‘Curating Italian Fashion’ the new book from Matteo Augello

Introducing the new book launch from Matteo Augello. Local to London? You can go!

Dr Matteo Augello announces the launch of his book ‘Curating Italian Fashion: Heritage, Industry, Institutions’ exploring the management, display and curation of Italian fashion heritage. The launch will take place on Wednesday, 23rd November 2022 at Istituto Marangoni London and include an exclusive interview and Q&A by fashion journalist, author and critic, Alexander Fury.

Matteo Augello lectures at the London College of Fashion, where he completed a PhD on Italian corporate museums in 2019, and at Istituto Marangoni London. 

Having previously worked at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Italy and the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Matteo’s story provides us a deep-rooted insight into his experience of management in the Italian Fashion industry and its heritage. Matteo provides an in-depth account of the Italian fashion curation drawing from various sources including archives, oral history and pre-existing literature.

Since the early 2000s exhibitions centered around the fashion industries have been some of the most popular and most visited museums around the world. Fashion brands believe it to be a forward-thinking idea to celebrate important dates in their history by showing exhibits in museums and galleries globally, some even showcase special archived pieces in their stores too.

When I think of the history of fashion, I always think of Italy. Some of the world’s most successful and influential fashion houses hail from the beautiful land of Italy. Some of these include Gucci, Prada, Versace and Dolce and Gabanna to name a few. Still to this day, Italy is significant in its contribution to the global fashion industry. However, not much has been written about the country’s contribution to the curation of fashion. The book ‘Curating Italian Fashion’ dives deeper into the ties between current corporates and the conservation of the heritage of fashion and brands.

The book itself shows different exhibitions and archives and critically analyses key examples thoroughly by Pitti Immagine and Salvatore Ferragamo. The book has an in-depth look into how fashion curation can work alongside corporate initatives. Principally, the book aims to show fully how fashion curation works via the practices used in Italy and Italian fashion. The Author, Matteo Augello wanted to deeply research different areas of arts and humanities such as costume and design, performance and art history.

Performance was a fundamental part of Matteo’s research practice for this book and his research generally. Matteo’s research comes as a result of him being of a member of the Advisory Board of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Italy which promotes the textile heritage of Silk production.

Matteo Augello’s current research consists of researching connections between the Lyonnaise textile industry and Maison Worth. This research has came from kind grants from the Victoria and Albert Fellowship and the Textile Society UK.  This work comes alongside historian Margherita Rosina.

When doing his research for this, the author integrated various research methods to collaborate for the book such as traditional academic research blended with dance, modelling and performance skills.

Alexander Fury is a fashion journalist, author and critic. He is also the Fashion Features Director of AnOther Magazine and the Mens Critic of the Financial Times newspaper. Fury’s first book ‘Dior: Catwalk’ was published by Thames and Hudson in the June of 2017. His second book ‘Catwalking: charting the career of the Catwalk Photographer Chris Moore was released later in the year of 2017 in the November.

Fury was made the first Chief Fashion Correspondent at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, he held this position from 2016-2018. During his work as a Curator Fury worked alongside Massimiliano Gioni the Director of the New Museum, New York to curate the 2022 exhibition ‘ Forever Valentino’ alongside Pierpaolo Piccioli, the Creative Director of the Maison.

This exhibit was his debut as a curator and this exhibition shows Valentino’s 60 year history and groundbreaking work whilst showing the houses intimate ties to the Italian capital Rome.

“I’m so excited to present the book at Istituto Marangoni London. I have been working here for 8 years and it is the best place to celebrate Italian Fashion. Alexander Fury is a brilliant fashion writer and collector, I’m sure we’ll have an interesting conversation on the importance of fashion heritage.”

Dr Matteo Augello commented

The book specifically highlights the first historical accounts of Italian fashion curation as there are only two very brief articles in the Italian language exist and even fewer texts in English are available.

Matteo’s new book expands on Italian heritage generally and in fashion and moves beyond the english and french language countries whilst providing historical analysis on the industry and his well researched commentary on the corporate fashion world and how it is working today.

Matteo’s debut book will be released on November 17th, 2022 at a price of￡85 and is published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts.

To attend the launch on Wednesday 23rd of November at 6pm, please click here.

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