However, the connection between fashion and the visual arts is very clear: like art works, clothing items are designed and manufactured according to formal rules in order to attain standards of aesthetic beauty and harmony.
When, around the 1960s, pop art provoked and radically changed the art world, the encounter between fashion and art, formal aesthetic research and commercial promotion opened up an ideal space where various forms of crossfertilization between the two domains became possible.
The conference proposes an exploration of the relationship between fashion and art in order to identify the most innovative scenarios. Here below the contribution of  Mr. Francesco Balduzzi, founder of Sintassi.
Sintassi is a Consultancy Company and an “Organizational Design Company” specialized in business projects (sometimes set in the future) that can also include the invention of new Brands and/or Companies, and that are made of marketing, evaluation, planning, management, and  handling of results expressed mainly by economic and financial figures.
Over the last 40 years (25 years of Mr Francesco Balduzzi management experience plus 15 years of the Company’s direct experience) we have been working exclusively in the world of fashion and of high value-added visual products that nowadays are, in our opinion,  inappropriately defined as luxury goods.
We collaborated with Cinzia Ruggeri in her father’s prêt-à-porter firm, during the  Sixties and Seventies; in the early Eighties, at Fiorucci SpA, we often met Andy Warhol and Keith Haring and worked for a long time with Oliviero Toscani, Ettore Sottsass, Andrea Branzi, Michele De Lucchi, Aldo Cibic, Isabella Tonchi; in the Nineties, for the styling and design of what later became the brand called Meltin’ Pot, we studied closely and plunged into the Italian Youth Music Cultures (Sud Sound System, Almamegretta) and in the Urban Art on the walls of Southern Italy (above all in the Salento area); and at the beginning of 2000s we worked side by side with Custodio Dalmau, Jordi Labanda and other designers and illustrators working at Custo Barcelona. In this timeframe we have often seen inspiration proceed from a combination and interlacement of Fashion and Art; we have often observed that art can be “used” by fashion. Therefore, we are convinced that between Fashion and Art, a fine red thread, invisible and resistant, exists: this thread originates from a common mentality that aims at turning desires into reality and at solving problemswith an experimental and, at the same time, design-oriented approach.
On the basis of these elements and of the recently started collaboration between Sintassi and the Centre for Fashion and Cultural Production Studies of the “Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore” of Milan, we believe that we can bring a useful contribution to this Conference by briefly illustrating three (among infinite possibilities) different interpretations of Fashion and Art, selected among existing cases and analyzed according to our business culture and through our professional observatory. The first case we are going to talk about is that of Elsa Schiaparelli, a well known and eminent name, renowned in the artistic world, but almost unknown in today’s fashion world. Elsa Schiaparelli has recently been taken over by the Della Valle Group. 15 years ago, our firm provided unofficial consultancy services for the study and planning of a potential relaunch of the Elsa Schiaparelli brand. For this reason, Sintassi is today looking with special attention and curiosity at this recent acquisition.
The second is a case that could be considered today as the most representative as far as the relationship between Fashion and Art is concerned: Prada. This company’schoices are constantly under our control, since we deal mainly with strategic analysis and consultancy.
The third case is Byblos’ and its parent company Swinger, in which Sintassi is directly involved, working along with Owners and Management for the general reorganization of the Company and for the definition and the development/implementation of a solid ongoing relationship between Fashion and Art. This is crucial for a brand like Byblos that, at the beginning of the Eighties, based its success on ideas coming from art and design.
Many are the cases that would be worth studying: the Temporary Store opened by Louis Vuitton inside the Brooklin Museum of New York, where numbered “editioned canvases” are exhibited and presented as artistic works; Isabella Capeto’s work, an emerging Brazilian stylist, whose collections, inspired by photography and history, sit on the boundary between Fashion and Art; the Maramotti’s collection presented in the Reggio Emilia factory where Max Mara was born; the H-Art Store Iceberg of Gilmar, where fashion combines with artistic works and designer furniture.
We believe that the three cases we have selected, leaving aside differences in importance, history, renown and significance, are the most representative as far as the relationship between Fashion and Art is concerned.TOD’S – SCHIAPARELLI
Financial data 2007:   Turnover € 657 million + 15% than in 2006
Net Income € 78.7 million + 18%
Debts € 156.4 million +9%
2,470 employees
Diego Della Valle’s Company, originally from the Marches region, has long been familiar with the world of arts: among others, one example is its collaboration with artists for the furnishing of the new head office in Tolentino and the organization of Art-Fashion events in museums and art galleries.
The most recent event is “Tod’s Art Plus Party 2008” that took place in London on the 6th of March inside the Whitechapel Art Gallery, with the purpose, among others, of collecting funds for art projects promoted by the London-based gallery.
Elsa Schiaparelli is quite a renowned name and a prominent figure of the Parisian High Fashion world (although she was born in Rome in 1890) that found inspiration in contemporary artistic movements.
In 1927 she presented her first collection in Paris, inspired by Futurism and by the French fashion designer Paul Poiret.
She was friends with artists and poets like Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalì, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara and Man Ray; she was inspired by Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism, in the quest for the synthesis between Fashion and Art. Thanks to her collaboration with the main figures of the Surrealist movement, in the mid Thirties she created unusual and original clothing, giving the word “fashion” a new meaning and influencing future generations of fashion designers.
She experimented for the first time ever with materials such as transparent plastics, metal, Sèvres porcelain and new colors, like shocking pink.
