Fashionlands – Clothes Beyond Borders
This new international exhibition explores fashion's role in transcending traditional boundaries.
Curated by Olivier Saillard and Emanuele Coccia
Thursday 27 March 2025 — Sunday 4 January 2026
On 27 March 2025, ITS Arcademy will present Fashionlands: Clothes Beyond Borders, an exhibition project born from the second collaboration between fashion historian Olivier Saillard and philosopher Emanuele Coccia, following The Many Lives of a Garment, currently on display at Italy’s first contemporary fashion museum. The exhibition features 25 works by emerging designers from the ITS Arcademy collection, set against the everyday wardrobe.
“Fashion knows no boundaries. Every item of clothing redefines the border between our body and the world around it. Every item of clothing negotiates the sensitive edges that join and separate us from all other bodies. All barriers in clothes are transformed into thresholds: spaces that have to be lived in and shared. This is why the political and cultural geography which, outside of clothes, separates and distinguishes nations, classes, ages, genders, and identities, becomes in the hands of fashion a single continent, an enormous Pangaea, a single common country, the country of Fashion. This year’s exhibition aims to celebrate, through the ITS Arcademy archive collection, this ability of fashion to redesign the global political and cultural space. Fashion also knows no boundaries from another point of view: it is everywhere, it inhabits our bodies and our world without limits of space and time. It accompanies us at all times and in all places. This is why the exhibition also sets out to be an exploration of the most ordinary of clothes, those that no one sees very often because they are under other clothes, or those that are too visible and too banal to be celebrated.”
Emanuele Coccia, co-curator.
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”.
With the Patronage of
Backed by
Partner
Media Partner
