There is something Homeric about the landscape carved into the tufa of the Città dei Sassi, which welcomes travellers and returns them to the world with a changed gaze, like the stony Ithaca to which one returns different from how one departed. It is an open-air theatre where, on summer evenings, the stone catches fire with a gold that seems to reveal every epoch it has lived through: here, after all, man has inhabited the rock since a time beyond memory, and the Barisano and Caveoso districts guard, alongside the celebrated cave-dwellings that form a Unesco World Heritage Site, a dense network of rock-hewn churches, frescoed Byzantine crypts and Baroque façades grafted later onto the very same structures, in an unbroken stratification of eras.
It was against this backdrop of stone and light that the edition marking the fifteenth anniversary of the Premio Moda unfolded, promoted by the APS Officina della Cultura ETS, which from the 8th to the 12th of July restored to the Sassi their vocation as a crossroads of peoples, languages and crafts. The sacred and the profane had already kept their appointment on these stones long before fashion took to them: if Mel Gibson set the Jerusalem of his “Passion of the Christ” among the lanes of the Civita and the steps of Via Muro, it was precisely in the alleys around the church of San Francesco d’Assisi – the very square that would later host the festival’s international couture – and in Piazza San Pietro Caveoso that Daniel Craig, as James Bond, sped his Aston Martin in “No Time to Die.”
This is the year in which Matera shares with the Moroccan city of Tétouan the title of Mediterranean Capital of Culture and Dialogue, a recognition that lent the festival an even broader reach. Under the patronage of the Comune di Matera, the APT Basilicata, the Regione Basilicata, the Fondazione Matera Basilicata 2019 and Confartigianato Nazionale, the Premio Moda drew designers, couturiers, artists and journalists from Italy and abroad, holding its many souls together through the cultural stance that distinguishes it.
This was an event that did not merely stage garments, but told of territories, biographies and customs, finding in the myth of Brigitte Bardot the thread running through the entire festival. Behind the scenes, the artistic direction of Enzo Centonze, direction by Stefania Coralluzzo, format direction by Paolo Fumarulo, public relations by Nicola Altomonte, with the contribution of Vincenzo Testa, Enzo Dell’Atti, Umberto Fadda, Sandro Quarto, Alessandro Palmiero and Nunzio Cancelliere on photography, Sara De Virgilio on make-up, and Enzo Estilo, Elisa Massari and Samy D’Amico on hair styling.
Piazza Vittorio Veneto, the city’s beating heart, was transformed for the first time into an urban catwalk, offering emerging fashion an unusual stage. Under the cultivated compèring of Ivana Pantaleo, the finalists competed in the categories on offer, taking part too in the special challenge of the outfit paying tribute to Bardot: the Prêt-à-Porter Prize was awarded by the jury to Dorotea Sušić, the Cinema Prêt-à-Porter Prize to Jessica Cavarischia, while Davide Morreale claimed the evening’s double, winning both the Alta Moda Prize and the Cinema Alta Moda Prize.
In the prêt-à-porter section, the Italian contingent opened proceedings with Saverio Barone, who translated into fabric his own research into Reflective Emotionism; Myriam Francese reinterpreted Bardot through a capsule of structured corsetry; Jessica Cavarischia, with her Sartorial Depths, presented a hand-made collection poised between Japanese ikigai and marine depths. Between Guinea and France, Mouctar Dieng paid tribute to the Riviera with a chromatic dialogue of white and blue built on fresh silhouettes. The Serbian delegation was rich and conceptual: Dorotea Sušić, with After Detritus, told of the beauty that flourishes after destruction; Bojana Prokić celebrated slowness through crochet and embroidery; Jelica Zrnzevic elevated hand-weaving to an almost meditative act; Ana Brdarac fused fairy tale and textile tradition.
In the alta moda section too, the sartorial registers on show were markedly different from one another. From Italy, Antonino Kevin Tuccio reintepreted Hollywood’s golden age through sculptural silhouettes; Davide Morreale, with Dominia Lux, raised couture to a symbol of inner strength; Paola Petracci, in Essenza di Femminilità, marked out the many dimensions of womanhood; Cettina Ricca turned children’s drawings into sartorial refinement. From France, Shanna Boyer evoked the Riviera of the 1960s. Rich and conceptual once again, the Serbian delegation: Emina Fetahović explored the bond between emotional states and sartorial form; Fatma Halitović, with Noctis, probed the mystery of darkness through surrealism and sculptural volumes; Dina Mehmedović, drawing on Dante’s Francesca da Rimini, told in Dante’s Sin of the conflict between desire and morality; Melanija Vasić, in Amanet, championed creative reuse; Teodora Stojanov, with Eternal Lumière, entrusted tulle and lace with a femininity of almost Klimtian glow.
