The Many Lives of a Garment
A poetic journey through our relationship with clothes, featuring visionary designs from the ITS Collection and everyday clothes, some belonging to international fashion muses.
Curated by Olivier Saillard and Emanuele Coccia
Thursday 28 March 2024 — Monday 6 January 2025
From March 28, 2024, to January 6, 2025, ITS Arcademy – Museum of Art in Fashion will host “The Many Lives of a Garment – Le molte vite di un abito”, curated by renowned art historian Olivier Saillard and philosopher Emanuele Coccia.
Clothes may often be taken for granted, yet they lead countless lives. Every garment narrates the story of the body that inhabits it, and every wardrobe serves as a personal archive, a sort of museum. The exhibition will guide visitors through an exploration of the profoundly subjective value we assign to garments at various stages of their lifecycle and within different contexts: in a shop window or a museum archive; in fashion, even if momentarily, or forever linked with an iconic wearer; cherished or forgotten.
Extraordinary designs from the unique ITS Arcademy Collection will be displayed alongside everyday clothing loaned by international fashion muses.
ITS Arcademy – Museum of Art in Fashion, Trieste – 28.3.2024-6.1.2025
About the Curators
Olivier Saillard
Curator and fashion historian
Olivier Saillard, an art historian and one of the world’s foremost fashion curators, directs the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation and previously led Palais Galliera in Paris. His exhibitions and shows redefine convention, offering a fresh perspective on design while bridging the gap between fashion and artistic performance.
He wrote several books and curated major exhibitions, such as “Yohji Yamamoto. Juste des vêtements” and “Christian Lacroix. Histoire de vêtements” at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs; “Azzedine Alaïa” and “Jeanne Lanvin” at the Palais Galliera; “Madame Grès. La couture à l'œuvre,” and “Balenciaga, l'œuvre au noir" at the Musée Bourdelle; and more recently, “Le musée éphémère de la mode” at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.
Emanuele Coccia
Philosopher
Emanuele Coccia is associate professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He has been Visiting Professor at the universities of Buenos Aires, Columbia NY, Harvard, Munich, Venice, Tokyo and Weimar. He is the author of “Sensible Life” (2010), “The Life of Plants” (2018), Metamorphosis (2021) and Philosophy of the Home (2023).
In 2019, he contributed to the exhibition “Nous les Arbres”, presented at Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris. He edited the catalogues of the 23rd Milan Triennale of Architecture and Design: “Unknown Unknowns. An Introduction to Mysteries”.
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