After 3 weeks of living in Rome, having already become bored with the monotony of the club scene that entices many international students, my chums and I chose to take in a fashion event presented by AltaRoma. We stayed in an appartement rome centrum. It was to be held at the historic Tempio di Adriano in Piazza di Pietra, an environment that contrasted sharply with the hi-tech feel of the event.
AltaRoma, an organization that provides opportunities and fosters relations among well-known Italian designers, encourages the cultivation of young, talent through coaching,’intended not only as a means of safeguarding the artisan quality but also as the driver of innovation, creativeness and technology,’ according to the AltaRoma website. Needless to say, walking into a room stuffed with some of the most fashionable young folk in Rome, while flourishing only my tacky beige messenger bag was quite menacing. However , we didn’t let that get in the way of occupying front row seats and grabbing as much promo material as we could get our hands on.
the 1st act was called’Wit Open Shooting Roger Weiss,’ which consisted of folk dressed in colourful card shapes, many of them phallic, dancing around a still model as photographers shot round the stage. The music was set to techno remixes of favored American hiphop songs, and the lighting beat to the beats of the music. This composition led one to a kind of hypnotic trance, which came as a welcome distraction after enduring more than forty-five mins - about forty mins too long to my mind - of the same. The bored and out-of-sorts expression worn by the model was the mirror image of those worn by the crowd, whose faces and outfits became increasingly more fascinating to watch than what was happening on stage. However , after the performance was over, I started to wonder if the anomaly of the act was precisely the point of it. Either way, it was something Ihad never before, and might never again, experience.
The second act was a performance art piece by Chicks on Speed. I braced myself for something so foreign and creatively different I wouldn’t understand it, as the set started with what only can be depicted as 2 hollering banshees. 2 ladies, dressed in identical jumpsuit, used video photographs, as well as easy, every day and typically female, objects such as stilettos, scissors and cloth to create an engaging and forceful performance. The set was an eclectic mixture of a rhythmic montage of derriere slapping to a cover of the Beach Boys song’Surfer Girl’, whose words were modified to make the final female anthem [*CO]’super surfer girl in the death defying curl.’ The act culminated in a dance party in which fashonistas and common students alike could get up on stage and dance to celebrate fashion, self-expression and life.
I strode out of the show re-energized and prepared for the next new and out-of-the- standard experience Rome had to throw my way. We went back to appartement centrum rome.
