147 million dollars grossed, Garbage and Radiohead as the soundtrack, Leonardo di Caprio as Romeo, outfits signed by D&G (Dolce & Gabbana line now set aside) and Prada suits, Hawaiian shirt, pink hair, Shakespearean language, weapons and feuds between gangs/families. 
Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet’s colorful contemporary retelling – immersed in a world inspired by folkloric, religious imagery and overflowing with pop culture – of William Shakespeare’s immortal masterpiece Romeo and Juliet.

This context “provided production designer Catherine Martin – Oscar for Best Production Design – and stylist Kym Barrett with an incredible amount of aesthetics to refer to, while always remaining anchored in Shakespeare’s words”.

Everything is set in a fictional Verona Beach – a mix between Venice Beach, Miami and Mexico City – out of time in a constant succession of cultural references of all kinds.

We all know the story of Shakespeare’s tragedy: two noble families of Verona in conflict for generations, the Montagues and the Capulets, and that “from the fatal loins of two enemies descends a pair of lovers, born under a bad star, whose tragic suicide will end the conflict”.

In Lurhmann’s adaptation, one of the most important things to bring out was to clearly differentiate the two rival families at the center of the story. Kym Barrett characterized Romeo’s Montagues through bright and strong colors, Hawaiian shirts, dyed hair, workpant cargo pants paired with Chuck Taylors or amphibians. 

The young Capulets are instead represented by real D&G uniforms: simple silhouettes, black pants, shirts and bulletproof vests/jackets both in leather and red satin, prints and decorations embellishing the gun holsters. They are all extremely well-groomed and haughty, rejecting the 60s/70s Yves Saint Laurent-style tailoring of their older relatives, an aesthetic ploy to underline the contrast and the generational split within the Capulet family itself. Juliet herself, played by Claire Danes, “dissociates” herself from her relatives by wearing softer colors and softer fabrics.

Leonardo Di Caprio’s Romeo is different from everything and everyone, for him as well as for Juliet, Barrett chose something that was “as simple as possible, clean lines and no decoration” as for the dress worn by Romeo to celebrate the secret wedding of the two lovers, a beautiful blue Prada suit, cotton shirt, and a tie with a floral pattern.

The combination of all these aesthetic features, studied in detail by Kym Barrett, and everything we described to you at the beginning of this article, made this unforgettable film one of a kind and absolutely unrepeatable.

Unless you have been on the International Space Station for the past month and have just returned to Earth, I imagine you are aware of the trial of the year-at least in terms of relevance and media attention-the one involving ex-spouses Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
We won’t go into the specifics of the trial quarrels here, partly because you only have to scroll through any of your feeds to get as much info as possible, I’ll just tell you that final arguments are scheduled for today, so we’re in the home stretch.

I have never been attracted to the morbidity that is unleashed around certain issues but I chose to take my cue from the story of the moment and try to tell the evolution of the unique and timeless style of one of the most eclectic actors in Hollywood show biz, John Christopher Depp II.

Ever since his big-screen debut, which took place almost as a joke and to support himself in his career as a musician, in the first episode of the cult horror saga dedicated to Freddy Krueger and created by Wes Craven, Nightmare on Elm Street, Johnny established himself to the general public as a handsome, charismatic actor and potential teen idol. This status was later solidified through his role in Oliver Stone’s Platoon and especially in the TV series 21 Jump Street.

The rebellious boy aura acquired in 21 Jump Street was further fueled by his off-set lifestyle and consummate rocker aesthetic that “cost” him his bad boy reputation.

Charismatic, eccentric, eclectic, versatile, shameless, over the years Johnny Depp has set a standard of style that is inimitable (partly because he is the only one who can afford to be Johnny Depp) linked inextricably to music and precisely to rock – he started out as a musician and continues to play guitar in the Hollywood Vampires – building a style that fully reflected that mood: long, shaggy hair, tattoos, leather jackets, ripped jeans, boots, vintage items, worn-out T-shirts etc.

Charismatic, eccentric, eclectic, versatile, shameless, over the years Johnny Depp has set a standard of style that is inimitable (partly because he is the only one who can afford to be Johnny Depp) linked inextricably to music and precisely to rock – he started out as a musician and continues to play guitar in the Hollywood Vampires – building a style that fully reflected that mood: long, shaggy hair, tattoos, leather jackets, ripped jeans, boots, vintage items, worn-out T-shirts etc.

A contemporary pirate who also delineated his style through his experience as the protagonist of the saga Pirates of the Caribbean as Jack Sparrow, his alter-ego on the big screen, and a character almost completely inspired by the legendary guitarist and founder of the Rolling Stones, who became his friend and mentor. 

