“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.” - Cecil Beaton

Street Fashion In Florence

While being in Florence and seeing all of what Italy has to offer I have learned that the fashion world around me is slightly different yet very similar.  When people go out to buy a new garment they usually find something that “fits in” with everyone else around them.  It is rare to see someone who steps too far out from what is seen as normal and instead sticks to what is common.  When someone does stand out and moves away from the social norm, they are seen as a rebel, a fashion forward being.  They are seen as someone that people inspire to be like yet are too scared to change to become.  These people are who I turn to for inspiration.  The person who is willing to take a chance, risk it all just to be seen as a revolutionary in fashion is who I want to become. 

Ponte Vecchio Florence, Italy

Throughout this semester in Florence I have been able to learn a lot about past fashion designers through looking at their work in museums, learning about them in class lectures and by exploring Florence on my own.  I have been able to see which fashion designers created collections to fit in with society and which designers’ goals were to stand out.  Out of all the amazing and talented designers I learned about this semester, two took a forefront in my mind.  These two designers are Roberto Capucci and Franco Moschino. 

Roberto Capucci-Oceano 1998

The first time I was able to experience Roberto Capucci’s work was when I went to the Capucci Foundation.  The second I saw his garments and how extraordinary they were, I fell in love.  At a young age Capucci’s garments were seen as astonishing.  At age 20, in 1950, his gowns were seen as the best of their kind.  Completely different than anything even see before in the fashion world of Florence, Italy.  He was considered a “boy wonder “since his garments were more like sculptures and art than just fashion.  Capucci created his garments to have shapes, forms and colors that were completely unique to his time.

Roberto Cupucci Gowns

When at the Capucci Foundation, I was able to see how astonishing his gowns were first hand and I would have to agree with how they seem to be more art than fashion.  One of his gowns that stood out to me the most was his gown, Oceano.  This gown was completely different than anything I had seen throughout my entire time in Florence.  It was hand crafted and designed to create the woman wearing the garment to be seen as a goddess emerging from the sea.  I believe I saw this garment as something so amazing because it was created from over 27 different shades of blue and over 100 meters of taffeta.  It was created in 1998 and took over five months and five different tailors to create.  That alone could have made the dress exceptional but the style in which Capucci creates his garments is what makes him a designer that stands out above the rest.  In Capucci’s gowns he uses a technique where he layers the fabrics on top of one another to create waistlines, sleeves and cuffs that defy gravity.  How he creates these layers is by stacking three different pieces of material, one diagonal, one horizontal and one vertical on top of one another.  Then Capucci sandwiches the three pieces of fabric inside two more layers of fabric.  By doing this, Capucci is able to transform normal fabric into something never seen before.  He is able to create something that other designers would never even dream of creating.  In all of his gowns Capucci was able to create something huge, extravagant, show stopping, unexpected and yet still form fitting to the wear’s body.  I find Capucci’s garments very inspirational to my career and what I want to do in the fashion world.  Within Fashion Merchandising even though I am not the one actually making the garment, I am the one deciding what the end consumer wants.  I am the one who determines what is given to the final customer.  I also am the one who is responsible for developing new style trends and fashions given to the consumer world.  By having an outlook like Roberto Capucci, I too could be seen as a “girl wonder” just like he was.  If I take what I learned from Capucci and take his ideas on being different, show stopping, unique and extravagant, I too can create something that can be seen as something larger than anything else in the fashion world. 

Franco Moschino 1950-1994

The other designer who stands out to me as being extraordinary and unique is Franco Moschino.  Moschino was a designer whose goal was to turn the fashion world completely upside down.  He was the designer who wanted to take a risk and did not care what other people thought of him.  Moschino, a native of a small city called Abbiategrasso, located outside of Milan, at a young age took up art and drawing to fill the void of losing his father.  He attended art school in Milan in 1967 and to fill the need for finances took on a job of sketching and drawing for fashion magazines and fashion houses.  In 1971 Moschino took on a job working for Gianni Versace then started his own collection in 1983.  When starting his own company, Moschino’s aspiration was to turn people away from following magazines and instead focus on thinking for themselves.  His main objective was to go against the grain since most designers were dreaming of being in fashion magazines, proving that they would follow the trends when he wanted to do the complete opposite.  Out of all of Moschino garments, one stood out to me the most.  This garment was his little black dress that I saw in the V & A museum in London created completely out of black lace bras.  When I saw this dress at the museum, I found it entirely amusing that he could turn such a simple idea into something so unique and “not normal”.  Moschino was willing to be a risk taker and branch away from the norm of fashion and society to create something that had a new outlook on life.  I found this very inspiring because Moschino demonstrated that it is okay to be different.  The aim in our lives in the fashion world should be to turn heads; it should not be to keep everything the same as it is already.  Our goal in the fashion world should be to create something so unique, so different that is makes people want to stop and stare.     

Franco Moschino-Little Black Dress 1988

Over all, Roberto Capucci and Franco Moschino both demonstrate the being unique and distinct is a good thing.  They both proved that when you take a step away from the normal, everyday society of things and step into something different, something amazing may come out of it.  They both demonstrate to me that it is okay if I want to be different than everyone else in the fashion world because without being unique, I will just blend in among the others. A quote from Coco Chanel demonstrates this perfectly, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”