That Peggy Guggenheim is an iconic figure is well known. The many venues of the Foundation that bears her name have also become iconic, thanks to the visions of architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry.
Treasuries of the recent past and of our contemporary world, these museums become inspirational spaces even before being places of preservation. The same goes for the Guggenheim in New York, where the gaze lingers on themes close to those explored by our FASHION HERITAGE ACADEMY.
In Jubilee (2021), Anthony Akinbola reflects on the fragility of the body through an artistic composition made of objects designed to cover and protect it—sometimes in nearly invisible ways, as in the case of tights.
Artists like Joseph Beuys express confidence in the ability of clothing to influence and transform people’s lives, even in profound ways. Known for his work on garments and for his radical vision combining art, politics, and life, Beuys presents The Orwell Leg – Trousers for the 21st Century (1984), a bold and imperfect pair of jeans imagined as capable of transforming the wearer into a better citizen—less concerned with status symbols and more attentive to civic and aesthetic matters.
A hundred years earlier, Édouard Manet – through Woman in Striped Dress, a painting found unfinished in his studio after his death—demonstrated his interest in fashion, especially women’s fashion. The blue-violet striped dress takes over the woman’s figure, with just a few brushstrokes capable of evoking everything.
