The lecture explores the 1990s as a decade of profound cross-contamination between art and fashion, marked by radical experimentation, the breakdown of traditional hierarchies, and new forms of visual storytelling.
The masterclass is curated by Filippo Maria Disperati (University of Florence)
The 1990s open as an unstable threshold: a time shaped by political urgency, existential fragility, and a new awareness of the body as a symbolic space. In this decade, art and fashion do not simply enter into dialogue—they contaminate one another, wound one another, expose themselves. The garment becomes trace, absence, memory; the image renounces seduction in order to become testimony.
At the height of the AIDS crisis, the body erupts onto the scene as a vulnerable and political site. It is a thin body, at times vanishing, marked by loss yet charged with desire—one that fashion observes without protection. The radical practices of Martin Margiela challenge notions of identity and permanence, while the tragic and theatrical vision of Alexander McQueen transforms the runway into a ritual, a staging of pain and resistance.
Juergen Teller’s photography rejects idealization, presenting real, exposed, often imperfect bodies, while Vanessa Beecroft’s performances multiply silent, motionless female figures—presences suspended between life and disappearance. Within this landscape, fashion becomes a critical language: it does not promise salvation, but raises questions. And it is precisely within this unresolved tension—between beauty and mourning, desire and fear—that one of the most intense and necessary seasons of contemporary visual culture takes shape.
Filippo Maria Disperati è dottorando del Programma di Interesse Nazionale in Design per il Made in Italy: Identità, Innovazione e Sostenibilità presso l'Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli ed è collocato presso l'Università di Firenze sotto il Dipartimento di Architettura. Ha conseguito un master in Arti Visive e Moda presso l'Università Iuav di Venezia e un Diploma accademico di Primo Livello in Design della Moda presso l’ISIA di Firenze in collaborazione con Polimoda. La sua area di ricerca è l’art direction e la comunicazione digitale della moda. È anche co-fondatore della piattaforma italiana di matchmaking lavorativo nel settore della moda FARMA 282.