A bijou for every day: deciding the dress by the accessory
A historical collection of necklaces, brooches and fancy bracelets. Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo opens the doors of her home for a photo shoot in which she dresses her latest acquisitions, which have never been exhibited.
We could say that collections of objects respond to a particularly felt need and freedom: they have a close proximity to individual expression, to a logic under construction. Each person has his or her own way of collecting objects, in which interest, wonder, and desire merge with a more personal and private aspect: if Patrizia Sandretto told Hans Ulrich Obrist that she chooses a different bijou every day in tune with her mood and commitments, she explained to me that those objects have become her signature and that they give her security.
Sort of magic objects, a new kind of emblem, variable, but recognisable - even if she really does own the family crest. Since each person, by choosing what they wear, creates a narrative of themselves, these bijoux are also the magical objects that Italo Calvino talks about in his 'American lesson' on speed: 'We would say that from the moment an object appears in a narrative, it is charged with a special force, it becomes like the pole of a magnetic field, a node in a network of invisible relationships. The symbolism of an object may be more or less explicit, but it always exists. We could say that in a narrative, an object is always a magic object'.
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Into this perimeter of action, into this narrative space, comes the performative element. The active relationship between body, dress and accessories. While the dress becomes an imprint of the body that wears it and somehow defines its posture and movements, the necklace or brooch determines itself as the centre of its own personal and public choreography.
In the many portraits of Patrizia Sandretto that we find on the web, in the photographs that show her on official occasions, the punctum, as Roland Barthes would say, is always that fancy object, highlighted by the dress which, as she has said, is most often chosen or designed according to the jewel whose surface it will become.
Objects that date back as far as the 1930s and reflect the styles and poetics of authors whose objects have defined costume jewellery, also in the sense of expression. These include William Hobé, Joseff of Hollywood, Miriam Haskell. And then, just to name a few other authors, Robert Sorrell, Kenneth Jay Lane, Hattie Carnegie, Marcel Boucher, Robert Clark, Iradj Moini, or a label like Trifari. Patrizia Sandretto's favourite among costume jewellery designers, however, is William De Lillo, who arrived in America in 1950 from Europe, specifically Antwerp. De Lillo, a narrative, abstract, phantasmagorical author, perfectly embodies an idea of costume jewellery as an autonomous language, giving a free and always spectacular interpretation of form and function, which becomes absolute in the reinvention of naturalistic motifs. Because of their quality and authority, anonymous pieces also claim space in the collection, while fantasy jewellery from fashion brands such as Schiaparelli, Chanel, Saint Laurent and Dior are excluded by choice.
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