After three weeks of living in Rome, having already become bored with the monotony of the club scene that entices many world students, my pals and i decided 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 high tech feel of the event.
AltaRoma, a company that provides opportunities and fosters relationships among well known Italian designers, encourages the cultivation of young, talent through training,’intended not only as a method of safeguarding the artisan quality but also as the driver of innovation, creativeness and technology,’ according to the AltaRoma website. Obviously, walking into a room stuffed with some of the most fashionable young people in Rome, while brandishing only my shabby beige messenger bag was quite menacing. However , we didnot let that get in the way of occupying best 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 folks dressed in colorful card shapes, a lot of them phallic, dancing around a still model as photographers shot around the stage. The music was set to techno remixes of favored Yank hiphop songs, and the lighting pulsed to the beats of the music. This composition led one to a type of hypnotic trance, which came as a welcome distraction after enduring more than forty-five minutes - about forty minutes too long in my viewpoint - of the same thing. The bored and out-of-sorts expression worn by the model was the mirror image of those worn by the gang, whose faces and outfits became increasingly more interesting to watch than what was going down on stage. However , after the performance was over, I began to wonder if the absurdity of the act was exactly the point of it. Either way, it was something I’d 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 wouldnot understand it, as the set commenced with what only can be described as 2 screaming banshees. Two girls, dressed in identical jumpsuit, used video photographs, as well as simple, everyday , and often female, objects like stilettos, scissors and cloth to form an engaging and forceful performance. The set was an eclectic mixture of a regular montage of derriere slapping to a cover of the Beach Boys song’Surfer Girl’, whose words were modified to create the final female anthem [*CO]’super surfer girl in the death defying curl.’ The act culminated in a dance party during which fashonistas and common students alike could get up on stage and dance in celebration of fashion, self-expression and life.
I marched out of the show re-energized and prepared for the next new and out-of-the- ordinary experience Rome had to throw my way. We went back to appartement centrum rome.
