A non-book book, experimental, artistic but never didactic; an “emotional object” of inspiration and design, made up more of free associations – thematic, graphic and photographic… – than of logical and orderly arguments, like a fabric that is interwoven of different kinds and consistencies of threads, combined together by proximity, and similarity or contrast: Tonello has chosen to celebrate its first thirty-five years of history with a tribute.
To the world of denim and its innovators. To a fabric that has revolutionized the way we dress, work and live. To a garment that was born as clothing for work and has now become an irreplaceable presence in everyone’s wardrobe.
This, therefore, is a product for connoisseurs, for true “denim lovers” who have shared its history or are enthusiastically in love with it. This unusual book, in fact, in its own way, tells a story. And it does so, for example, by presenting some of the figures who have “made denim”, in Italy and in the world. Through graphic portrait sketches done with affectionate irony: from company shareholders and members of the Tonello family to Adriano Goldschmied, Piero Turk, Mariette Hoitink (HTNK), Maria Cristina Pavarini (Sportswear International), Koizumi Sumio (Edwin Co.), Bart Sights (Levi Strauss & Co.) and Andrew Olah (Olah Inc.).
Or by narrating the story of denim’s evolution through the detachable illustrated posters that represent the journey of jeans fabric from Genoa to the “new world” and from there to a future made up of sustainability and health. Or even by an immersion into a real narration like – “Horses, Denim, and us” – which was written for the occasion by Giorgio Falco. This narration transports the eye to a continuous visual phantasmagoria of photographic experimentation that has nothing to do with classical “catalog-style” photography. Here the contrasting and alternating black and white and color of machines and people ”in candid shots”, that is, at work and never posed, reinterpret and rediscover, with the wonder and magic of a “first time”, the daily life of a company that has managed to become a point of reference for the entire industry. Illustrations, shades of color, suggestions and different languages, intersections of paper or of changes in color tones or colors overlapped to create other colors; alterations allowed in the code of some files in order to create visual breaks in continuity; real pictorial and artistic experimentation, provocative and “open” to the interpretation of non-readers; photos and graphics that tell the story from denim’s point of view that, ideally, looks at us from inside the baskets of Tonello’s machines… It would be impossible to tell about this strange, unusual, unpredictable object. Because, after all, as Magritte would say, this book is not a book.
Many have been involved in the realization of this project: Piero Turk was the special supervisor and coordinator; Metodo Studio dealt with the graphics design and layout; Lucio Schiavon produced the illustrations, Marco Zanta, the photographs and, as mentioned above, Giorgio Falco wrote an original story for the occasion. In short, a real “dream team” that has made possible a “something” that is, above all, and not surprisingly, the interpretation of a dream to leaf through, touch and feel: with hands and eyes, and with the heart.
1000 COPIES OF “FROM HERE TO THERE” WILL BE PRINTED AND PRESENTED IN A SPECIAL PREVIEW AT THE AMSTERDAM DENIM DAYS, FROM APRIL 11TH – 17TH, 2016.