kiss each time I called out to him ‘buona giornata’ as I left for class! At a later stage of our acquaintance, in halting conversation with him I discovered that Massimo was 53 years old (numbers in Italian were more easy for me to recognise) and that he had lost two children – one at aged 6 months and the other at age 8 months. I conveyed to him that I felt sad for him. He made the sign of the cross, shrugged his shoulders and continued making coffees for other customers. As I was leaving and opened my wallet to pay him for my coffee he lightly put his hands over mine and he wouldn’t let me pay for it. Special moments like that still give me goosebumps!
This week the Men’s Spring/Summer 2020 Fashion Week is showing in Milan, and reminded me of my first experience of the Women’s Winter 2019 Milan Fashion Week in February this year, where I visited the sites of 5 fashion shows – Gucci, Fendi, Moschino, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana. I was surprised how spread out these fashion shows were around Milan. I travelled for around an hour to Gucci’s compound in Via Mecenate in the southeast of the city, while Versace’s show was in a central city location, in the Palazzo Mezzanotte, the site of the Italian Stock Exchange (Borsa) in Piazza Affari. Bottega Veneta’s show was held in a transparent marquee constructed behind the Arco della Pace in Piazza Sempione and Fendi’s invited guests queued on artificial turf laid outside their premises in Via Solari, about 40 minutes by tram from the city.
While I was studying in Milan I came to understand that over the years since 1985 the leading fashion design houses were constantly negotiating with the city for venues in central Milan where the fashion shows could be held. At various times, the fashion houses were forced to present their shows outside the city at the fairgrounds. This was unsatisfactory from the point of view of both the designers and key stakeholders such as Vogue. Ultimately the fashion houses searched for their own venues within the city and resisted the city’s numerous efforts to create fashion ‘precincts’ as part of urban redevelopment plans.
Since 2016 Gucci have hosted fashion shows and international buyer events at their own compound in south-east Milan and Dolce & Gabbana ended their venue search by acquiring an old cinema, the Metropole in Via Piave, which is now used for all their shows.
Milan Fashion Week was a very different experience overall to what I expected. I imagined the city to be awash with #MFW banners and posters, and with top models posing outside the Milan Cathedral in the Piazza Duomo. However, there were no obvious signs, and unless a fashionista, the visitor to Milan would not necessarily know that Fashion Week was occurring! The only tell-tale signs were the parade of black town cars transporting VIPs to each show.
Fendi
Versace
D&G
Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana is the official representative for organising Milan Fashion Week and their website provided a calendar of events and locations. This gave me the perfect excuse to explore my new home city of only one month. Using my Milan transit app I was able to plot routes to some of the larger designer venues. My first ‘show’ was Gucci, and having to take two trams to reach Via Mecenate I was really heading into new territory and didn’t know what to expect. I knew I was heading in the right direction when I was joined on the tram by fashion photographers and more than the usual number of passengers wearing Gucci monogrammed belts, jackets and handbags! The stylish appearance of my fellow tram passengers belied the fact that the ultimate destination to which we were heading turned out to be a nondescript building, a former aeroplane factory adjacent to the Jaguar brand headquarters.
Outside Gucci
While the locations for each individual fashion brand were scattered across Milan I came to understand that the crowds were mostly fans and social media groupies who followed each of the shows. Cameras and iphones clicked away furiously at, what I observed to be two distinct groups: official invitees who wore the brand and clutched oversized invitation envelopes; and fans who were dressed to stand out and pose for everyone with a camera! It was a toss-up as to which group deserved the most attention. The invited guests convincingly exhibited the respective brand’s ethos in all manifestations – daywear or gala-ready ensembles. The cluster of fans outside the perimeter of the carpeted ‘in-zone’ were equally flamboyant and outrageous. While some were unashamedly fodder for social media photographers, others showed remarkable originality in their compositions! What I eventually concluded was that it was the fun and vibrancy of fashion on the street that was as part of Milan’s appeal as the business of fashion here.
From my observation Milan Fashion Week was a ritual for exclusive gatherings of influencers and power-brokers. However I also came to realise that these are in the main business events. I think the fashion designers who stood their ground and opposed moves to dilute the business of fashion within educational, tourism or cultural platforms have preserved a framework that champions the legacy, and ensures the future, of Milan Fashion Week.
