FASHION AND ITS CYCLES

For those who know me and already know that I am not a total fashionista, and when “today” is defined by a war, a pandemic, rampant political and financial instability and, above all, an environmental catastrophe, what exactly is “ right”, what exactly is fashion?

Many continue to focus on the automobile industry and its combustion-powered products as villains, an industry where I worked for 13 years as an employee, almost 23 years ago. However, one of the main causes of environmental pollution is the gases produced by cattle, the lack of treatment given to the environment by thousands of tanneries that do not comply with legislation around the world and the fast fashion industry that floods the globe with its creations. unbridled that generate excessive disposal and waste.

In my opinion I consider some things absurd. Sometimes I think a fashion designer is very much in their own world of trying to come up with something that has to be on the covers of magazines or that needs to shock, rather than really thinking through the purpose of their work.

When I see fashion trying to be news just for the sake of novelty, or being absurdly extravagant, I am very shocked and I don't particularly believe it. But is there anything really new today, after all the cycles that fashion has gone through? I don't think so, but it is possible to find a new way of adapting something that already existed in today's context, to find a new way of proposing something.

We at Adolfo Turrion live in this context. We don't invent anything new, but we create and manufacture our shoes respect

ing the characteristics of the uppers designed according to the original models that date back to the 19th and 20th centuries. We innovate in the concept of improving our molds, in the manufacture of soles, in the development of insoles and heel cups to provide maximum fit and comfort for you who purchase or may purchase our product.

We have also improved the proper application of premium bovine leather from adult cows measuring up to 5 meters, whose treatment, dyeing, finishing and minimum damage to the environment are certified by LWG.

In this way, we reinvent the semi-handcrafted shoe and guarantee the consumer public the continuity and availability of a line of timeless men's shoes.

Another example of this “reinvention” or “resuscitation” of something good from the past, specifically between the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 70s, was the North American series Mad Men.

According to Forbes, for example, between 1998 and 2014, sales of suits doubled in the US. This may or may not have something to do with the huge success of Mad Men, the incomparably sophisticated TV drama that aired from 2007 to 2015. The series has many qualities (characterization, tantric pacing, sixties forensic humor), but most unusual is a tailoring texture so dense it has been deciphered for clues ever since.

It also changed the way men dressed. The mid-2000s taste for smarter, minimalist menswear may well have been a backlash against casual '90s fashion.

Mad Men's visionary costume designer Janie Bryant said that for the first season, set in the late 1950s to 1960s, she considered tight suits, narrow ties, flat front pants, narrow lapels, Italian hems, "turtlenecks" and Oxford and Derby shoes polished and timeless. See here that no

stalgia-chic seems to work in forty-year cycles: just as Mad Men helped the 2000s fetishize the 60s, turtlenecks go back to the 20s and 30s, reviving a look that became popular again from mid 60's.

As the series makes its way through the decade, however, there's a shift towards kitsch - wider ties, plaids, more colors, more facial hair and wide sideburns, and two-tone shoes.

Jon Hamm's anti-hero Gatsby, Don Draper, l

ike the advertising industry he dominates on the show, is a metaphor for the reinvention (idealized, devious, beautifully executed) and evolution of Don's wardrobe over the course of the year. of the sixties mirrors his personality.

Until about 1963, his look was conservative: gray suits, heavily gelled hair, flowing white shirts (with crisp reserves kept in an office drawer), pocket squares, high collar, traditional Derby shoes mostly in black and brown. dark and proper pajamas on the bed.

But from the fourth season onwards, trips to California and a (soon) happier remarriage bring out Prince of Wales checks, fancy checks and even a mock polo collar paired with two-tone Oxford shoes and Derby brogues, blue, greens and burgundy's. In the final scene of the final episode already in the 70s, he is meditating barefoot and looking cool on a hill by the sea.

Janie Bryant approached the costume composition of Mad Men like a painting, always thinking "full pictures," and the clues are so lyrically hidden in each frame that you could study them like an art historian (one American university even offers a course on based on Mad Men).

The Mad Men retro-revival was pure pleasure, both classical and radical. A masterpiece of construction, full of larger and smaller pieces of foreshadowing and remembrance, lines and images that seem to respond to each other over time.

Although fashion is a “carousel” in itself, given its cycles and its comings and goings, vertiginous with echoes, throwbacks and reinterpretations, rarely has television influenced menswear with as much taste or knowledge as Mad Men.

Let's enjoy stylish fashion while it lasts. The forty-year nostalgia rule suggests that we may have to prepare for the post-formal backlash… which is already happening.

But most importantly, as I always say, before “being fashionable” and wearing clothes that don't fit your profile and shoes that hurt your feet, always evaluate comfort, quality, durability and above all, what best matches your essence. Clothes and shoes may even cost more, but if they are completely adapted to you and are worn until they “disassemble”, it will be worth every penny spent.