To honour the exhibition (until 16 March 2025) that the Milan Triennale dedicates to Elio Fiorucci, it is only right to start with the phrase that greets visitors. “Fiorucci does not discriminate against the unique and unusual”. This is also the starting point of our visit to discover Fiorucci’s creative genius
by Domenico Casoria
The unique and the unusual are two collateral abstractions told through fashion. A respectfully disobedient creative genius. A stylistic revolution silently shouted. The Milanese, Italian (and other) cultural backgrounds are ready to explode into contemporaneity. Elio Fiorucci has been everything and the opposite of everything. But he also flirted with fashion as we know it today. We tell it to you as one would say to a ride, superadrenalinic, on a rollercoaster.
Why him
Three major itineraries curated by Judith Clark, each one set up on a razor’s edge, allow us to discover how the human being gave way to Fiorucci. The first is entrusted to personal memories through his voice. “I was the first to use certain colours, perhaps with a certain recklessness, when shoes were mostly brown, and there was this sad, grey air around,” Fiorucci repeats, almost like a cantilena, with the awareness of one who knows he has found a way to read customers. It is a story that starts in his father’s slipper shop, left unscathed after the bombings of the war. Those sensual babes that the young Elio even sold to nuns. Then, the first trip to the swinging London of the 1960s, where prohibition gave way to hedonism and desire.
How he liked London
But it is in Barbara Hulanicki‘s store, Biba – a hangout for artists and rock musicians – that he sees young people dressing according to the fashion of the moment: multicoloured shirts, miniskirts, knee-high boots, make-up and wigs. Biba plundered with his eyes and his mind and, back in Milan, opened the first concept store in Galleria Passarella in 1967. A revolution, we said, colourful, pop, disruptive, fabulous. A silent struggle made of coloured plastic trench coats, paper jumpsuits, Victorian angels and jeans that envelop women, once and for all, after the intuition of pulling back the crotch by two centimetres.
The other story
The other two itineraries of the exhibition, on the other hand, start with a collection of unpublished works and some scenographic installations inspired by the theatre to narrate the narrative and avant-garde soul of the creative genius. In 1974, he opened a second shop in Milan on Via Torino: three floors, sacred and profane, where you can buy everything, eat and meet friends. Then New York – realised together with the architect Ettore Sottsass -Chicago, Los Angeles, and London again. It is at this point – and only after ten years of Fiorucci Pensiero – that one begins to speak of a before, an after and a new working method. It is enough to explore the reproduction of his office exhibited at the Triennale: a river of references of all kinds that all flow into fashion.
Changing the paradigm
In addition to transforming shopping into what we all now call a ‘transversal experience‘, Fiorucci was an ante-litteram trend hunter. He was not the designer, but he was great at connecting people to create uniqueness. He intuited the power of design before others did. He was the first to design an eyewear line. He was the first to exaggerate logos. He did not give in to advertising pages or TV commercials, inserting advertising directly into the products. He played with humour, with levity, with political correctness and even with asses, clearing them through customs. He was the perfect storm after decades of (calm) flat fashion. A creative genius who dug a furrow, planted a seed in it, cultivated it and let it bloom by continuously watering it.
Read also: