Olivier Saillard

Triennale Milano and Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain give carte blanche to the fashion historian Olivier Saillard, who will curate the third Nomadic Night organized in Triennale.

On the occasion of Ron Mueck’s major exhibition, which can be seen until March 10 at Triennale Milano, Olivier Saillard will present three performances on two evenings, Friday, Feb. 2 and Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024, including a new creation designed specifically for the spaces of Triennale. Moda Povera VI: les vêtements des autres – Milan is the title of the new performance, which explores the intimate dimension of clothing.

After Boris Charmatz in 2021 with 20 dancers for the 20^th century and even more, Alexis Paul and Alessandro Sciarroni together with ten folk choirs from around the world in 2022 for Voci dal Mondo Reale, it is now the turn of Olivier Saillard, former director of the Fashion Museum – Palais Galliera in Paris, currently head of the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation and artistic director of J. M. Weston, who has been invited to imagine a new edition of the Nomadic Nights format as part of the cultural partnership between Triennale Milano and Fondation Cartier, launched in 2020.

A Nomadic Night in two acts

On Friday, February 2, Olivier Saillard will present the world première of Moda Povera VI: les vêtements des autres – Milan, a new chapter in his work inspired by Arte Povera, an avant-garde movement of the 1960s making use of simple – often natural or recuperated – materials.

Conceived and produced especially for the Nomadic Nights and Triennale Milano, Moda Povera VI: les vêtements des autres – Milan is an unprecedented performance and promenade based on a protocol that is as simple as it is fragile.

Each visitor is invited to lend, for a moment, a piece of clothing they hold dear. A cherished shirt, a jacket from a loved one, a dress, a pair of trousers from the memory of a parent, a coat from a friend who is precious to them: they are asked to entrust a garment chosen for the memory and affection it embodies in the eyes of the lender.

Ten models, chosen for the heritage dimension of the living fashion they embody, are given the task of wearing these relics of the ordinary or the exceptional from the past.

Carrying rather than wearing, presenting rather than putting on, animating rather than dressing. Herein lies the challenge of the performance: to restore to each and every one of us an intimate part of our relationship with clothing, without proclaiming it. It is also the art of gesture and movement that the ten models involved possess.

Clothes for use or for work, every day, damaged, banal or ordinary, fashion clothes or ceremonial clothes, exceptional clothes, extinguished clothes, all these “vêtements des autres” without distinction parade by after Olivier Saillard and his studio have pre-empted them with a gesture.

On the following day, Saturday, February 3, the public will have an opportunity to discover or rediscover two important works from Olivier Saillard’s repertoire:

Salon de Couture, the first fashion show without clothes in the history of fashion, was Olivier Saillard’s very first creation. Created in 2006 and never performed since, it features Violeta Sanchez, muse and model to Yves Saint Laurent and Helmut Newton, in a ghostly fashion show. While the scenic protocol of haute couture is respected – salon chairs, catwalks, bouquets of flowers – all that remains of the clothes are the descriptions that Violeta, like an orderly salon director, carefully utters, as was customary in fashion houses up until the 1950s. Memories of fabrics, shapes and materials, the clothes, melted like snow in the sun, sewn from memory, parade to the sound of her voice.

Moda Povera V: les vêtements de Renée presented to the public for the first time last June at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. This performance, the most recent one in Olivier Saillard’s repertoire, is presented in the Teatro di Triennale. Using the ordinary wardrobe of his mother, who died two years ago, Olivier Saillard uses haute couture techniques to cut up and transform her clothes. Ordinary shirts are transformed into exceptional dresses using his knowledge of fashion history and know-how. Yet they retain the vulnerability of the person who wore them. Model Axelle Doué, in a subtle and refined exercise where undressing becomes a choreography of intimacy, gracefully serves up this infinitely personal wardrobe.

This third Milan-based Nomadic Night is the natural continuity of Olivier Saillard’s creative work. Having distinguished himself through significant fashion exhibitions, installations and performances, including a recent one at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, he continues thus his artistic and educative project Moda Povera.

Olivier Saillard claims: “In response to the frenetic succession of fashion weeks, I wanted to offer two days, a few hours of performance where clothing, and not fashion, would be celebrated, emancipated from any commercial or consumerist character, freed from any economic perspective. The three performances that will take place in Milan can only be appreciated from a poetic and performative point of view”.

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Moda Povera VI: les vêtements des autres – Milan
Creation: Olivier Saillard
With: Christine Bergstrom, Kristina de Coninck, Axelle Doué, Charlotte Flossaut, Claudia Huidobro, Sonia Ichti, Ania Martchenko, Anne Rohart, Violeta Sanchez, Amalia Vairelli
Artistic collaboration: Gaël Mamine
Assistants: Zoé Guédard, Romain Blot, Antonin Simon Giraudet
Technical support: Morgane Denis - La Mode en Images
Media and communication: Nathalie Ours - PR Consulting
Studio manager: Aymar Crosnier
Production manager: Noémie Torz
Production: StudiOlivierSaillard
Co-production: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain - Soirées Nomades.
This project benefitted from a residence at the Ménagerie de verre – Paris.

Moda Povera V: les vêtements de Renée
Creation: Olivier Saillard
With: Axelle Doué, Olivier Saillard, Zoé Guédard, Gaël Mamine
Studio manager: Aymar Crosnier
Production: StudiOlivierSaillard

Thanks to: Bénédicte Breton, Romain Blot, Morgane Denis, Jocelyne Imbert, Antoine Jean, Antonin Simon Giraudet, Nathalie Ours, Cécile Holstein and Grégory Teillet / Les Archives Nationales

Salon de Couture
Creation: Olivier Saillard
With Violeta Sanchez, Olivier Saillard
Artistic collaboration: Gaël Mamine
Studio manager: Aymar Crosnier
Production: StudiOlivierSaillard

Biography

Olivier Saillard is a graduate in art history, former director of the Palais Galliera - Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, currently director of the Fondation Alaïa and artistic director, image and culture for the J.M. Weston brand. Since then, in parallel with his work as a historian, he has been engaged in poetic reflection presented in the form of performances, the most famous of which, Impossible Wardrobe with Tilda Swinton, inaugurated a cycle of work spanning ten years of collaboration. Similarly, Models Never Talk, with a studio of famous models, instituted a new form in response to conventional fashion shows.

In 2018, he founded Moda Povera, a poetic, educational and performative project based on the transformation of modest, ordinary clothing magnified by techniques and knowledge of haute couture.