It started with a skull and a heart, and the question if destruction can ever be redemption.
Francesca Romana Correale, founder and designer of Romana Correale, has begun a collaboration with five artists. The rules for the creative process were simple: ”Destroy one of my bags.” and ”No sex.”.
Here follows the poetic interpretation by Federica Zane Wilhelm, in her own words;
It started with a skull and a heart, and the question if destruction can ever be redemption.
Destruction is, after all, not just the physical breaking apart or physical annihilation.
It is also an intellectual dissection, a rearrangement of the mind, that allows us to see what is there, what is not, what is hidden.
It gives us possibilities: a heart becomes a handle to take us places, or a skull can accompany us visibly instead of hidden.
This search for possibilities is what I have seen in Francesca Romana Correale’s philosophy of fashion. It is possible that respect and beauty comes before economics; that beauty is built without unnecessary suffering. .
Her objects emanate the permanence and the fleeting, the humanity of us: we are, and then we are gone, not as if never was, but as if a shadow always stays in our place.
Destruction is intrinsic in our human nature. We carry the ruins of our passing, like a castle decayed; we see our losses and mourn in advance our departure. We regret to leave; we regret to stay.
This is what I’ve seen behind a bag: a woman who translates life in a product.
A woman whose love and respect for her work mirrors her love and respect for life.
Federica’s three poems:
Q&A while Walking alone
In the Bin
Link / image to Pinterest 3
Who is Federica Zanet Wilhelm?
Federica Zanet Wilhelm is a native of Italy, a writer, an artist and a mother of two children.
After many years working as a manager in Italy, she and her husband decided to move back to the US, where she pursued her passion for writing and poetry.
She is fluent in three languages, and still pursuing her Mandarin learning.
She writes mostly in English, her second language.
“Writing in a language that is not your mother tongue” she says, “is like seeing yourself from a different perspective. Like wearing a magnifying glass that finds the hidden details of one’s life. I have developed towards myself the curiosity of a stranger”.
Her writing is a translation of a life lived abroad, between countries and cultures,
She and her family have traveled extensively in Europe, America, Asia and Oceania.
They are currently living in Stockholm, Sweden.
