From 16 July to 22 October 2023, the MA*GA of Gallarate (VA), in collaboration with the Missoni Archive, presents FASHION REPORT: from ALFA to MISSONI, an exhibition project for the rearrangement of the Ottavio Missoni Tapestry Room by the Missoni Archive.

The exhibition is part of the ARCHIVIFUTURI programme. Festival of the Contemporary Archives second edition, in which the Missoni Archive participated as an event venue, hosting a guided tour and an augmented reality experience, curated by the artistic director Luca Missoni and the manager Nicoletta Bettolini.

The exhibition offers 22 shots, taken in the studio between 1967 and 1970, by Alfa Castaldi (pseudonym of Alfonso Castaldi, 1926 - 1995), considered one of the fathers of Italian fashion photography.

The images had been chosen and reprinted by the artist himself in 1978 for a tribute to the Missonis on the occasion of the Maison's 25th year of activity. It is a full expression of the documentation of the affirmation of the Missoni Style: the first experiments with knit-fabric and jacquard, with mesh and zig-zag work, experiments with dyed slub yarns, printed jersey and nude-look flocking.

Alfa Castaldi is part of that group of creatives who documented the transformation of Italian cultural life in the sixties and the affirmation of Made in Italy in the world. Frequent frequenter of the mythical Giamaica bar in Milan, in the mid-fifties he began his activity as a photographer documenting new artistic expressions, writers, cinema characters and culture in the broadest sense.

In 1958 Castaldi met Anna Piaggi, a journalist and fashion editor, with whom he married in New York in 1962. Thanks to her, Alfa met Ottavio and Rosita Missoni, one of the main pioneers of Italian pret-à-porter, and began to photograph their creations. His elegant and at the same time spontaneous works will become part of the annals of Italian and international photography.