20 TRAJES 20 VESTITS 20 DESIGNS

times they had to live in: Marina Tsvetáyeva and Anna
Ajmátova. The beauty of the poems of these two women,
favoured by songwriters and other keen observers of the
trials, tribulations and joys of living on one and the other
side of the world, will be clothed by Juanjo Oliva and
Roberto Verino.
For his part, Anton Chekhov establishes ties with the
great writers of the Spanish-language literature that
appeared in the Americas, including the most recent
Nobel Prize in Literature winner Mario Vargas Llosa,
whose character Urania, from The Feast of the Goat, is
dressed by Agatha Ruíz de la Prada and surrounded by
the creations of Devota & Lomba, Lemoniez, Victorio
& Lucchino and Jesús del Pozo. Lastly, the poetry of
Antonio Gamoneda, dressed by Davidelfín, and the
“woman soldier” from Olvidado Rey Gudú, by Spain’s
recent Cervantes Prize winner Ana María Matute, form the
starting point of a gallery of contrasting, powerful female
characters: Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Carlota Fainberg,
Carmen Martín Gaite’s Snow Queen, María Zambrano’s
“La Loca” and the unforgettable Natàlia from Mercè
Rodoreda’s The Time of the Doves, in outfits designed by
Roberto Torretta, Miguel Palacio, Amaya Arzuaga, Custo
Barcelona, and more. Underlying this creative display is
the completely human science of Nikolái Gógol’s Nevsky
Prospect, dressed Angel Schlesser.
For writers, providing a description of the way their
characters are dressed has always been a way of placing
the reader and the action at a specific point in time: and
time is regarded by many as the cornerstone of fashion.
Writers and intellectuals alike have used this device more
often than we might imagine. A list might be headed by
Miguel de Cervantes, closely followed by Marcel Proust,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nikolái Gógol and a number of the
authors featured in this exhibition. For fashion designers,
the idea of clothing quotes from great works of literature
has given a new boost to their creative process.
It was Mallarmé who said that fashion is the goddess of
appearance. However, it is also a cultural phenomenon
that gives us an insight into the ideas of the world at a
particular point in history, and the psychology of people
as manifested by their dress. Fashion tells us of the
past and projects us into the future. The way we dress
–this mark of civilisation, this integral and indissoluble
part of that which we call culture– becomes something
more than a second skin. Having outgrown the
traditional categorisation of the arts, imposed from
the times of Aristotle to the present day, we are now
witnessing a dispersion of languages and a multiplicity
of media, and fashion bursting out with its own,
immediate character, benefitting from the consolidated
democratisation it has enjoyed ever since the invention
of the prêt à porter concept.
Dressing a poem, a character, the magic of that vague
moment that only literature gives us: this is what
20 Designs is all about. It is an aesthetic experience, a
place where one group, as creators, exists alongside the
other, as inspirers of literary characters. Latin American
authors that Spain has adopted as their own, and
Russian authors to whom we always return in admiration,
as they broaden our cultural horizons and increase our
ability to understand the human condition. A shared
language and a boundless phraseology of shapes and
colours. And, lastly, poetry pouring out a splendour that is
timeless and placeless. Poetry as the ultimate refinement
of language, the deepest place, the essence of the word
and that which, in the end, gives the greatest freedom to
the creator. And, above all (or ranking with it), the clothes,
directly inspired by a literary quote.
All of them help us to enjoy and take pleasure in an
exhibition that invites us to find out more about our
designers and writers. An exhibition that becomes an
example of intercultural dialogue, a Tower of Babel for the
senses. After all, their sheltering sky is one and the same.