Blumarine Spring/Summer 2017

“Letting go to explore the desert, under the sun, with a hat, in glaring heat: a romantic, rebellious idea,” read the show notes at Blumarine. Tina Modotti, the glamorous Italian photographer, model, and revolutionary activist was also an influence for this collection. Modotti died from congestive heart failure after leaving a dinner party hosted by famed poet Pablo Neruda in Mexico City. Neruda wrote the epitaph, which can now be found on her tombstone in the Mexican capital. It reads: “Pure your gentle name, pure your fragile life, bees, shadows, fire, snow, silence and foam, combined with steel and wire and pollen to make up your firm and delicate being.” While this collection was mostly delicate in nature, with florals on soft chiffons, pretty pink ginghams, and white eyelet dresses with ruffled necklines, one would have to be fairly brave and adventurous to wear a tiny bralette top or a ruched crop-top with fleshy pink spandex leggings in public. If there wasn’t much of the steel and wire to illustrate Modotti’s determination, there was plenty to represent the gentleness Neruda suggested.