Greta Garbo exhibition opens in collaboration with Ferragamo

By by Hilary Alexander, Fashion Director Published: 1:47PM GMT 02 March 2010

Photo: REUTERS

An appealing exhibition, usually non-stop at the Triennale, in Milan, goes behind-the-scenes to exhibit the character secrets at the back of that majority puzzling of Hollywood stars, Greta Garbo.

The exhibition, the initial of the kind, is the outcome of a partnership in between Ferragamo, founded by the important shoemaker, Salvatore Ferragamo, who done majority of Garbos shoes, and Garbos great-nephew, Craig Reisfeld, son of her usually niece, Gray Reisfeld; with loans from museums, in isolation collections and skirt institutes.

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To many, Greta Garbo is remembered as the shade statue who shimmered on film, but in real-life was a recluse. Despite statute the Silent Era and the Golden Age of Hollywood, she gave no interviews, sealed no autographs, answered no fan-mail. She deserted Hollywood in the 1940s, and changed to New York, assumingly giving one of the majority important soundbites in history: "I wish to be alone". It was, in fact, a line of discourse from one of her movies, "Grand Hotel"; Garbo regularly insisted she had said, "I wish to be left alone" a pointed difference. A lone, unknown figure on the streets of New York, in unreasoning raincoat, low-brimmed hat and dim glasses, she was for years stalked by the paparazzi. She died in April, 1990. In 1999, the American Film Institute declared her the 5th biggest womanlike star of all time.

The muster includes movie clips, photographs and shade costumes, from movies such as "Inspiration", and the skirt ragged in "Queen Christina." One territory is clinging to Garbos face, that the French writer and philosopher, Roland Barthes, called "an thought ." She was photographed by, between others, Clarence Sinclair, and Cecil Beaton, a close familiarity in the 1950"s who famously took her pass photograph.

By far, the majority extraordinary arrangement is "Everyday Elegance", the "closet" non-stop to exhibit Garbos personal and endless - pick up of dresses, camel coats, raincoats, hats, scarves, and gloves; the cheap shirts, and the trousers that she had sewn in Hollywood, by Watson, a tailor referred to to both her and Marlene Dietrich, by her friend, Mercedes de Acosta.

All have been delicately recorded by the Reisfeld family, and are on show in a demeanour never been seen before. There are her Louis Vuitton suitcases, one of that was specifically written to hold boots majority of them Ferragamo; the designs by Pucci and Givenchy; and, of course, by the Russian-born, New York high-society couturier, Valentina, who lived in the same unit construction on East 52nd Street, combined majority of the mannish-tailored jackets that became a Garbo signature, and speedy her to skirt for herself and for amusement, not for others.

The muster shows Garbo as an awfully contemporary, non-conformist lady whose character stroke radiated from the shade to the street. The high-collared, face-framing gowns, done by Adrian, the Hollywood skirt designer, and the belted trench-coats she wore in Mata Hari, for example, were copied forever by her fans. Garbo was wakeful of, and insisted upon, timeless, classical and organic conform conform that would not see out of place today. "Garbo has the instinct of what suits her," pronounced Cecil Beaton.

Ferragamo, the shoemaker of dreams, crafted his initial span of made to order boots for Garbo in Hollywood in 1927; she one after another to wear his boots via her life. In his biography, Ferragamo recounts their assembly when she told him, I dont have any shoes. And I wish to walk. "In five sessions I combined for her a array of low-heeled, closed-toe styles," he recalled. " … as she paced the building of the reception room in the initial span she smiled at me as she smiled in "Ninotchka" … exactly she systematic seventy pairs."

The muster will go on at the Triennale in Milan until May, when it will move to the Ferragamo Museum, Palazzo Spini Feroni, in Florence, the companys domicile given 1938. It will sojourn on show there until September. Four pairs of boots in the Garbo-style are enclosed in the Ferragamo autumn/winter 2010/2011 collection.