Futurism remains the least understood of early twentieth-century art movements, largely because it staked its cultural terrain outside the bounds of traditional painting and sculpture. The Futurists aimed at "reconstructing the universe," not only through the practical design of objects and spaces, but also by exploiting the mass media and public spectacle. They conceived of a modern "antihumanity," whose existence thrived on the technological values of speed, dynamism, and ceaseless innovation.
The Futurist avant-garde invented a political style of provocation, believing that the tyranny of tradition could only be overcome by a constant assault on passeiste institutions, social mores, and even gender roles. Nowhere is their aesthetic and ideological agenda better displayed than in the theory and design of fashion. Through the specifics of dress, the Futurists wanted to clothe a revolutionary body politic that thrived on the need for individual expression in an anonymous, mass society [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Moreover, the fashion phenomenon operated on a number of levels congenial to the Futurist enterprise: it promoted the new and discarded the old, blurred the lines between art and industry, and was predicated on style as both a social and an aesthetic statement.
Though some designs were crafted by the artists themselves and in a few instances manufactured by commercial firms, Futurist fashion remained largely in the realm of theory. It was propagated in consummate Futurist style through the written manifesto - itself a blend of creative posturing and political agitation. Some eight manifestoes on clothing were issued over the years, the majority addressing the deplorable lack of imagination in men's styles.(1) Other Futurist proclamations, such as Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero's Recostruzione futurista del universo (The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe; 1915) and F. T. Marinetti's Contro il lusso feminile (Against Feminine Luxury; 1920), raised the issue of fashion in the context of design and feminism, respectively. A thorough study of Futurist sartorial invention and reconfiguration of the human form would also have to take into account the costume and stage design of Depero and Enrico Prampolini.
In general, the Futurists argued for clothes that promoted health and comfort and that banished frivolous detail, expensive fabrics, and ultimately class distinction in dress. Sleek lines and simple shapes promoted the unencumbered movement of the human body, and the fast-paced rhythm of modern life was evoked by dynamic textile designs and asymmetrical cuts [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED]. The Futurists suggested an unorthodox use of natural and industrial fabrics - paper, straw, burlap, rubber, metals, and plastics. Browns, blacks, and grays were debunked as stodgy and traditional, while brilliant primary colors and reflective, even phosphorescent surfaces pointed the way to a shimmering, exuberant future.
As propagators of the new, the Futurists lived for the moment between the already outmoded and the next season's style. They were responsible for transforming the ideology of modern consumerism into an aesthetic theory by envisioning clothes that would last only a short time. The reasons for built-in obsolescence were threefold: it necessitated continued creativity on the part of the artist, provided sensual delights and novelty for the wearer-consumer, and served as a stimulus to the national economy. The first manifesto on Futurist fashion, Balla's Le Vetement masculin futuriste: Manifeste (Futurist Manifesto of Men's Clothing; 1914), also introduced the concept of "transformable" apparel.(2) Though the actual technology remained rather vague, in theory, with the push of a "pneumatic" button, the wearer could jettison his long sleeves or change the color or fit of his suit. A year later Balla expanded this idea to include "mechanical trimmings, surprises, tricks, disappearance of individuals."(3) Not only did this allow the wearer unprecedented "self-expression," it also turned him or her into a provocateur and performance artist. The purpose of Futurist dress was to act upon the environment, to stun, to upset, to annoy, and ultimately to liberate bourgeois society from its stuffy sartorial and social conventions.
The three fashion manifestoes published here in English for the first time span the Futurist movement from its beginnings around World War I, through the rise of Fascism, to the second decade of the regime. The continuity of ideas bridge the chronological division between the original movement and so-called Second Futurism (after 1915), although the war did change perceptions of both women and the economy. Futurist attitudes toward dress were woven into the movement's dominant ideological fabric. Typically the manifestoes display a strident nationalism merged with anarchic individualism, a belief in the cultural superiority of the Italian race, and in the right of the artistically gifted to lead a rejuvenated, modern nation. With characteristic imperialist rhetoric, Futurist writers on fashion saw Italian style as a means of competing with and exerting political influence on the rest of Western Europe. They also anticipated today's couturier celebrity status, maintaining that a "great poet or painter" should run the fashion houses and that designers were in the same league of genius as the old masters.
Clothing was therefore both a symbol and vehicle of the new "Futurist Democracy," as evident in Balla's manifesto on Il vestito antineutrale: Manifesto futurista (The Antineutral Suit: Futurist Manifesto, 1914; [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED]), an altered version of his Futurist Manifesto of Men's Clothing published four months earlier. Issued shortly after the outbreak of war, it exudes Futurist propaganda for the interventionist cause (Italy's entry in the war on the side of the Triple Entente). Marinetti likely contributed to the revised text, with its bellicose tone and incendiary verbiage.(4) The opposition between past and future now becomes a national battle between neutralists (pacifists) and interventionists, the cowardly and the daring. In the discourse of style, this translates into an assault on timid conformity, boring designs, and bodily constrictions. Though the headings of fashion dos and don'ts remain virtually the same as the earlier manifesto, the outfits themselves are now geared toward military superiority: the agility to dart and to defend, to overcome the dowdy enemy. The manifesto concludes by identifying the Futurist interventionist suit with the colors and patriotic significance of the Italian flag.
Considered the father of Futurist fashion, Balla began designing textiles and suits in 1912-13. With asymmetrical cuts and diagonal surface patterns, the brightly colored outfits were a direct translation of the dynamic "force-lines" of his painted canvases [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED]. His fashion projects only increased in the teens and twenties, as part of his and Depero's utopian vision of a total Futurist environment. Never mass-produced, his models were realized in small numbers by local Roman tailors and by his daughters Elica and Luce in the household studio. Balla had considerable influence on younger abstract painters in the years following World War II; the geometric exuberance and ice-cream colors of his scarfs and blouses also clearly anticipated Emilio Pucci's silks of the 1960s [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 5 AND 6 OMITTED].
As to the infamous "antineutral" suit, it was actually intended to dress the Futurists during their interventionist activities in the Italian piazze. Marinetti, Balla, and the poet Francesco Cangiullo were each to wear one at the demonstrations planned for the University of Rome on December 11 and 12, but only Cangiullo's was ready in time [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 7 OMITTED]. In the midst of the mayhem, he jumped above the crowd in his red, white, and green suit accompanied by a similarly colored beret crowned by a silver star. The appearance of this "living flag" delighted the onlookers who responded with shouts, whistles, and applause. Cangiullo was later carried aloft in triumph by the throngs of demonstrators.(5)
