An international collection of amazing picturebooks invites children and all readers to delightful pages, stories, and visions devoted to the everyday magic of clothing, ancestral and familiar memories of threads, wonders of invention in Fashion History, and the neverending power of textiles.
The Fabulous Wardrobe is an invitation to wonder, play, and delight our gaze through the encounter with the weaving of narrative patterns telling stories of cloth and dresses, embroideries that become illustrations, homages to the art of costumes, and the great internationally renowned fashion designer’s biography retold in children’s books. Clothing is, from childhood, a symbolic narrative act of self - determination, and autonomy to be conquered, an act of care and communication. Creating and choosing clothing is the result of many hand gestures and mind expertise, and it’s deeply rooted in the cultures in the night of the time, know-how, and techniques.
The Fabulous Wardrobe
A delightful journey through enchanting pages exploring different aspects of this multifaceted theme, the exhibition invites children to feel like authors, creators, and seekers of their own style, their own voice, their own sign, their own way of participating also in the great game of fashion design, between memory and unexpected visions.
Divided into five sections, the exhibition The Fabulous Wardrobe presents (around 100 but even more) picturebooks chosen from the international best publishing (and about 15/20 from Chinese publishing). Many of them are a patchwork of fiction and nonfiction elements. All of them bring a coral homage to the arts of fashion design and craftmanship, tailoring, weaving, embroidering, tricots, sewing, the art of hat making, but also the everyday gesture that we all start all day with choosing a dress, an accessory or a pair of shoes to protect ourselves, to present ourselves, to transform ourselves into the person we feel we are that very day. Children are imagined to be dressed well before birth, and waiting for a baby means designing, thinking, and working to prepare a lovely baby layette.
Still, every illustrator is, in fact, a fashion designer - or a stylist - since every picturebook artist needs to dress up their characters, choosing shapes, patterns, and color palettes.
If narratives of all times are interwoven with words (and objects and accessories) belonging to the textile vocabulary and semantic field - as the term “text” itself - it is because stories were told from the dawn of time while sewing, mending, or knitting. We participate in this neverending creative and visionary process, proposing a collection of “pictured fashion” for all seasons and ages, from exquisite, dreamful, glamourous, and contemporary children’s publishing scene.
The Fabulous Wardrobe in picturebooks will suggest a “theme” or “mood board”: as a children’s trunk of disguises, it will invite every reader to find and play with shapes and plots, to find their own style, the perfect fit just for this moment or for today.
Five sections with many threads, constantly interweaving each other
- Stories of Threads and Twists
Memory, embroidery in books, techniques of weaving or carpet knotting in the world, thread as a sentimental and cultural act of connection - Stripes, dots and other Patterns
Patterns, textures and motifs. The Act of Dressing up as a Child. Children playing with wardrobe and clothes. Graphic patterns, motifs, repetition, composition: the act of dressing up as a child, or retelling the world in pictures in a book page, is a neverending creative game of combinations and choices. From detail to the big picture, the eyes enjoy learning and experiencing new gestures in dressing up, delight pleasure of familiar prints and finding the wonder in everyday accessories and in front of the wardrobe. - The Tailor’s Stories
From Beatrix Potter’s Tailor of Gloucester to a Korean studio and the Tailor as a mentor for a giant. Endpapers as homages to tailoring: the hems of the book - Fairy Tales’ Elegance
The Emperor and his New Clothes, Cinderella in Prada shoes, Secrets of Fabrics and Textiles - The Game of Fashion
Meet the BIOS of greatest Fashion Designers, Fashion History’s mashups, be part of the game with different ways to design a dress, discover curiosities and masterpieces of fashion industry with the best non fiction on the topic
