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THURSDAY NEWSLETTER FROM ANDREA BATILLA

WHAT IS THE POINT OF FASHION CULTURE?

The house my partner and I bought has a large garden—a very large one. When we found it, it was in terrible condition, abandoned for decades. Some parts had turned into woodland, in others brambles made the ground impassable, and all sorts of plants had taken over every space, choking each other out and creating chaos—literally. Only now, after nearly a year and with the help of a very skilled gardener and an architect, are we beginning to understand the vision of whoever built the house and its surrounding grounds.

In late 1960s Italy, houses and gardens became subjects of contemporary design thinking. In our case, the inspiration was clearly drawn from the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, where the relationship between interior and exterior spaces is essential. From the living room’s large windows, you can see all the greenery that surrounds the building—an elegance lost with time but that was clearly considered with as much care as the interiors.

Thinking about the conception of a large garden is something we’re not used to, simply because it’s not something we often encounter—or even desire, perhaps, because it’s too complex. The number of factors that go into designing a garden is immense, and it takes great technical skill and experience to manage them. Here in Brianza, gardens often feel artificial: overly manicured, with geometrically trimmed hedges and flower beds bursting with multicolored blooms. The Italian garden has historically been a rational space, a metaphor for the magnificence of human reason and also for the Renaissance desire to display family wealth and lineage. Over time, those historical roots lost their meaning, and we ended up with pots of geraniums—beautiful but useless—that bloom for a few months and then die, demanding no thought or care.

The garden, more than the house, is a powerful metaphor for the challenge of maintaining a tight network of connections between very different plants while also having a broad vision that makes the whole thing harmonious and meaningful. If you plant herbs, you need to know that mint tends to spread aggressively through its roots and must be controlled. If you want a cherry tree, you’ll need to plant it near another cherry tree because it’s not self-pollinating and won’t bear fruit alone.

Maybe the garden has enormous plants that aren’t worth much because they’re not native. But removing them and replacing them with more suitable species could take years—decades, even.

Even though Italy gives its name to a type of garden, the culture of outdoor spaces—especially public ones—has long disappeared and has only recently started to recover. Green space here isn’t viewed as something with identity but rather as an accessory, an ornament, a decoration—unlike in France, Germany and especially England, where parks and gardening have been part of the culture for centuries.

When thinking about a system like fashion, we should keep this metaphor in mind. In Italy, fashion as a cultural system hasn’t existed since the Renaissance. What we see today is a series of events—some incredibly important—but they lack unity and a solid framework.

There’s the story of the Sala Bianca in Florence, with the brilliant Giovanni Battista Giorgini who, in the 1950s, invented Italian fashion shows. There’s the tale of the Fontana Sisters who, around the same time, created Roman haute couture. Then there’s Salvatore Ferragamo, who built a globally famous shoe brand from scratch. The same goes for Guccio Gucci.

And what about Armani, Versace, Ferré and Krizia, who essentially invented the very concept of “Made in Italy”? All these stories have, over time, become part of a romanticized collective imagination—but they remain individual episodes, never forming a cohesive whole.

This fragmented picture exists because there has never been a collective reflection on fashion. No one ever tried to piece everything together, and the geographic fragmentation eventually became a colorful jumble of offal, served only a couple of times a year.

Of course, there’s a common thread connecting all these legendary events, but it’s not a romantic story.

Cathy Horyn, a renowned fashion journalist for New York Magazine, is one of the few truly independent critics. She’s allowed to say what she wants because she writes for a magazine with a small readership but strong cultural authority. In one of her recent editorials, she declared Milan Fashion Week dead and buried, reminding everyone that the only show worth traveling to Milan for is Prada’s. As harsh as that sounds, there’s some truth to it.

The Italian fashion system is not, in fact, a system. Its historical uniqueness lies, as mentioned, in its decentralization and relatively recent development—two qualities that also make it extremely hard to understand.

