Exhibition ‘Dressing a Garden’. All photos published are provided by: Museum of Costume CIPE.

It has been a while since we recommended an exhibition, and we have just found a surprising exhibition that connects head-on with some of our most recurring inspirations and, specifically, with the floral theme of the 2024 Lookbook. The Madrid Costume Museum has just released the ‘Dressing a Garden’ exhibition, an exhibition curated by Gema Batanero that focuses on connecting nature with fashion through floral motifs as the backbone.

A historic binomial

Since ancient times, nature, and especially floral motifs, have been a constant source of inspiration for human beings. Like the self-portrait, flowers have focused attention and have become the first themes that humanity has captured in art and in all its cultural manifestations. This connection has endured over the centuries, especially in the field of fashion and interior design, where decorating with flowers meant a way of maintaining ephemeral beauty and union with the natural environment: the gardens, the countryside, the forests… In fact, each era has had its peculiar way of linking fashion and textiles with the language of flowers and doing so in an extraordinary way.

Starting from this historical premise, the exhibition “Dressing a Garden” at the Costume Museum explores how floral motifs in fashion evolved between the Baroque and the Enlightenment. This exhibition reveals how these floral representations reflect the profound changes in the relationship between humans and nature and the emergence of new artistic, scientific and philosophical ideas. Furthermore, the exhibition highlights how commercial exchanges and technological advances influenced the rapid transformation of these floral designs, making them a key testimony of the aesthetic taste of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Through the leitmotif of flowers, the exhibition also vindicates the study of creative and technical processes as a fundamental part in understanding the phenomenon of fashion, raising its transversality and continuous dialogue with different cultural fields.

Detail of an 18th-century dress from the exhibition ‘Dressing a Garden’. All photos published are provided by: Museum of Costume CIPE.

Floral motifs in more than a hundred pieces

The exhibition includes around 120 pieces, the core of which are collections of historical clothing and textiles from the 18th century and part of the 19th century from the Costume Museum. These pieces are accompanied by documentary and bibliographic collections, painting, ceramics and decorative arts from institutions such as the National Prado Museum, the National Archaeological Museum, the National Museum of Decorative Arts and the Royal Botanical Garden.

The first stop on the tour is titled “The Forest of the Furies” and places the visitor in the 18th century with an explosion of textile creativity: unusual fabrics, also called furies, due to the passionate and vibrant character of their decorative motifs. The exhibition continues with “A naturalistic still life”, which shows how, during the 1830s, the fanciful bizarre vegetations gave way to much more naturalistic representations. Starting in the 1940s, “The Line of Beauty” marks the evolution towards the Rococo style, characterized by its lightness and refinement.

Next, “The Flowers of Enlightenment” addresses the development of Enlightenment ideas and the return to the ideals of the classical world, marking a profound aesthetic change with respect to Rococo taste. “Gardens of the East” discusses how indianas, a textile phenomenon from India and the Middle East, made its way to Europe. The note of bucolic celebration is provided by “A country party”, which addresses the genre of the gallant party in Rococo and alludes to the social enjoyment of the countryside. Finally, the tour culminates in “The Return of Spring”, a space that explores how the relationship with nature is a constant in the lives of human beings, and how floral motifs, although they experienced an unprecedented boom in the centuries XVIII and XIX, are repeated cyclically throughout the history of fashion.

The exhibition is completed by a catalogue created by the General Subdirectorate of Publications and Palaces and Museums, which further develops the areas covered in the exhibition. The exhibition ‘Dressing a Garden’ can be visited for free until September 29th at the Madrid Costume Museum. A good opportunity to delight in this inspiring pairing: nature and fashion.

We took advantage of the exhibition to bring out some of our floral fabrics, which maintain a similar dialogue with some pieces on display. Let’s give rein to our imagination!

Gratacós was present in the last edition of the Fashion and Communication Seminar that took place in the Traje Museum (Madrid). The seminar was hosted in cooperation with the Villanueva University (part of the the Madrid Computense University) and their degree in Communication and Fashion Management (CGM).

In this IX edition, Juan Gratacós, executive director of Gratacós, relayed the importance of the creation of fabrics as an element to differentiate oneself and also to bring value to the fashion industry:

“On the catwalks, you see the fashion show and the garment surrounded by glamour. In fabrics, however, you will never see the brand nor be able to appreciate it on an individual or collective level. We want people to recognize us, because the risk is that the industry is disappearing. We want to show the public that we make something as important as the fabric that make the clothes in our country. If we don’t, in the end, they will go somewhere else and look for it cheaper. We need to differentiate ourselves from the fabrics that come from abroad. We want the garment to have a differentiating value.”

You can read the full  interview with Juan Gratacós and the Communication and Fashion Management degree by clicking on the following link.