"IL Guardaroba Di Gabriele d'Annunzio: Conformismo e Trasgressione" 1988

D'ANNUNZIO, Gabriele

1988

[168] pp.

11" x 8 1/4"

Firenze/ La Nuova Italia

Elaborately illustrated exhibition catalogue on d'Annunzio's life (1863-1938) and wardrobe.

Numerous photographs.

Fine

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"The restless soul of Gabriele D'Annunzio can finally have peace. One of his last wishes comes true: the clothes he bequeathed to the Italians so that they could amaze and enjoy came out of the closets of the Vittoriale, they shook the dust off and took a beautiful place in the halls of the Andito degli Angiolini at Palazzo Pitti for the exhibition The wardrobe of Gabriele D 'Annunzio. Conformity and transgression. This evening there will be a big party for the inauguration reserved for the people of fashion while in the Boboli Gardens Cabiria will be projected and lunch will be served on tablecloths that reproduce the poet's autograph writings. As long as it doesn't rain, says Luigi Settembrini who conceived the exhibition for Pitti Uomo Italia. He scans the sky and laughs: He was 1.62 tall, D'Annunzio, like me. Just a little narrower of shoulders and wider of butt; A little longer than arms, too. You know, when Artale was photographing for the catalogue, the temptation was irresistible. The thing that suits me best is a hussar of death uniform. Now I'll show it to you. We enter the rooms of the exhibition, we dribble a graduate of the Domus Academy who, kneeling on the ground, extracts dozens of silk stockings with perforated baguettes from a box; We greet the lady who irons the fiftieth ecru silk nightgown with flat round collar, we pass along a parade of calf and suede ankle boots: white, brown, black, of colors, with felt gaiters, kid ... from time to time Settembrini draws my attention to an object: the black rubber English cape brought to the mockery of Bucari, the moccasins with a phallus drawn on the upper, the linen duster worn on many aviation occasions, a nightgown that has a shaped hole at the groin. Until we surprise Gherardo Frassa, the creator of the exhibition, who is knotting a black tie to the mannequin with the face of the poet modeled by Mathias Mucchi. Frassa is disheveled, wears a red handkerchief around his neck and makes a nice contrast with the vate azzimato to whom he gives the final touches. Do you recognize it? asks is the suit that D' Annunzio wears in the portrait that Romainh Brooks made of him in ' 12. If you don't know who Brooks was, let Andreoli explain it. I have work to do. We must hook the Vate by the ankles and the neck otherwise it falls. Bear fur Anna Maria Andreoli, professor of Italian literature at the University of Rome, is observing fox-collared bear fur. Romainh Brooks? She was an American painter, an international lesbian. She had an important relationship with D'Annunzio. Robert de Montesquiou presented it to him in Paris when he arrived to escape the creditors. But maybe it's better if we sit down. In the sunny Boboli Gardens, the curator of the exhibition gives depth to the things that D'Annunzio's scholars know but never write. Outrageous things, of course. De Montesquiou was the homosexual dandy who was taken as a model by Proust, Huysman, Oscar Wilde for their most famous characters. He madly loved D'Annunzio who, sadistic, stirred him up. To have the complicity that presented him with dangerous women like the dancer Ida Rubinstein, or Roaminh Brooks. D'Annunzio was 47 years old. Before leaving Italy he had written very touching things about ageing but in Paris, with those reports, he overcame the mid-life crisis and never allowed himself to be taken back. On the other hand, they were ifmpre enjoyed loves with two women. Duse was also a lesbian; This is the truth, if you want you can write it. It is also certain that he consumed, at least once, with de Montesquiou. Professor Andreoli lights a cigarette. If, 50 years after his death, it has been decided that it is permissible to rummage through the poet's wardrobe and study what silk his beautiful underpants are made of, there are things to tell! The true, murky story of his first marriage to Maria Harduin of Welsh, for example. In that house D'Annunzio had entered at the age of 18 as a fellow student of the duchino who was a bit listless. And immediately became the lover of mother and daughter. His mother, Natalia, was 37 years old and then encouraged the marriage of her lover with her daughter Maria who soon had an affair with Prince Sciarra. The three sons of D'Annunzio are from Sciarra; maybe Gabriellino not, but in short ... otherwise, how do you explain the hiring of D'Annunzio at the Tribuna, which was Sciarra's newspaper? And why would D'Annunzio have been fired in '88, when he was full of debts? Describe Pleasure? Imagine! There is a murky story there: at the same time as D'Annunzio's dismissal, his wife throws herself from the third floor. Andreoli crushes the butt with his heel. Write a biography? No it is too difficult, there are still so many mysteries. There is one more child who we do not know where he comes from. This is why I was surprised, in front of his wardrobe: I expected extravagance, deviations, that he used to combine, transgress. And instead from his closets comes a great tendency to respectability: English fabrics, ritual hats. D'Annunzio dressed as required by the worldly society of his time. The French intellectuals were right when they said that he played himself, that he behaved like an impresario looking for clients. He transgressed only in small details or in excess. Between fashion and literature Annamaria Andreoli is uncertain whether to continue, whether to mix literature and fashion to the end. Then you decide: He had thousands of identical underpants, thousands of ties all the same. He was a maniac, a collector. He behaved with clothes as with words. It was a machine that produces piecework, it could write even three thousand verses a month. He could do it because he had found a system. Do you remember the rain in the pine forest rains on tamarisks, myrtles, brooms, on our hands, our foreheads, our faces? It could go on and on, with its lists of words, as with the purchase of handkerchiefs. He was good, he was clever: he knew how to exploit vocabularies. If you take the Marine and Military Vocabulary of Abbot Guglielmotti under the heading Onda you will find the poem L'onda by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Andreoli's eyes shine; is about to tell us something else surprising: I found another link, between D'Annunzio's style and his taste in dressing. It's about novels. He does not describe women as the Fogazzaro, so a lady at most has a dark woolen dress. No! He had been a worldly chronicler, he had a technical knowledge of fashion, he talks about tarlantane, raglan, carmelite cloth, he goes crazy for the first velvets, for the first paletot that come from Paris! The women who dressed so that he could describe them in the Tribune were the first passionate readers of his novels."