On reflection of Milan while homeward bound to Australia I can definitely say that Design Week literally transformed the streets of Milan like the city’s Fashion Week never did. Design Week cannot be considered an exhibition in the traditional sense, although the Fieramilano Showgrounds outside the city would have resembled that aspect of commercial enterprise. From my observations, what attracts more than 300,000 visitors to Milan for 6 days in April is the transformation of ordinary spaces and streetscapes into temporary stages/venues for showcasing leading design concepts. These are not simply a few pieces of furniture or bathroom-ware idly positioned to fit a space, but to provide an event experience that reflects the creativity and innovative use of marble or wood or new materials. This concept hails from 1965 when exhibiting companies wanted more flexibility in showcasing their innovations, to the extent that in 1979 one company left their exhibition booth empty but from it promoted a shuttle service to take interested delegates directly to their warehouse for a personalised experience. This led to the creation of the Fuorisalone that supported dressing up spaces around the city and opening up the design concepts to local Milanese as well as international visitors.
Historic precincts such as the Brera Academy hosted pop-up installations, forecourts of train and metro stations were utilised, cafe walls were rented by artists. This activity attracted major consumer brands – Nike, Nokia, Prada. This year’s exhibits by Sony with their robot-dog and Samsung were extravagant! Also for the first time pharmaceutical company Novartis showed in the Tortona design district.
Design Week also included design competitions. One of my fellow students, Yui Akagi (who is also an accomplished ballroom dancer), helped her architecture colleagues from the University of Tokyo complete an exhibit of an imitation of a famous Japanese tea-house. Its innovative design whereby the floating floor movement created by an occupant, which in turn affected the frame through tension on wires interlaced through a series of pulleys, was designed to illustrate the intimate relationship between occupant and environment, won the team first prize in their category.
Fuorisalone dates for 2020 are 20-26 April.
Well I’ve reached the half-way mark of my sojourn in Milan. What do I think so far? Its absolutely fabuloso!
Venice Carnivale
While the snow and freezing temperatures took its toll in the first month, the temperatures in Milan have now definitely improved. La primavera is well and truly setting a much warmer scene for the remainder of my stay.
It’s no surprise that I have learned a lot more about Milan since arriving. My Universita Cattolica subject, Reading Milan, is as interesting and revealing as I had hoped it would be. My lecturers have pointed out that reminders of Milan’s Roman and Medieval past are constantly being uncovered. Age-old skeletons have been unearthed as a new underground metro station is being dug alongside the Basilica Sant’Ambrogio to which Universita Cattolica is associated. Even under the Duomo metro station it is possible to see the original base of the Duomo Piazza and realize how much of the existing urban space has been layered and layered upon centuries-old foundations. Even within the Italian Borsa (Stock Exchange building) I was able to see through a glass sub-floor to the remains of Roman foundations during a rare weekend when the building was opened to the public.
Milan’s Duke in the left foreground
I have spent nearly every day since I arrived exploring different parts of the city, using its public transport system, either the metro or trams. Having a bucket-list of reasons to get around the city, such as hanging around Gucci’s compound during Milan Fashion Week show has helped expose me to areas outside the inner-Duomo and tourist precincts.
I was surprised to learn that Milan once resembled Amsterdam with a network of canals to enhance commerce and trade for its merchants until the Fascist government in 1920s decided that the canals were outdated and changed the urban landscape with a road network for modern motor vehicles.
I have been blessed to experience life-long dreams and absorb many beautiful treasures here, such as visiting Venice during Carnivale, attending a performance at Teatro La Scala, observing the goings-on outside 5 fashion houses during Milan Fashion Week, viewing some wonderful art exhibitions of Picasso, Paul Klee and the treasures of the Brera and Gallerie d’Arte Moderna.
I’ve loved seeing the Milanese’s affection for their pets and I have no problem sharing trams, cafes and elevators with dogs of all sizes and breeds, including Great Danes and British Bulldogs!
Dante’s Inferno: Francesca & Paolo
Do I feel like I’m starting to fit in? Well, my local barista now blows me a kiss each morning when he makes me my macchiato, and during a stroll through Sempione Park Marco, an architect from Florence, chatted me up. As it turned out he incorrectly thought the architect of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II was also the architect of Arco delle Pace – when in fact one was Guiseppe and the other Luigi!
