Giardina Atelier doesn't deal with fashion. Rather, it seeks to elevate fashion, making it an art form, which it really should be. In recent years, fashion has taken an exclusively narcissistic, politicized, indexical direction, practically for the use and consumption of political correctness, essentially a ridiculous product. There is no true creativity because everything is interpreted within a pre-established, predetermined framework.
I would say we are witnessing a dictatorship of the ugly, the banal, sold as a high art form.
Obviously, this is not a problem exclusive to the fashion field. It's what Hans Sedlmayr called the "loss of the center," which is reflected in every art form, fashion included.
Once upon a time, there were debates about aesthetic philosophy, disputes about the study of Beauty, Art, and taste, investigating how they are perceived, how we experience the sensible world. After all, even custom is an art form, a valid element of study for social history. I think of Kant's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, I think of Schelling. Beauty as measured and harmonious, reassuring; the Sublime as something that transcends conventions.
Kant wrote: "Beautiful are the flowerbeds in the garden, Sublime are the oaks, Beautiful is the day, Sublime is the night." None of this exists in postmodernism. No one thinks of making their life a work of art. André Breton said that Beauty will be convulsive or it will not exist. He wrote: "The marvelous is always beautiful; indeed, only the marvelous is beautiful. This approach is missing in art and it is missing in fashion as an art form. With Ernst Jünger, I would say that in our times, "the hatred that the vulgar soul harbors against Beauty is profound."
Let's think about men's fashion today. Let's look at a fashion show from one of the great fashion houses and think about the vision they offer of Man. What do the runways express if not hatred against Beauty?
Giardina Atelier wants to return to making Art. Like a painting by Pontormo in which the draping of the clothes is both fashion and art.
