Giorgio Armani and Aldo Fallai met back in 1970. Designer and photographer agreed on their concerns about opening a new chapter in fashion aesthetics. They united creative synergies and began, first, to provide sensuality to the aesthetic codes that prevailed in the images of men. This crossover of talent between the then young and unknown designer in Nino Cerruti and a graphic designer with a happy penchant for photography, promised to be iconic. And it was, as recalled by the exhibition Aldo Fallai per Giorgio Armani, 1977-2021, which has just opened at the Armani/Silos museum in Milan, curated by Giorgio Armani, Rosanna Armani and Leo Dell'Orco.
The designer from Piacenza was determined to rewrite the rules of dressing and create a new lifestyle. Fallai's lens, witness to a fashion that sought to rewrite the rules of dress, became an expression of social changes, of women gaining space in the world and of men learning to dress with conscience.
The photographer helped the designer define an imaginary in which cinematic evocations and neorealist touches were mixed with echoes of late Renaissance painting and mannerism, with a staging that was alive and, therefore, deeply authentic. The use of black and white - and the narrative abstraction it offers - was a winning bet: the images are pure imagination, but at the same time immediate and timeless, as if a real moment had been captured. Fallai introduced portraiture into fashion photography, where the element of clothing apparently becomes secondary.
The 250 images on display in the exhibition show a real aesthetic ideal, with models without excessive prominence in snapshots that are almost like stills from a feature film: although they are conceived to show the collections, they focus on the character of the models, making of clothing a subtle complement to your existence. They are a reflection of the designer's idea that elegance is not about being noticed, but about being remembered.
They are iconic images like that of the young executive who looks towards the sky, in search of her future with several newspapers under her arm and dressed in a Giorgio Armani jacket. We are in 1984 and the model of Aldo Fallai's wonderful and legendary photograph is Antonia Dell'Atte, who, as she herself always proudly remembers, became the Italian designer's muse. Another image of the model is the one chosen to illustrate the exhibition poster.
The narrative tour, opened around August 11, takes place on two floors and brings together in a strictly unsystematic order some 250 snapshots, which either appeared in magazines or were transformed into billboards with great media impact. The exhibition juxtaposes images produced for different lines: there is the photo with the tiger cub, taken in Palermo when the company took refuge in the Togni circus on a rainy day; There is the businesswoman, played by Antonia Dell'Atte, looking straight ahead, towards a bright future, in the middle of the crowd on Via Durini, next to Armani's office. And then there is the Venetian lagoon, evoked in the studio, and the statues of the Foro Italico translated into a game of sharp and graphic shadows. The photographs are both familiar and surprising, shot with wit and intelligence.
"My work with Giorgio was the result of a natural and continuous dialogue and great trust on his part. We were both interested in highlighting an aspect of style linked to character and personality, and that translated into images that seem so current today like yesterday: a quality that reveals the layout of the exhibition, which does not follow a chronological sequence. I have vivid memories of our 30 years of collaboration. The production was always agile and rational: we achieved the results with few means and without special effects "I think this attracted the public," comments Aldo Fallai at the presentation of the exhibition.
For his part, Giorgio Armani adds that "working with Aldo allowed me to transform the vision I had in my mind into real images: communicating that my clothes were not only made in a certain way with certain colors and materials, but that they represented a form of life. Because style, for me, is a form of absolute expression. Together, with a constant, fluid and concrete dialogue, we create scenes of life, evoke atmospheres and sketch portraits full of character. Remembering everything we have done until today, I I myself am impressed by the strength that these snapshots still emanate, and by Aldo's great ability to capture the nuances of personality.