Just this weekend, I had the sense of taking a magical carpet ride on a visit inside Gucci’s Hub. This is the brand’s marketing complex located in Milan’s outer district in Via Mecenate. In the 1920s the premises were home to the Caproni aeronautical factory. Unfortunately no photos were allowed but the images will remain imprinted on my mind for some time! I will never forget walking into what was obviously an airplane hangar now metamorphosed into a formal banquet space while beyond a lavish and seemingly endless expanse of black draping were a large stage and it is in this compound that all of Gucci’s fashion shows are held. Surrounding a cloistered garden was a modern glass structure that housed showrooms for international buyers and six floors of offices. Again an image imprinted in my mind is walking through huge velvet red doors into a plush red-carpeted showroom complete with mannequins draped with examples from their collection, while handbags of every description were showcased along the walls. Definitely not allowed to touch! Apparently Gucci’s Creative Director, Alessandro Michele selected the vintage and eclectic mix of furniture that grace the buyer spaces and staff lunch area.
Milan’s Navigli canals
So, armed with a new Milano Moda hairdo and having watched Stramilano’s half-marathon from my apartment’s balcony this weekend, I am ready for the next stage of my race around Milano! May it be a saunter rather than a sprint!
Milan Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2019 is now in full swing, and with a bit of early research I discovered that Italy’s very first ‘Fashion Week’ was held 68 years ago, and surprisingly not in Milan but in Florence.
The man responsible for the first fashion show of Italian designers and textiles was Giovanni Battista Giorgini. In 1951 he invited American buyers for US department stores and international fashion journalists to his villa in Florence for the show which was held on 12th February.
La Rinascente’s imposing facade
An innovative thinker, Giorgini understood the emerging post-war consumer trends; that the US would offer a larger market than Europe (a trend that Paris would be slow to realise.)
Valentino’s boutique in La Rinascente
The designer Valentino also influenced the global appeal of Italian fashion and helped to position Milan as Italy’s fashion capital. He understood the cosmopolitan lifestyle of US consumers would not fit with traditional haute couture so in 1967 he opened a boutique in Milan’s leading department store, La Rinascente, and filled it with high quality ready-to-wear.
To read more about Milan’s fashionable history, refer to Turning Fashion into Business: The Emergence of Milan as an International Fashion Hub by Elisabetta Merlo and Francesca Polese.
Coming up: Milan Fashion Week – what goes on outside the Show venues!
The Museo del Novocento’s exhibition, Margherita Sarfatti, reflected the gravity and passion that she poured into her causes – her attempts to influence a ‘national expression of the arts’ and to position Milan as the centre of artistic opinion and critique.
What the exhibits illustrated was a time in Milan when the city’s inhabitants and bureaucrats were in the process of defining the features that would go on to give the city its reputation as a powerful artistic and industrial centre.
Passaggio urbano, 1908
Urban Landscape
Mario Sironi (1885-1961)
The display included works from private collections including Mario Sironi (1885-1961), one of Sarfatti’s favourite artists. Passaggio urbano, 1908 documents the new tenement buildings that were rising up in the city and as I wander around areas along via Michelangelo Buonarroti, I see modern versions of these still.
The exhibition continued to express the urban theme of modern Milan with scenes of streets, automobiles, trains and air travel.
As well as portraits of Sarfatti and display cases of magazine articles penned by her, other works reflected the outward contemplation of progress and modernity, such as a portrait of a woman wearing the latest fashion ensemble, paintings of social settings and of a group of women sitting around a table, not depicted as part of a domestic scene, but as if they were discussing current affairs.
New to me was the manner in which Italian artists, after World War 1, returned to and represented the classical form. This work by Mario Sironi (Nudo con fruittiera – Nude with Fruit Bowl, 1923ca) was exhibited at the 14th Venice Biennale in 1924 in a display by six Novocento artists.
The exhibition was informative in depicting a decisive period in Milan’s artistic and social history. Over the next few months I plan to discover more about contemporary influences that have given this city its vibrant characteristics.
Polar bear – am I in Milan or Antarctica?
Here are my first impressions of Milan after being here a couple of weeks:
– it’s cold, as one would expect in January. But wait – it got colder! I could really be forgiven for thinking I’d landed in Antarctica!
– within 72 hours of arriving I’d bought some new boots – and acquired the flu!
– basic black is still the staple of fashion here but interspersed with some white puffer jackets and red – fur that is! (faux I’m not so sure!)
– Long-gone is my ideal of stylish dressing to blend in with the locals – it’s all about surviving the cold and conserving body heat – which for me effectively means layering pretty much everything I brought with me to wear! What to do when my outer-wear becomes another layer of under-wear?
My first snowfall as seen from my apartment
– experienced my first snowfall! What a great photo opportunity – now, roll on Spring!
Stylleque 