VOCE, 15 September 2016
MILANO – New beginning for Milano Unica. The fabrics and accessories fair has launched, from 6 to 8 September its first edition in the Rho Fair stands after the transfer from the Portello Milanocity Fair.
The “revolution” concerned not only the location but also the events and the layout with new projects highlighting fashion and creativity. As On Board for example, an exhibition that displayed the moodboards of 19 Italian brands together with the collections they inspired. Among these last ones, near the famous names of Fendi, Trussardi, Prada, Valentino and Versace, we can find also Blumarine. The exhibition, curated by Simone Marchetti, will migrate to Via Tortona on the occasion of the Fashion Week scheduled for the end of September.
The 23rd edition of the exhibition, which gathers three fairs (Moda In, Shirt Avenue and Idea Biella) took place in an atmosphere of general satisfaction. In addition to the new location, nice and spacious, the fair showed itself with a high-impact new image, preparing itself for a new challenge, namely the anticipation of the next 2017 editions dates: in July instead of September and in January instead of February. Official figures highlight an increase of exhibitors compared to the last years and a good turnout of visitors (about six thousands) for all three days. Milano Unica therefore confirms to be the most important Italian exhibition of fabrics and accessories. On stage the news and trends for autumn-winter 2017-18 presented by 442 exhibitors (including 139 foreign ones) Among the exhibitors some companies from Carpi: Astarte, Baronet, Cadicagroup, Fantasie Tricot, Gruppo Dondi, Graf&Co, Reca Group, Staff, Texcart, Texil and Ulisse. Confirmed, also for this edition, two Observatories dedicated to Japanese and Korean Fashion with, respectively, 39 and 21 companies.
Concerning trends, the main themes are elegance and artistic representation. To represent this concept of timeless elegance, art as an everlasting source of inspiration has been chosen. In this sense, elegance is harmony and purity, precision and sobriety, lightness and essence. Elegance is movement, the one created by the artist when with a clean cut he divides the canvas, the one of an architect when his pencil draws lines for his project or the one of a weaver that weighs the tissue by touch and understands its structure. Elegance is everywhere. In a simple gesture, in the nature forms, in the casuality of certain events but, above all, in the heart of human creativity. No abstract themes, therefore, to define Milano Unica trends for next Automn/Winter 2017-18, but actual names of people whose creativity and genius, internationally recognized, represent a concrete reference world, a source of inspiration for the design of new warps and weft, and the creation of new accessories.
« Fashion trends are developed through the work of six great artists and creatives who have represented in their works the essence of elegance – explains Emanuela Contini, fashion consultant from Carpi – along three main routes characterised by particular colours and materials, marked by by the genius and the characteristics of the different artists».
The artist Alberto Burri and the architect Renzo Piano lead to reflect on the power of the raw materials and their poetic ability of transformation which, in terms of textile and accessories, means maximum processing and experimentation in order to get yarns, buttons, labels, sophisticated borders, all pleasant to the touch, so rich as to seem architectures with cool and metallic tones and touches of orange and powder blue. The Italian Lucio Fontana and the Japanese Katsushika Hokusai are instead defined the alpha and the omega of elegance. The black and white perfection of the Tao: Italy and Japan, space and nature. Sharp cuts are opposed to sea waves coils, fascinating and stormy. «Space therefore to laser embroideries, overlaps – she adds –, modern geometries for prints and shiny/ matte games for a very modern image declined in white, black, charcoal gray and mauve».
The last creative “clash” is between the designer Walter Albini and the Milanese architect Piero Portaluppi and focuses on the vision on lines and details, on the classic updated in a less serious and more contemporary key with symmetry games and prints.«This path evokes the atmosphere of the twenties and thirties and a new rational and essential liberty style – she continues. – The combinations are always tone-on-tone , delicate and ironic for prints. Velvet accessories, floral and geometric embroideries abound while the tones range from mastic to lilac, from powder to pink and light blue. The Autumn-Winter 2017- 18 codes – she concludes – talk between past and present, arts and crafts, tradition and modernity, East and West». (Claudia Rosini)
