Across Art and Fashion

edited by Maria Luisa Frisa, Enrica Morini, Stefania Ricci e Alberto Salvadori

exhibition catalogue: (Florence, Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, Museo Marino Marini, Galleria del Costume di Palazzo Pitti, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze; Prato, Museo del Tessuto, 12 May 2016-7 April 2017)

This catalogue accompanies and illustrates an exhibition that was installed in multiple venues and makes use of the many illustrious loans obtained from public and private museum collections, and the contemporary works of art created for the occasion. The new production by the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum considers the complex relationship between the worlds of art and fashion. Building on his long-held fascination with the avant-garde artistic movement of the 20th-century, Salvatore Ferragamo found inspiration in the art world and collaborated with his artistic contemporaries, inaugurating a practice that the Ferragamo brand continues to this day.

Through case studies, the project will analyze the forms of dialogue, contamination, overlapping and collaboration between the two worlds from the experiences of Pre-Raphaelitism, Futurism, and Surrealism. Paying attention to individual ateliers of the 1950s and 1960s, studios and meeting rooms, and the birth of celebrity culture, this catalogue follows the trajectory towards the experimentation of the 1990s, arriving at the following question: in the contemporary cultural industry can one still speak of distinct worlds or have we arrived at a blending of roles?