In France, history unfolded in a single city—Paris—from the courts of the seventeenth century onward, often concentrated in one part of the city, sometimes even a single street. In Italy, fashion’s narrative split among Milan, Florence, and Rome, but also included Turin, Venice, and countless manufacturing companies scattered across the country.

When the textile industries of the US, France, Germany, and the UK vanished in the ’70s and ’80s, Italy rose to international fame for its production capacity and its natural flair for everyday style—that is, commercial fashion.

With the collapse of the production system, in all other countries fashion became something to narrate—a story, an intangible and highly adaptable metaphor. Italy, on the other hand, even though it maintained its full wealth in the textile and clothing sectors, failed to transform it into a collective narrative, remaining at the surface, stuck on individual episodes.

The proof of this is that, while a lot still happens here, there is no collective thinking or overarching direction. As a result, our garden is sometimes accidentally beautiful, other times wildly overgrown.

Among the many examples that could be cited (and there are truly a lot), I’ll mention just a few that I find particularly telling. In Milan, the City Councilor for Economic Development and Labor Policies, Alessia Cappello, also holds the portfolio for fashion and design. This means that Milan’s perspective on fashion is a productive/industrial one—not a cultural one. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if there were coordination groups at the municipal, regional, or national level, or if this role were fulfilled by the National Chamber of Italian Fashion. But that’s not the case.

The Architecture Department at the Politecnico di Milano, the first of its kind in Italy, was founded in 1933 and essentially created the profession of the architect, which up until then was practiced by both engineers and fine arts graduates. Not long after, a professional register was also established, defining the training requirements for anyone wanting to pursue the profession.

In 1993, the School of Design was founded within the Politecnico, and within it, courses in fashion design and communication were introduced. It’s unclear exactly when these fashion courses began, but it seems relatively recent. This means that, at the university that invented the study of architecture in Italy, fashion is treated as a branch of design, which in turn is treated as a branch of architecture.

Fashion, unlike design, suffers from a poor reputation and is often seen as frivolous and superficial. The roots of this issue run deep. Architects and designers receive a cultural education that allows them to develop a critical perspective on their own work and to present it using sophisticated, often academic language. Fashion designers, and the fashion world in general, suffer from a kind of cultural illiteracy—they still approach their craft the way it was done in the 1950s, talking about inspiration and confusing creative instinct with actual design thinking.

This also happens because fashion education in Italy wasn’t born within universities but outside of them, in schools historically closer to technical institutes, and almost always privately run. In these schools, industry demands shape academic courses, not the other way around.

Then there’s the issue of museums. After four years of renovation, the Museum of Fashion and Costume at Palazzo Pitti has recently reopened. It’s the only museum in Italy that can truly claim this title, but what sets it apart from institutions like the Musée Galliera in Paris or the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is that it doesn’t host themed exhibitions—just a rotation of its 15,000 archival garments. This means its focus is on preservation, not research, and it’s far from offering a contemporary perspective or contributing to the formation of a fashion culture.

In reality, Italy has a vast “scattered museum,” made up of private archives and foundations (just think of Prada’s, which includes 67,000 pieces). But this network isn’t coordinated, it’s not accessible for study, and it’s not connected to public institutions. As a result, it’s impossible to have a detailed picture of the immense heritage it represents.

All this might sound discouraging, but it could also be the starting point for a deeper analysis of the state of cultural fashion production in Italy.

When Stefano Boeri was Milan’s City Councilor for Culture in 2011, he showed real interest in fashion. He not only supported the idea of establishing a proper fashion museum but also organized a two-day forum. A large number of people were invited to participate, each given ten minutes to talk about a challenge, share a point of view, or offer suggestions. Boeri listened carefully, took notes, and even joined the discussions. To me, both days felt incredibly fertile and full of ideas. Then Boeri left his position, and not a single one of those ideas was ever followed up.

So maybe now is the time to do something similar. Let’s give ourselves three days, a spacious and relaxed setting, and simply begin—by talking about it.