It isn’t easy to write about the sublime, its elusive nature or ephemeral qualities. Writing about couturier Luke Azzopardi’s work feels like it should be simple but never is.
Standing over six feet tall with tumbling locks of golden hair and a penchant for beautiful, flowing robes and gold rings, Azzopardi himself is a living, breathing exhibit, an epithet to his work.
Shrouded in drama and mystery, his latest show entitled On the Museum’s Ruins found its roots in Keats’s poem Isabella and the Pot of Basil a tale of a dark, all-consuming passion worthy of a Gothic fairy-tale.
For those not as enamoured of Keats’s poetry as Azzopardi is, the tale of Isabella and her star-crossed lover Lorenzo is as gruesome as it gets. Isabella’s family want her to marry into a rich family but instead she ends up falling in love with one of her brother’s employees, Lorenzo. Her brothers discover their affair and kill Lorenzo.
Distraught and crazed with grief, Isabella doesn’t know what to do till she is visited by Lorenzo’s ghost. Isabella exhumes her dead lover’s body and buries his head in a pot of basil, which she obsessively looks after while she pines for her lost love.
Azzopardi did not only take Isabella’s story and build on it, but also took advantage of the imposing setting of the National Museum of Archaelogy’s Grand Salon to show a 28 look couture collection that showcased art in motion in what is usually a motionless setting. It was an interesting choice of venue, one which made the narrator’s voice at the beginning of the show sound hauntingly intense.
It is almost impossible to recreate the collective intake of the audience’s breath when Model Gabriella Mifsud entered the salon
The looks tumbled out one after another, all different yet all made to the same high standards that we are used to seeing from Azzopardi. Most of them made use of different high-end couture fabrics sourced from Camilleri Paris Mode and the studio teamed up with Philip Sultana to create a set of custom printed fabrics based on the Gran Salon’s wall paintings for two of the looks and artist Gabriel Buttigieg for another two of the looks.
Particularly interesting were Buttigieg’s contributions: his jaw dropping ‘naked body dress’ saw what looked like a thick, stiff fabric being used as a canvas for the drawing of a nude body. His second piece, a candid white gown liberally doused in red paint, was most definitely the pièce de résistance of the night.
It is almost impossible to recreate the collective intake of the audience’s breath when model Gabriella Mifsud entered the salon, looking like one of Charles Dickens’s well-known literary creations.
Indeed, complete with tulle veil and wide-eyed stare, who could not think of crazed Lady Havisham in her wedding gown waiting for the lover who had jilted her and never returned? Or poor Isabella, watering her lover’s head every day, covered in the betrayal of her brothers, knowing that she would never be able to reach the altar with the man she loved.
With a colour palette that varied from funereal black to the chartreuse green that Azzopardi loves, the collection did not stop pulling punches.
Silk gowns were held together with bejewelled hand straps, opulent jewel tone orange velvet was cut into medieval column styles and a silk brocade dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Talitha Getty took the room by surprise.
Who could forget the white Monsieur Dior tulle dress tied with a beautiful floppy bow at the back which made the wearer look as light as air and as delectable as a cream puff?
Cut in such a way as to flatter and skim the curves of a woman’s body, this collection even introduced many pieces that can be worn well by the larger woman.
Never one to shy away from drama, Azzopardi did not hold back from combining different fabrics with unexpected designs. He reconstructed and reworked pieces with finesse and although there was a somewhat Gothic and medieval strain throughout his work, he was able to show his versatility by putting everything together in such a way as to make the pieces timeless.
Couture is not a word that one should use lightly, yet Azzopardi’s pieces are as individually animated and full of character as the man himself. Intricately constructed, opulently glamorous, beautifully put together, On the Museum’s Ruins reminded everyone once again why Luke Azzopardi is considered to be one of the best dreamers Malta’s ever seen.