is armani alright?

On Wednesday this week we all visited the Armani Silos in Milan.

I thought that this exhibit was really unique, a little bit strange and fun.

We started out by looking through the art exhibition that had on the ground floor. A lot of it focused on photography done by Paolo Ventura involving a series of portraits that depicted an odd story. I can’t say that I completely understood them all but they were on a broad range of being deep and dark to silly and confusing. Characters included clowns, twin soldiers, children, dolls, and uninterestered women. We are going through dreams, personal conflicts, social interactions and life with the photo series… and we can even see this in Armani’s clothing collection.

Now… let’s talk about the Armani collection. I thought that it was pretty cool to see the transitions throughout the garments over the years and seasons BUT I didn’t really like some of their exhibition floors — specifically the “Ethnicities” exhibit.

First of all, why even name an exhibit “ethnicity” when there are over 175,000 words in the dictionary. This wasn’t about people’s ethnicities, it was about cultural appropriation used in his work. He says he was inspired by these different cultures —

“I avoid merely copying traditional forms, styles, and decorations, preferring instead to explore a reinterpretation that is both decisive and nuanced. This is my personal idea of exoticism: imagining and reinterpreting an ‘elsewhere,’ capturing its purity, it’s capacity to move the soul.” 

Most of his work literally looked like traditional clothing remade with expensive fabric. I interpreted his quote to mean that he intended to pull little threads of inspiration from these different countries to add an eclectic twist on modern clothing. He definitely did NOT do that in all of his pieces.

This isn’t the first time he attempted to culturally appropriate in his designs… Just last year he received about the doobie hairstyles of his models were wearing at a show.

I would just like to say that although it’s a pretty weird exhibit and I have some opinions about his work, everything was interesting to look at and learn about. It was interesting to see the transitions between seasons and years with fabrics, styles, colors, etc.