CFE Announces Theme for 8th Bi-Annual Fashion Show: Welcome to the Feast of Fools
By Megan Yarusso
The carnival is in town, and you’re all invited! This December, the Circular Fashion Exposition will be celebrating its 8th sustainable fashion show with a Feast of Fools. Drawing on medieval and renaissance-era practices of hedonistic revelry and ritualistic inversions, this theme is all about subverting social norms in extravagantly theatrical ways.
As far as the fashion goes, CFE 8 is looking for designs that draw on the ethos and aesthetics of historical traditions in the vein of the Festival of Fools and Commedia dell’Arte.
The Festival of Fools was a tradition that emerged during the middle ages–though exact origins remain murky–and centered the inversion of cultural and societal norms. For example, lower-ranking members of the local church would dress up as their superiors, sometimes going so far as to elect a “false archbishop” or “false pope” for the day. Locals would engage in masked dances, unscripted plays, and generally enjoy freedom from everyday social customs. This semester, CFE encourages its participants to channel this spirit of subversive merriment on and off the runway.
For more specific aesthetic inspiration, designers have a broad playground to explore in the world of Commedia dell’Arte. Commedia dell’Arte was a form of professional theater that emerged in northern Italy during the 15th century, and rapidly gained popularity for its bombastic improvisational stylings. Plays were performed outside, with actors dressed in colorful costumes and often wearing distinctive masks. Even though many cast members had their faces covered, performances were extremely expressive, thanks in part to the over-the-top acrobatic movements of the actors. The masks themselves were also very expressive, featuring exaggerated eyebrows and noses. These masks weren’t just fancy accessories; they were crucial to understanding the performances, as each mask worn in Commedia dell’Arte is associated with a different kind of stock character, or archetype.
A few main archetypes crucial to the genre of Commedia include:
Innamorati: Young, upper-class lovers, these characters are often the main source of conflict within the story; they are naive, sympathetic, and romantic
Vecchi: Older men of society, including greedy merchants, boorish husbands, and inept doctors, these characters tend to cause comedic mishaps for the young lovers
Zanni: Lower class servants and clowns, these characters can be either witty of foolish, cunning or clumsy, or a combination of contradictions–the famous Harlequin fits into this category
Il Capitano: Cowardly but boastful military types, these characters are ridiculous braggarts whose grand tales greatly exaggerate their bravery and prowess
These and other colorful archetypes fill the world of Commedia with a variety of comedic possibilities. Even when conforming to a particular archetype, the characters found in Commedia often have their own unique traits and styles. By emulating the traditions of Commedia, designers have room to play with ideas of gender, class, morality, self-awareness, and more.
For example, the character Arlecchino (or Harlequin) wears an iconic costume of head-to-toe patchwork diamonds and an animalistic mask. Arlecchino’s patchwork clothes are meant to signify his relative poverty and his animal mask serves to dehumanize him, his flashiness and popularity as a character can elevate him over the upper-class characters and make him more relatable to an audience.
Through the stylistic hallmarks of theatrical traditions like the Festival of Fools and Commedia dell’Arte, CFE 8 asks designers to bend and break normative archetypes. What happens when the foolish servant becomes as powerful as a king? Or a naive romantic is more cunning than they let on? What kind of mask do you wear, and what truths or lies is it meant to communicate? How can you push these already exaggerated archetypes to their extreme?
Join CFE this December to see how the feast unfolds!
