Futurism
Futurism and fashion are not antithetical entries, at least for the following reason: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the movement, never lamented the unbearable frivolity of fashion, as poets and intellectuals often do, but actually adopted fashion as a code of ideal behavior for those artists destined to greatness, those peremptorily invited to update their work with every new season just as the French couturiers offer their new designs. At that time, of course, Italian stylism was still in the future. If this was the movement’s ideology, then one shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that right in their clothing designs futurists provided — thanks especially to Balla, Depero, Prampolini, Thayaht, and many others — some valuable information about everyday clothes in the 20th century. First of all, with the thousands of prophetic intuitions that can be traced to the two manifestos considered, on this subject, to be fundamental. The first, by Balla, was Le Vêtement Masculin Futuriste, 1914, of which there was also an Italian version, titled Il vestito antineutrale (‘Anti-neutral clothing’). The second was Ricostruzione Futurista dell’Universo, 1915 signed by Balla and Depero. In Ricostruzione Futurista, clothing isn’t actually discussed in a specific sense, except in a hint about “transformable clothing,” from the point of view of a refounding of the world which takes into account new productive and social rhythms. But here also one has the feeling that the usual Futurist terminology — including velocity and dynamism — can’t but be directly reflected in fashion and in the fashions of a season that is more and more marked by dramatic and uncontrollable events. So the anti-neutral clothing foreseen by the manifest of the same name — right at the dawn of World War I — can’t be but pro-war, colored, phosphorescent, agile, hygienic, joyful, anti-Germany and so on. In short, it fostered a more comfortable and functional clothing (also suitable in peace time) which abandoned black, grey and dark half-colors — forbidding them even to gravediggers, if necessary — in order to bring the Futurist rush into the streets, the salons, and the theaters. And it wouldn’t be a surprise, after all, if some of the most convincing tests of such a mode of dressing were to be found in the theater. And it was true, on the other hand, that the followers of Marinetti, who were inflexible advocates of a closer relationship between art and life, were unable to limit themselves to a purely ideological proposal. They had to put it into practice. And they did, although sometimes only in sketches or in some discussions at the café, emphasizing even on this battleground the use of “bad taste” — made of unbalances and asymmetries — as a unique but still efficient antidote to the mediocre “good taste” of the bourgeoisie. And so on, with very gaudy waistcoats cut in unusual shapes; metallic ties and light bulbs transformed into ties; evening jackets with one sleeve rounded and the other squared; hats of every shape and size; overalls in all the colors of the rainbow with lozenge and cone-shaped cutouts made from different fabrics put one next to the other; not to mention the mismatched shoes that were also in different colors and an unspeakable number of accessories — the famous “modifiers” — which were sufficient to apply here and there with special “inflatable buttons” according to the taste of the person wearing them, in order to change in a flash (and thus extremely fast) the very structure of the garment. It is hardly necessary to add that such a concept of clothing — destined to be reverberate all through the 1950s thanks to the last Futurists, by then aged 90 — aimed in particular at the liberation of men, being that women’s fashion was already “more or less futurist,” as one could read in a winning if somewhat pandering manifest from 1920 in which, it is clear, the son of Futurism carefully offered (in quite an Italian style) a tribute to his mother. But that experience has not been lost, in spite of the unfortunate fact that futurist clothes were almost always worn by their creators or by their patient companions. And it certainly stirs a certain tenderness to see again today the religiously kept pajama-overalls (what else to call them?) in which the old Giacomo Balla would stroll around his house in Rome, forced to paint portraits of ladies in order to support his family, although not yet tamed, or desperate. As if he already knew that one day the best Italian designers — those more open to the world in which they live — would have preserved his style for the future. Or, at least, a spark of it.