It will be one of the most anticipated events of Turin Book Fair, on May 11th, because it’s not every day that a great fashion designer (certainly the most important in recent years) writes a book with an important philosopher. I’m talking about Alessandro Michele who was recently appointed creative director of the Valentino fashion house and who was the dominus of ”Gucci phenomenon” until November 2022, and of Emanuele CocciaItalian philosopher born in 1976, professor at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales since 2011, with a degree thesis at the University of Florence in medieval philosophy.
The book ‘The life of forms. Philosophy of reenchantment
The two wrote a book with an austere and essential frontispiece, which in appearance recalls an ancient treatise entitled: ‘The life of forms. Philosophy of re-enchantment’, published by the New York publishing house HarperCollins which also has the headquarters of HarperCollins Italia in Milan which also recently published the Pope’s book ‘Life. My story within History’. The stylist-philosopher dialogue occupies 224 pages in bookstores from May 7th and it will cost 22 euros.
As the publishing house itself communicates “fashion is a strange spell: every time we dress we transform any shape or any color of the world around us into our own skin. It is this strange magic that makes it together the most powerful and more metaphysical. To talk about it it is therefore necessary to make creation and philosophy coincide. This is what Alessandro Michele and Emanuele Coccia do in this Unparalleled treatise on the alchemy of life forms of all of us.”
In the volume which in its graphics also resembles a sacred book it is argued that fashion is the most powerful art because it is the only one capable of changing our life, our face and our body in an instant. In fact, a dress is not contemplated but worn, it thus becomes part of us. In short, fashion is the expression of one profane and everyday form of animism: thanks to it we transform into sorcerer’s apprentices of a twin who takes our same shape.
