Venice will this week welcome thousands more visitors from across the world with the opening of its 60th Biennale, exhibiting the work of more than 330 participating artists from some 90 countries. But much like London’s Frieze, Miami’s Art Basel, or Milan’s Salone del Mobile, the trade show has increasingly positioned itself as a fashion-adjacent event. (Burberry is the headline sponsor of the British Pavilion, Tod’s will support the Italian pavilion, and Louis Vuitton is hosting its own exhibition at the espace Louis Vuitton.)
And so great swathes of celebrities, influencers and global brand ambassadors will soon rub shoulders with the art world, among them Salma Hayek—the wife of Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault—who last night attended a pre-opening dinner at the Fondazione Cini dressed in vertiginous platforms and an hourglass gown cut from tendrilous sequins. Those famous proportions perhaps rivalling some of the city’s most stomach-soaring architecture, Hayek—like Hunter Schafer’s ode to van Gogh last week—has managed to align her own image with the might of fine art itself.
I do wonder what the more prescriptivist art types—ie. those who tend to cloak themselves in a more austere, Yohji Yamamoto sort of look—make of all these famous people in their shimmering sequins posing on step and repeats. There’s a lot the art world can learn from fashion (and vice versa), and when the two converge it creates a real see-and-be-seen spectacle. That’s something Salma Hayek—the twinkling nexus in her strapless bodycon—knows all too well.
This article first appeared on British Vogue.