If the first evening had the flavour of discovery, the one that followed took on the solemn character of consecration. Piazza San Francesco d’Assisi, dominated by the astonishing Baroque façade of the church that lends it its name, hosted the gala dedicated to the couturiers, the culminating moment of the Settimana della Cultura, presented by the well-known television host Beppe Convertini, joined by Ivana Pantaleo in a thoroughly accomplished double act.
Once more, designers competed for the outfit paying tribute to the Bardot myth, a contest that saw the Cinema Couturier Prize go to Rosa Addabbo Couture, who played with elements dear to the actress – blue Vichy print, bows, fitted shorts, finished with hat and summer sunglasses.
Internationality once again proved the watchword of the second evening. From Italy, Gianni Cirillo paid homage to a graceful, poetic femininity of fabrics gliding along clean lines, enriched with bustiers, cinched waists and draping; Bruna Couture signed bridal and gala gowns of striking chromatic impact, balancing contrasts with a flapper-tinged flourish of feathers and crystals; Adriana Monaco drew on a theatrical register of Baroque ruffs, Renaissance pearls and eighteenth-century bows; Claudio Greco offered an elegance calibrated in white and beige, across taffeta and macramé; Rossana Prisciantelli made pleating a living structure on the body with her sophisticated Plisségraphie; the duo Sciamat, Silvana Di Nunzio and Valentino Ricci, marked out the rigour of form through the dichotomy of black and white; Basilicata-born Damiana Spoto brought East and local landscape together in her Kimono Le4uadre line; Aris Rocco Albano, again from Basilicata, worked leather between innovation and sustainability; Giuseppina Di Bartolo, with Filo Rosso, told of passion and rebirth in total red; Nicola Pica, with Maison Pica, turned his contemporary art into signature handbags. From Venezuela, Rosa Matiguan condensed fifty years of career between her homeland and Venice; from Mexico, Sally Salas presented material experimentation, while from Bolivia, Piedades Villavicencio Rossell staged a fashion for every body. From France, Rosa Addabbo Couture paid tribute to the diva with gowns emphasising the waist and volume. Closing the evening, from Serbia, the artisan knitwear of identity and tradition by Paduri, by Milica Bainović-Jović.
A grand finale came with guest of honour Giovanni Cannistrà, honoured on the occasion as ambassador of Italian high fashion in the world. The designer astonished with a collection of refined beauty and sumptuous sensuality, capable of elevating the feminine by reinterpreting pinstripes, houndstooth and men’s flannel enriched with lace and embroidery, alternating 1950s-inspired tailoring with evening creations of intense, shimmering colour.
The Lifetime Achievement Award went to the master photographer Rino Barillari, known as “The King of Paparazzi,” and there was no shortage of recognition for excellence in journalism that helps spread fashion and champion the culture of Made in Italy: among those honoured, Claudia Chiari, editorial director of Celebre Magazine, who, on receiving the prize, remarked on how compelling she found this new way of narrating the fashion system – one that lends aesthetic depth and elevates fashion to the status of art, as the Premio Moda does.
On the 12th of July, the Hub Temporaneo on Via del Corso opened the 9th ModArt Cult Exhibition, on view until the 26th of July, dedicated to the Bardot imaginary, with some twenty creations by the competing designers set in dialogue with iconic photographs of the star – images capable of returning an authentic, unfiltered gaze onto her public and private self – taken by Rino Barillari, who opened the vernissage together with Professor Antonello Di Pinto, writer and art critic.
The curtain thus falls on an edition that has succeeded in holding together Mediterranean spirit and sartorial substance: Matera, once again, proves itself no mere backdrop but the protagonist of a story in which beauty, the ancient beauty of the Sassi and the contemporary beauty of the catwalks, remains the most effective instrument for bringing the world’s different cultures closer together.
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Article edited by Lucrezia Doria