Villa Nazionale Pisani pays tribute to Dior in Venice with an exhibition in the Cameraphoto archive

From April 12 to November 3, 2019, Villa Nazionale Pisani in Stra (Brenta Riviera) will host the exhibition Intramontabile eleganza. Dior in Venice in the Cameraphoto Archive, curated by Vittorio Pavan and Luca Del Prete.

1951 was a magical year for Venice. Christian Dior was the most popular tailor of the moment, and in the same year, on September 3, the Ball of the Century, that Bal Oriental desired by Don Carlos de Beistegui y de Yturbe, was celebrated at Palazzo Labia. A masquerade ball that engaged Dior, with Dali, the very young Cardin, Nina Ricci and others, as costume designer for the illustrious guests. It was an event that reverberated the splendor of 18th-century Venice to the world.
The photographers of Cameraphoto, the Venetian photo agency founded in ’46 by Dino Jarach, witnessed those events.

And thanks to Vittorio Pavan, the current curator of Cameraphoto’s impressive Archive (the historical part alone boasts over 300,000 filed negatives) and Daniele Ferrara, Director of the Polo Museale Veneto, the images of those two historic events are on public display at the extraordinary Villa Nazionale Pisani in Stra, the “Queen” of Venetian Villas: a dwelling embellished with marvelous frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo.

Forty images from the collection were selected: in those years, each fashion show featured just under 200 models, carefully calibrated between easily wearable garments and more challenging ones. Dior represented fashion of that postwar era. His collections were eagerly awaited and contested around the world. It is estimated that just to see (and buy) his offerings 25,000 people flew across the Ocean each year. No woman who wanted to be fashionable could ignore the dictates of the Parisian couturier from Avenue Montaigne, a Maison that, born just five years ago, already engaged more than a thousand collaborators. His new look evolved season after season. In 1950 he had imposed the Vertical Line, in ’51-as the images on display in Villa Pisani document-the woman could only dress in Oval: rounded shoulders and raglan sleeves, fabrics shaped until they became a second skin. Indispensable complement, the hat, for which Dior was inspired, that year, by the headdresses of the coolies, Chinese-style then. For autumn, he created instead the “Princesse” line in which the waist gave the illusion of extending to below the breast.

In Cameraphoto’s images the beautiful models dressed by Dior duet with Venice. Canals, churches, palaces are never a pure background but equal protagonists of the great tailor’s creations.

The second core of this fascinating exhibition is dedicated to the Grand Ball at Palazzo Labia, thesocial event of the century.
On the occasion of that September 3, the whole of the beautiful world came to Venice. The invitation of Don Carlos, popularly referred to as The Count of Monte Cristo, reached a thousand people. Dior, with a host of young tailors and with Dali, was engaged to create the most fascinating outfits, all recalling the 18th century of Goldoni and Casanova. Costumes for people but also for the greyhounds and other dogs that often accompanied their masters. The flashlights that mythical night illuminated the Dukes of Windsor, the Greats of Spain, the Aga Khan III, King Faruq of ’Egypt, Winston Churchill, many crowned heads, princes and princesses, legions of millionaires, artists like Fabrizio Clerici and Leonor Fini, fashion designers like Balenciaga and Elsa Schiapparelli, jet set stars like Barbara Hutton, Diana Cooper, Orson Welles, Daisy Fellowes, Cecil Beaton (whose pictures, published by Life, made the world dream), the Polignacs, and Rothschilds. Welcoming them, amid clouds of dancers and Harlequins, was the host who, walking on platforms 40 centimeters high, towered over them dressed as the Sun King. He was the heir to an immense fortune created in Mexico. He lived between Paris, where he owned a house designed by Le Courbusier and decorated by Salvador Dali, and a country chateau. He had bought and restored Palazzo Labia and was now offering it to his friends.

The exhibition aims to contribute to the enhancement of the Cameraphoto photographic archive, which has been declared of exceptional cultural interest by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, as it constitutes a priceless heritage in terms of the richness and variety of the images that make it up.

For info: www.villapisani.beniculturali.it

Image: Dior in Venice in 1951, Cameraphoto Archives ©Vittorio Pavan

Villa Nazionale Pisani pays tribute to Dior in Venice with an exhibition in the Cameraphoto archive

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