Photo: Nick Knight



As stated last July in my Contr[addiction]s, Florence is the new Antwerp [but also the new Lourdes]. Today it was Stephen Jones’ turn to get blessed by Polimoda’s overflowing new home room. A well deserved benediction because, as per words of Anna Piaggi, Mr. Jones has made the most beautiful hats in the world, so he has been on the head of designers among the most hitting of our times, starting from Jean Paul Gaultier, passing through John Galliano and Rei Kawakubo, arriving to the more recent collaborations with Marc Jacobs.

While going through the rising moments of his career, our guest explained the cultural and historical importance of millinery: our clothes are dressing our bodies, the relationship between what we are and how we look, basically between ethics and aesthetics, is passing through our heads, it’s something happening in our minds.

Why then stopping to dress at the neck and not dressing also the part of our body that generates the process of dressing? If we underwrite this, we rejoin what has been artificially disjoined along history: top and down, head and body, mind and flesh, inside and outside, content and container, up to person and client, society and market, freedom and power. As I wrote in the book Luxury Hackers, the choice of a hat has always meant bringing the importance of ego-directions above hetero-directions, and the way to wear the hat as well, not by fault during the WWII ladies launched the wave of putting the hat back-to-front as sign of resistance. Rejoining means becoming the totems of us, self-standing figures from head to toe, ultimately totems without taboos. It’s well visible in the book “Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones”, here the humans wearing his creations become immediately iconic figures. Stephen Jones is a very good designer, but he has a vision, and this is making of him the greatest in his kind.

The second most touching moment of his speech has been when talking about his former collaborations, describing a fizzy atmosphere in fashion made of occasions, new styles rising, strong statements of a fashion system able to influence the society through design. It has been moving listening at him but also sad, because today we don’t have all this and we need it bad. He suggested to the young designers and brand managers in the audience to work hard on their passions, to be creative their own way, to learn how to follow the rules but also to feel free to write new ones. This is the point. We need new patterns for sure, but also new ways to think at patterns. If people don’t purchase fashion with the same joy they felt decades ago it’s not only because of the crisis, it’s also because fashion has not the same driving force. We need to produce new sense and sometimes non-sense that makes sense, meanings, ideas, and provocations that are becoming shapes, mental and physical, corporeal and not necessarily corporate. He said we need some new John Gallianos and we all know it, even if sometimes we don’t dare to confess it.
A display of thirty archival hats is included in the exhibition “Salvatore Ferragamo: Inspiration and Vision”, at the Museo Ferragamo in Florence. For this event, Stephen Jones created hats that co-ordinate with the iconic shoes made for Judy Garland and Greta Garbo. It’s on up to March 12. 2012, but don’t wait, go now, visit and be inspired in [but also on] your head.
Danilo Venturi

SOURCES
Danilo Venturi, “Contr[addiction]s, http://daniloventuri.blogspot.com/2011/07/contraddictions.html
Danilo Venturi, “Luxury Hackers”, Lindau, Turin, 2011
Danilo Venturi, “Danilo: Totem”, http://www.polimodamag.com/danilo-totem-2-1007/
Stephen Jones, http://www.stephenjonesmillinery.com/
Stephen Jones, “Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones”, V&A Publishing, London, 2009
Salvatore Ferragamo, “Salvatore Ferragamo: Inspiration and Vision”, Museo Ferragamo, Florence, November 2011-March 2012