Pitti Immagine Discovery Foundation is gearing up to unveil “The Ephemeral Museum of Fashion,” an exhibition making its debut at Florence’s Palazzo Pitti during the 92nd edition of international men’s wear trade show Pitti Uomo, running June 13 to 16.
Curated by Parisian Musée Galliera director Olivier Saillard, the exhibition is part of a three-year program promoted by the Florentine Center for Italian Fashion and Gallerie degli Uffizi.
“The Ephemeral Museum of Fashion” will showcase selected pieces from the 19th and 20th centuries included in the archives of Florence’s Costume and Fashion Gallery.
“‘The Ephemeral Museum’ is an occasion, an opportunity to reinvent Palazzo Pitti’s Galleria del Costume e della Moda,” said Saillard, who recently curated the “Balenciaga: Working in Black” exhibition at the Musée Bourdelle in Paris. “On mannequins of wood and wax, or abandoned on armchairs and seats, suspended as soft sculptures, reclining like sleeping beauties, the garments are the shipwrecked waifs of a mysterious, fragile and caduceus museum. It will disappear in a few months, victim and witness to the passing of time. It is our hope that it may reborn in another time, another place, within the fickle walls of a museum, in the forgotten spaces of a building.”
The exhibition, which is supported by the Italian Ministry for Economic Development and ICE, the Italian trade agency, will be open until Oct. 22.