“From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce & Gabbana” is now open at the ICA in the Design District.
Photo by Greg Kessler
In the wake of much-heralded, gangbuster runs in Milan, Paris, and Rome, the internationally renowned writer, professor, and art and fashion curator Florence Müller could have taken the eclectic, wild, extravagant traveling exhibition “From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce & Gabbana” anywhere in the world, but for its North American debut, she chose the Institute of Contemporary Art in her recently adopted city of Miami.
“Miami is a great city for the arts,” Müller tells New Times. “Of course, everyone knows Art Basel, but it is far more than Basel.” There’s an expansiveness here, both cultivated and implicit, which extends to fashion, she says. “In Miami, they love fashion in a very diverse way,” she continues. “People here love to experiment, they love colors. They love both the simple and classic as well as the extravagant. And, so, for us, the conversation of where to begin the next phase of the tour naturally turned to Miami and, specifically, the Design District, which we love and which, to me, has developed in a very unique and exciting way.”
“Of course, on top of all of this,” Müller adds with a mischievous chuckle, “is the desire to do something which is not expected and a little bit surprising.”
Appropriately, then, nothing can truly prepare visitors for the immersive, through-the-looking-glass nature of “From the Heart to the Hands.” There is a strong theatrical element to the exhibition’s multiple themed rooms — some designed for the original Milan exhibit, some unique to Miami — featuring more than 300 archival and new pieces. (Considerable respect should be given to the awe-inspiring set design of Agence Galuchat — the delightful Magic City imprint of the ICA and its executive director Alex Gartenfeld, a longtime Müller compatriot — and producer IMG.)
The exhibition features more than 300 archival and new pieces.
Imagine stepping into a very large, constantly turning haute couture kaleidoscope and you’ll be in the neighborhood: If Müller has previously described the world of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana as a place “where magic and fantasy, legend and reality intertwine,” then “From the Heart to the Hands” makes the case with panache, drawing on art, opera, architecture, folklore, “regional topographies and artisanal craft,” cuisine (pro-tip: keep an eye out for the Sicilian lemon), ballet, sculpture, and “the abiding spirit of the dolce vita.” An added dynamic comes in the form of work by visual artists Quayola, Alberto Maria Colombo, Obvious, Vittorio Bonapace, Felice Limosani, and others.
“There are other influences, of course, but mainly the main book of inspiration is Italy — and the long love affair the world has had with it,” Müller says. It’s a theme the curator returns to later in our conversation: “It’s a very visual exhibition. What I observed [during previous iterations of the exhibit], especially in Paris, was that visitors found all these references quite seductive — almost like a voyage in pursuit of a muse through time and space.”
Vanishingly few curators, aside from Müller, possess the experience and qualifications to pull off such a multisensory feat. Check the epic CV: Educated at the École du Louvre and Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie. A former director and curator of the Union Française des Arts du Costume at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Contributor to more than 150 diverse exhibitions across the globe — e.g., “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams” at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris; “Costume Jewelry for Haute Couture” at Grand Hornu in Belgium; “Shock Wave: Japanese Fashion Design” at the Denver Art Museum; “Carla Fernandez Casa de Moda, a Mexican Fashion Manifesto” at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City. A professor of the Culture of Fashion program at the French Institute of Fashion for a quarter-century. Author of more than 40 books. Three-time winner of the Award of the Grand Prix du Livre de Mode, courtesy of the University of Lyon.
The close-up details are just as stunning as the exhibition’s multiple themed rooms.
And yet even with all this experience, the charge to “[trace] the extraordinary translation of [Dolce and Gabbana]’s ideas, from the heart through to their realization, by hand” and their “constant reimagining of Italian heritage through a contemporary lens” nevertheless proved its own daunting epiphanic journey for Müller.
“It’s a big task, absolutely,” she acknowledges. “I’m used to working in the history of fashion and plunging into the archives, but there is so much to convey here. The Renaissance is a huge inspiration. Baroque is a huge inspiration. Italian cinema is a huge inspiration. And more. All of this is expressed through 15 or 16 themes and subsidiary themes. At the same time, for all its complexities and difficulties, it’s a joy, not an exercise, to explore this amazing dialogue between designers and history.”
Which brings us back to the fitting home which both Müller and, albeit more temporarily, “From the Heart to the Hands” have chosen: Miami, after all, is a sprawling metropolis where so many come not just for better economic opportunities and social stability, but to express themselves and live outside the lines. “People in Miami bring with themselves their own culture and vision,” Müller says. “It makes the cultural conversation here very interesting, the encounters very enriching. We hope to be a part of that.”
“From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce & Gabbana.” On view through June 14 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, 23 NE 41st St., Miami; 305-901-5272; icamiami.org. Tickets cost $26 to $27.70 via miami.dolcegabbanaexhibition.com.