Moda Povera II: Il Couturing comes to Italy

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Feb 21, 2019

One of fashion’s few proper intellectuals is Olivier Saillard, the noted curator of multiple designer museum retrospectives.
 
He showed up in Milan’s hippest big boutique Corso Como at Thursday lunchtime to present his latest artistic brainchild Moda Povera II.

A refined yet funky idea – buying T-shirts off the internet and them reimaging them using classic haute couture techniques. Let’s christen it Il Couturing, democratizing fashion by taking the profession’s highest technical skills and showing them to a wide audience on a simple item of clothing. Perhaps not quite to the masses, but at least to several score of curious fashionistas inside Corso Como.
 
For the concept’s second edition, Saillard linked up with Martine Lenoir and Axelle Doue. 

“They were, respectively, the couturier and the fit model chez Madame Grès, so we were able to use true haute couture techniques, on a simple plain garment like a t-shirt,” explained the ever youthful Saillard.
 
Featuring over 30 looks, Saillard escorted each model – dressed in spike heel boots, classic pants, black bra and chiffon scarves - into the art space. Then, he dressed them in each top, carefully pulling the couture t-shirt into its right position.

 
The brief walk by each model ably demonstrating multiple ideas from couture of rouching, stitching and gathering. An elegant master-class allying France with Italy in fashion, admirably so given the bitter invectives their political classes have been aiming at each other of late 
 
Moda Povera I was held in a series of fashion magazine offices last season; this July Saillard plans to stage Moda Povera III during Paris couture. It’s an educational tutorial worth catching.