Depp has consistently ignored the fashions of the moment, expressing himself and preserving his eclectic and distinctive aesthetic throughout the years. He has never enlisted the help or advice of stylists and is always conscious of what he expresses through his extremely divisive looks, just as the person is.

There is only one unique and inimitable Johnny Depp.

It is news of a couple of days ago that, starting from July 6, 2022, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris will open its doors a brand new exhibition dedicated to Elsa Schiaparelli who, along with Coco Chanel, is considered as one of the most important and decisive figures of fashion in the period between the two world wars. 
Shocking Chic: Les mondes surréalistes d’Elsa Schiaparelli, this is the title of this retrospective on the designer – of which you can buy tickets here – costume designer and dressmaker Italian naturalized French, which will be open until January 22 next year.

I take advantage of this interesting and wonderful initiative to tell the life, history and career of one of the most influential women in fashion history.

“Designing clothes, let it be said in passing, is not a profession but an art. It is one of the most difficult and disappointing arts because as soon as the dress is born, it already belongs to the past. A dress does not remain attached to the wall like a painting, nor does it lead the long intact and preserved existence of a book”. 
The words pronounced by Elsa Schiaparelli to define her work is a perfect summation of her way of seeing fashion and the world. Art first of all, codified through her non-conformist and very original style, which began to manifest itself right from the start, but let’s start from the beginning. 

Elsa Luisa Maria Schiparelli was born in Rome, in Palazzo Corsini, on September 10, 1890 in a family of Piedmontese intellectuals: her mother, Giuseppa Maria de Dominicis, was of Neapolitan origin while her father, Celestino Schiaparelli, from Piedmont, was the first librarian of the Accademia dei Lince, one of the oldest scientific institutions in Europe. Not to consider his uncle Giovanni Schiaparelli, famous astronomer and his cousin Egyptologist and senator, Ernesto Schiaparelli.

When she was 6 years old, in order to answer to her mother who constantly told her how ugly she was, Elsa decided to cover her face with flowers, or at least that was her intention. She managed to get the gardener to give her some seeds and she put them in her mouth, in her ears, in her throat because she thought they would grow with the heat. Obviously this was not the case, he risked only to suffocate. 

She studied philosophy and dreamed of becoming a poet – she also published a collection of poems – but her family was against it and she was sent to a Swiss convent. The passion for philosophy, however, allowed her to meet in London, during a conference of the Theosophical Society where she traveled in 1913, Wilhel de Wendt, a count now fallen into disgrace passionate about philosophy. 

Radha aka “Gogo” in 1920 and where Elsa met the likes of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. The marriage ended in divorce in 1922, due to her husband’s constant cheating, and Elsa was left alone with Gogo. 

After returning to Europe and settling in Paris, she met stylist Paul Poiret by chance during a walk, and became his pupil almost immediately. It is the same Schiap, her nickname with which she was accustomed to refer to herself, to tell of the encounter that changed her life: “One day I accompanied a rich American friend to Paul Poiret’s small and colorful tailor shop. It was the first time I had ever entered a maison de couture. I wore a loose-fitting, soft-cut coat that could have been designed today. ‘Why don’t you take it Mademoiselle? It looks like it was made especially for you’. ‘I can’t afford it,’ I said, ‘it is certainly too expensive, and besides, when could I wear it?’ ‘Don’t worry about money,’ replied Poiret, ‘you can wear anything in any situation’”.

Her first works as a model designer were not very successful, the companies with which she worked did not want to deal with a beginner, but she decided that she would not give up and in 1927 she opened her studio in an apartment at 4 rue de la Paix in Paris.

His creations were incredible and crazy: His first sweater, completely black and with a large white trompe-l’oeil bow; the “chic melancholy of Italian softness” knit, so defined by Janet Flanner of the New Yorker; the themes of his garments such as pierced hearts, the typical tattoos of sailors were a first; the “X-ray pullovers”, so called because they traced the bones of the body; the “crazy hat”, a small knitted hat that could take any kind of shape; and his first iconic evening dresses.

Her popularity grew by leaps and bounds, so much so that on August 13, 1934, Time magazine put her on its cover – the first woman designer to receive this “honor”, describing her as “crazier and more original than most of her contemporaries, Schiaparelli is the one for whom the term ‘genius’ is most frequently used. Even to her closest friends, the lady remains an enigma”.

Come dicevo all’inizio l’arte ebbe sin da subito un ruolo fondamentale nell’atto creativo per Elsa As I said at the beginning, art had a fundamental role in the creative act for Elsa Schiaparelli from the very beginning and in fact, since 1935 she started to realize collaborations with Christian Bérard, Léonor Fini, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, Mere Oppenheim and Pablo Picasso. 

His presentations were not mere parades, but performances in their own right as in a kind of new theatrical form. The theme of mask and play were very present in his work of the time, experimentation of all kinds dominated his provocations. 

