Allegory of Water

For the Milan Fashion week 2018, Vogue Italia in partnership with Yoox, will produce and present three short films around the theme of sustainability.

When approaching this complex and extremely current theme, the first feeling that came to my mind was the fear, each day more possible, to loose the richness and beauty of the oceans. Fashion, as well as most of the western art, has always had as his main focus the representation and expression of beauty and grace and it is through this language that I decided to approach this thematic .

Allegories of the Earth elements has been one of the most important topoi of classical paintings. Goddess were portrayed in flourishing landscapes surrounded by symbolic objects, to represent the richness and importance of the natural elements. Taking inspiration by the Allegory of Water (in particular the one by Brueghel and van Balen) I was imagining how could it be if re-enact today. What would we have as landscape and what represents the current status of Earth’s waters.

Willing to be provocative, I recreated a painting-alike composition based on the canons and aesthetic of flemish painting, but in a current landscape: a landfill (Angus landfill site in Scotland), and with symbolic elements that represent the current status of waters: dead fishes and plastic waste. The starfishes we used sadly appeared couple of days before the shooting on Portobello beach Edinburgh, apparently due to a strong storm combined to full moon.