The brand left the market shortly after Elsa Schiaparelli’s death in 1973 and was bought by an American company from New York, called Schiaparelli Inc. During the Eighties and Nineties several unsuccessful attempts were made to relaunch the brand.
At the end of 2007 Elsa Schiaparelli’s brand was bought by Tod’s, whose owner, Diego Della Valle, hastened to say that the relaunch of the brand would take place only in 2009.
In our opinion, Diego Della Valle’s strategic statement is very realistic and appropriate considering the complexity of the Schiaparelli case, in which highly fascinating elements cannot make us undervalue the difficulties implied in the redesign of a brand that is full of history and of concepts, or underestimate the amount of investments required for the relaunch.
The company, which already operates with several brands (Tod’s, Hogan, Fay and Roger Vivier under license), will probably prioritize the existing brands before starting such an important project, likely to imply a company culture evolution during which a number of issues might arise.PRADA
Financial data 2007:   Turnover €1,660 million + 14% than in 2006
Net Income € 127 millions + 66%
Debts €507 millions – 8%
6,900 employees
Prada, who recently announced that it will go public in the Borsa of Milan by the end of 2008, has always been strongly connected with the contemporary art world.
In 1993 Prada created the Fondazione Prada (originally PradaMilanoarte) that manages a space for contemporary art exhibitions, and performs an intense publishing activity centered on exhibitors’ work and monographs and on philosophy, design and architecture; moreover it organizes multidisciplinary conferences in which communication, graphic design and other new expressive languages play a main role.
A few days ago, Prada announced that it will create an art factory in Milan, a new concept of museum, designed by Rem Koolhaas and by his Office of Metropolitan Architecture. The new museum will cover 17,500 square meters and will be the headquarters of the Fondazione, where the over 500 artistic works collected in the last 15 years will be exhibited. In order to turn this project into reality, 25 million euros will be invested. Other companies might join Prada in the realization of this project.
Beside this challenging project (in Italy this type of project is usually carried out by governmental institutions and is quite infrequent), it is very interesting to see how in its everyday work Prada uses art in order to create a new narrative language and to innovate the presentation of its products to the public.
An example of Prada’s innovative way of presenting its products is the 4 minute animated short-film, available on the Web and downloadable to DVD, which depicts a lush, slightly scandalous, landscape of flowers and nymphs and presents in a heavenly fairy tale scenario some of the items of the new collection.
The Milanese company deals with art in two different ways: on one side Prada acts as a Renaissance Maecenas financing and supporting artists with absolute respect of their freedom of expression; on the other, Prada uses an artistic experimental language to widen its linguistic territory within the production and communication of fashion.SWINGER – BYBLOS
Financial data 2007:   Turnover (direct) € 56 millions (same as 2006)
Indirect turnover (brand) € 100 millions
Net income € 1.2 millions + 85%
Debts € 21 millions – 7%
190 employees
This company based in Verona is noted for its brands Roccobarocco (under license) and Byblos (bought from Prada in 2002) and has been related with art since the beginning of the Seventies, when its founder Dino Facchini started expressing his passion for art through the collection of works of art.
In 2005, Masha Facchini, his daughter, founded a 600 square meter art gallery, called Byblos Art Gallery, in the historical center of Verona. This space has quickly become a “living gallery”, an international meeting point for contemporary artists, curators, collectors and neophytes, where artistic avant-garde projects can come to life.
In 2005, in a town called Corrubio, in the heart of Valpolicella, Facchini inaugurated the Byblos Art Hotel Villa Amistà, a 15th century villa restructured as a luxury hotel, and devised as an art and design in progress gallery that gathers works by internationally renowned artists like Vanessa Beecroft, Anish Kapoor, Peter Halley, Damien Hirst, Robert Indiana, Cindy Sherman and others, alongside with interior decoration and design objects by architect Alessandro Mendini.
Besides its remarkable instinct for business (at the end of 2002 Swinger spent € 17.6 million to buy Byblos from Prada that had previously spent 150 million euros to acquire the Genny/Byblos group, including the production facilities, from the Girombelli family in 2001), Swinger has demonstrated a great strategic vision when it rejected a number of licenses (Ungaro, Laura Biagiotti, Mila Schon, Vivienne Westwood) in order to focus its attention on the relaunch of the new property brand.
The operation has been carried out trying to stylistically reconnect Byblos to its early Eighties art and design inspiration (the early Eighties was when the brand was created and acquired its fame), while potentiating the brand artistic values and references by using the name Byblos for experimental projects like the art gallery and the contemporary art hotel.
The company is now engaged in the completion of the Byblos redesign process and is planning to develop the brand internationally taking advantage of the numerous current opportunities.
A new mono brand shop was recently opened in Verona, adding a new sales point to the historical flagship store on via Spiga in Milano and to the two shops located in Beijing and Shanghai, opened in 2008, which, together with the shops in Wenzhou, Ningbo and Hanzhoudare, bring to five the number of Byblos monobrand stores in China.
In order to attain these goals, Swinger, with whom Sintassi had already collaborated at the beginning of the Nineties, has requested our direct collaboration inside the company for a series of strategic and operational interventions.To look over the contributions of all the lecturers at the Conference “Moda e Arte”, see  the documentation of the Centre for Fashion and Cultural Production Studies of the Università Cattolica of Milan on their web site.

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