The Tamesis
Etro held its show in the dark back room of a small restaurant in Brera, replacing the white cubes with low lighting and a vaguely Wunderkammer-esque vibe. The space is intimate and luxurious, filled with mannequins wearing Venetian papier-mâché animal heads—foxes, owls, rams, bears—turning the exhibit into a menagerie of well-dressed men with impeccable table manners.
Marco De Vincenzo explains that the masks pay homage to Etro’s 1997 photography campaign, which was designed by Kean Etro during his tenure as creative director. The idea hinges on physiognomy, the idea that human features often mirror animal ones, and that our most refined behaviors still rely on fairly primitive instincts. “I thought the images were so genius,” he said, so he brought it back. It feels less like an archival citation than a conscious throwback: weird, and a little campy. The series is called “Ani-men,” a portmanteau of “animal” and “human.”
DeVincenzo photographed his animated people in the dim light of the forest at dusk, which feels like their natural habitat. Their color palette includes rich browns, velvety greens and sensual garnets, hues that suggest camouflage, or at least discretion. They flitted between paisley-patterned velvet robes and loose pajamas. When they donned suits, they wore slim-lapel tailoring trimmed with feathers, paired with equally feathered vests. Here, feathers are a matter of heraldry. A pixelated jacquard pattern on plush knit highlights the deer’s adorable face. The paisley pattern is inescapably ubiquitous, less a pattern than a genetic marker that seals the Ani blood and ancestry.
The speech unfolds to a hypnotic score by Wendy Carlos, a composer DeVincenzo has long admired. “She composed the scores for ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘The Shining,’” he explains. “Her best-known albums were electronic arrangements of Bach, and I thought: ‘She’s doing exactly what I’m doing.’ She was both praised and criticized as an inventor who transformed existing music. That’s exactly what I’m doing at Etro: rewriting the past, reinventing the past, and remixing it into new rhythms.”
