POSTPRODUCTION

A bent for sampling characterizes and defines many of the most significant experiences that make up the panorama of Italian fashion, especially in the 1990s, when the figure of the creative director took the place of the stilista and designer.

In continuity with editorial montage and the processes of image making that pertain to the sensibility of the stylist, the actions of sampling, reactivating and rearranging existing forms and styles in new ways define Italian fashion design, between the aggressiveness of bad taste and the dematerialization typical of the 1990s.

The anti-graceful figures of Prada, swathed in fabrics and prints that evoke acerbic 1970s wallpaper designs are as much an expression of this as is the profusion of sequins that animate the knitwear of Enrico Coveri are both expressions of this. Then there are the bored women of Donatella Versace, looking as if they have just emerged from luxurious Los Angeles villas. And the clothes that reactivate heritage by redesigning or even radically inventing it, as in the case of Gucci imagined by the Texan designer Tom Ford.