The invention of shocking pink came precisely from his ability to experiment. It was launched in 1937 and was used in many collections. 
In ’35 came the first accessory made together with Dalí and designed by him: a compact compact in the shape of a telephone dial on which you could “write your name”, a true work of art.

Elsa Schiaparelli was also the first designer to come up with themed collections such as: Papillon of 1937, Cirque of ’38 and Fall Pagan of 1938, inspired by Botticelli’s paintings. 

World War II led Schiaparelli to move to the United States, where her daughter Gogo lived, but she continued to keep her Parisian atelier open, relocated to 21 Palace Vendôme. 

The great success of Christian Dior and his New Look and the end of the Second World War, began the twilight of Elsa Schiaparelli’s incredible career. Traveling began to be an inescapable part of Elsa’s life: Rome, Hammamet, New York were fixed stops.

Despite the fact that Hubert de Givenchy had started to work in his atelier, the fame of the brand slowly faded, also due to the distance of Elsa, who had decided to spend her life between Tunisia and Paris, farther and farther away from the world of fashion. 

Elsa Luisa Maria Schiparelli died on November 13, 1973, at the age of 83, leaving an indissoluble legacy that has decisively inspired geniuses of the caliber of Yves Saint Laurent, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Miuccia Prada, Rei Kawakubo and so on and so forth.

Extravagant, eccentric, dreamer, artist, Elsa Schiaparelli was an atypical visionary and tremendously forward so as to make her work untouchable even to the passage of time, making her creations immortal. 

L’odio di Mathieu Kassovitz è uno di quei film che non può invecchiare. Girato in bianco e nero, racconta la routine svogliata di tre amici lungo le 19 ore durante le quali la storia si sviluppa. 

I tre protagonisti sono Hubert, un pugile nero con un forte codice morale, Saïd, un ingenuo di origini algerine e Vinz, un ebreo della classe operaia con un carattere molto difficile. Tutti nati in Francia da genitori immigrati, vivono nella banlieue parigina, costantemente arrabbiati e in contrasto con la società per il modo in cui la società stessa li tratta da sempre.

Nonostante il tempo passato dall’uscita del film, L’odio sembra essere più attuale che mai, le lotte razziali e di classe, l’abuso di potere da parte della polizia e il contrasto con l’autorità costituita di cui il film è permeato, sono ancora oggi problematiche al centro del dibattito politico e sociale a tutte le latitudini e ci ricordano quanta strada ci sia ancora da fare per cambiare rotta.

Oltre al messaggio crudo e diretto che Kassovitz lanciò con il film, L’odio è stato anche un incredibile esempio dell’estetica streetwerar degli anni ’90 immortalandone gli schemi. 

Il modo in cui i tre protagonisti sono vestiti è intrinsecamente connesso alla loro caratterizzazione: Vinz, represso ed emotivamente arido, resta tutto il tempo “chiuso” nella sua tracksuit Nike. Hubert esprime il suo conflitto interiore fatto di rabbia e violenza indossando brand diversi come Carhartt, Fila, Everlast e una shearling jacket mentre Saïd personaggio turbato, confuso e smarrito, indossa capi semplici come un polo Lacoste sotto la tuta no brand.

Le tute messe sotto i cappotti, quasi una sorta di uniforme, sono una vera e propria anticipazione del concetto anti-luxury che domina un certo tipo di moda maschile contemporanea.

L’esperto di abbigliamento vintage Kevin Soar ha spiegato: “L’odio ha una risonanza enorme per il suo stile e il suo contesto politico. Il film rimane rilevante concentrandosi sul rapporto tra la polizia, il governo e i giovani dei sobborghi, poiché ci sarà sempre una lotta tra i giovani e la polizia nella maggior parte delle grandi città del mondo. L’abbigliamento tra gruppi di persone, e soprattutto tra i giovani, rappresenta un’affermazione importante, non si tratta solo di apparire belli, ma anche di dire ‘Siamo una cosa sola’.“

Una delle immagini più iconiche del film è quella in cui Vinz, Saïd e Hubert vengono immortalati su un balcone con vista su Parigi: Vinz indossa un MA-1 su una giacca di una tuta Nike e un paio di jeans, Saïd un bomber in pelle su una tracksuit e Hubert la sua classica shearling jacket, un paio di pantaloni cargo camo e un beanie Carhartt.

L’odio di Mathieu Kassovitz con Vincent Cassel è un film controverso, unico, iconico e potente, uno sguardo crudo e reale sulle difficoltà sociali che purtroppo continuiamo a vivere, ma è anche un film premonitore, che è riuscito a catturare perfettamente l’estetica streetwear anni ’90 che rappresenta il riferimento principe della moda contemporanea.