Italian fashion designer Kean Etro this week surprised fashion buyers and press with a finale of vivid food prints in a spring 2015 menswear collection that matched the nutritional theme underlying Milan Expo 2015. The collection is set to hit stores before gates open to the world fair next May. Pasta, clams, fruit, lasagna, fish and vegetables were splashed in appetizing, bright palettes across trousers, t-shirts, parkas, trench coats, slippers, track suits and gym bags for a runway show that paid hommage to Italian cuisine entitled, "We are what we eat".
Even materials used in the collection were raised from the earth.
"The first pieces were all clothes made from natural fibers," said Kean Etro, sitting backstage at a table spread and set in Etro Home products.
"Bamboo, nettle, banana, corn soybeans to say that we can return to biodiversity and allow the earth to have different cycles," said Etro. Cultural actitivities and business generated by "Fuori Expo" - events staged to coincide with the Universal Exposition but taking place outside of the fairgrounds - are expected to add about 1.6 billion euros of production, 500 million euros of sales, and roughly 19,000 jobs to the local economy, according to a study by the Milan Chamber of Commerce and SDA Bocconi university.
Italian celebrity chef Massimo Bottura and Eataly food market entrepreneur Oscar Farinetti last weekend presented a preview of the local producers and culinary culture offered in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna.
Bottura's restaurant in Modena, the Osteria Francescana, reinterprets regional Emilia-Romagna cuisine and is ranked third among the world's 50 best restaurants in a contest sponsored by San Pelligrino and Acqua Panna.
Under a yellow and blue circus tent last weekend - a salute to the Federico Fellini film 8 ½, located in Federico Fellini Square in the Adriatic city of Rimini - Bottura, Farinetti, Rimini Mayor Andrea Gnassi and Emilia Romagna Governor Vasco Errani unveiled plans to showcase culinary traditions and local producers along the Via Emilia - a 329-kilometer stretch from Rimini to Milan - for Milan Expo 2015. The two-day preview event offered a "circus market of flavours and handmade things" from 100 high end food producers, while a maxi-screen displayed images of show cooking, as the chefs prepared tastings for customers at five euros each. Twenty-four chefs - 12 from Emilia Romagna and 12 from abroad - will transform Emilia Romagna gastronomy with their own hands for Expo.
"Today I witnessed how to do tourism in Italy. One pairs informality with authority," said Farinetti.
"In this project there is a decisive piece for the future of Italy," said Errani, who explained that the key concept was the "integration of the territory, beginning with production, the great cultural quality, which is gastronomy and the future of this country. We will go to Expo this way and we will change representation of Italy to the world". The theme of the world fair, which runs May 1 to October 31, 2015, is "Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life," and is focused on food security, sustainable agricultural practices, nutrition and battling hunger, as well as on dishing out the best edible fare of the world's culinary cultures.
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