The new edition of the ‘White Street Market’, the Italian event dedicated to ‘street fashion’, will be held from 12th to the 14th January. Cittadellarte will be among the protagonists of the initiative, participating with a series of installations highlighting its decades-long commitment between art and fashion, combining beauty and ethics into a new global myth. Specifically, Fashion B.E.S.T. (the platform created in 2009 committed to the sustainability of the fashion supply chain, from raw materials to design, from production to education*) will present a few brands already well-known for their sustainable development: Tiziano Guardini, Bav Tailor, Nadia Shaulova, Giada Daolio (with Debatelier), and Flavia La Rocca. In this context, WRAD, in partnership with Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, will set up the WRAD Lab, a temporary factory of t-shirts Exclusive for WSM, customised with the scraps of local textile factories. Also on display for the occasion will be a selection of items of clothing designed and created by the fashion designer Pietra Pistoletto, a pioneer in the field of recycling and circular fashion since 1994.

But this is not all for Cittadellarte: to further stress the link between art, fashion and ethical dimension, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Venus of the Rags”, a work emphasizing consumerism and recycling, will be exceptionally part of the exhibition. “Fifty years ago – said the artist from Biella – I created the Venus of the Rags. The rags represent the passage of people through all these clothes, by now worn out. The Venus, coming from the past as a symbol of beauty and hope, gives life back to the rags, regenerating them”

On 12th January, the day of the opening, the programme will include a talk with the participation of Paolo Naldini, director of Cittadellarte. The event is scheduled for 12.00 and is called ‘Sustainable lifestyle’. The other speakers will be Alessandra Ciccotosto, Oway Trade Marketing & Communication Manager; Carlotta Robbe Di Lorenzo, founder of ‘Vanta’; Angelo Ruggeri, freelance fashion editor. “The role of Cittadellarte, as an artistic institution, – explains Paolo Naldini – is to generate myths and rituals for a reconciliation with the planet and its inhabitants. Myths like the Third Paradise, rituals like the Demopraxy. The reconciliation develops through our way of living in all its manifestations: from what we eat to what we wear. Clothes can become the costume of an everyday superhero who, wearing it, acquires superpowers not allowing them to fly or walk through walls, but rather to operate in a more and more responsible and sustainable way in their daily life.”

*Pistoletto and Cittadellarte have been collaborating in projects linked to sustainable fashion for years. Worth mentioning are the big performance in Piazza Duomo in Milan in 2012 for the launch of the manifesto for the sustainability of Italian fashion (in collaboration with the National Chamber of Fashion); and the event dedicated to a sustainable textile supply chain at the United Nations in Geneva in 2014, with a permanent artistic installation, a series of performances in the Palais des Nations and in the city’s squares, and a working conference with the major international stakeholders.