NEW YORK, NY, January 14, 2008 - Peroni Nastro Azzurro, the official beer provider of Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, has collaborated with international style bible, Vogue Italia, to create a retrospective photographic exhibition. The exhibition, ‘50 Years of Italian Style’, will feature fifty iconic images of Italian style spanning five decades of Vogue Italia, Casa Vogue and L’Uomo Vogue and captures the enduring Italian sophistication as viewed by some of the world’s top photographers . The exhibit launch will help to kick-off fashion week on Friday February 1st at Twelve 21(West 21st Street between 5th and 6th Avenues).
The private exhibition will feature fifty stunning images from the 1960s to the present day and tells the tale of Italian style through the ages. Each decade will showcase works by the world’s pre-eminent fashion and society photographers, including David Bailey, Norman Parkinson, Gian Paolo Barbieri, Elisabetta Catalano, Patrick Demarchelier, Bruce Weber, Michel Comte, Peter Lindbergh, and Steven Meisel. To preserve the original mood of the times, the images in the exhibition will be blown up tear sheets and will appear exactly as they were first published in the magazines, charting the tale of Italian elegance, past and present, as defined Vogue Italia, the ultimate authority on the country’s style journey.
Further paying homage to the timelessness of Italian style, Peroni and Vogue Italia have also commissioned five new-generation photographers to recapture a selection of era-defining Peroni advertisements, giving them a modern, current reinterpretation.
A star-studded preview party hosted by Vogue Italia and Peroni will take place on February 1st. ‘50 Years of Italian Style’ will then be open daily thru February 4th 2008. The exhibition is not open to the public and can only be viewed by invitation. Invitations to the exhibition must be downloaded from www.PeroniItaly.com/vogueitalia. Launch preview is strictly by invitation only.
The collaboration is an ode to Italian heritage, bringing together two institutions that symbolise the timelessness of effortless Italian style. While Vogue Italia has captured images that go beyond both fashion and time, Peroni has created a true lifestyle identity, making this union of icons a real celebration of Italian spirit.
BACKGROUND
1960s – Vogue Italia bursts onto the scene in ’66, blazing a path of aesthetic influences and transcending fashion with photography by contemporary masters. Actresses and other cultural icons are featured reflecting fashion evolution from Mary Quant miniskirts to the space age look. The exhibition includes personalities such as Elsa Martinelli, Marisa Berensen and Benedetta Barzini.
1970s – The ‘long patchwork skirt and hand-knit dress’ decade : The exhibition features Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace and Valentino as well as haute couture designed by the late Gianfranco Ferre, highlighted by typical 70's group shots by Oliviero Toscani.
1980s – In the age of excess and prosperity, Vogue Italia bears witness to a radical shift in fashion – logo mania and power suits – and consecrates the supermodel trend as Italian fashion goes supernova around the world. The exhibition features a selection of stunning portraits and fashion shoots including images of Isabella Rossellini and Carla Bruni.
1990s – Vogue Italia exhaults fashion’s new talents and sophisticated minimalism, and underscores the genuine rebirth of legendary labels such as Gucci and Chanel. In the exhibition, the images become more daring in their nature, including stunning portraits of actresses Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale.
2000s – Artfully alternating between traditional and distinctly experimental spreads, the style bible keeps pace with the red carpet era of celebrity obsession, as well as the return to fashion of a bygone era. From launch to present, “Vogue Italia” transcends fashion to interpret the social, psychological and cultural implications of our age.
