After 3 weeks of living in Rome, having already become bored with the monotony of the club scene that entices many world students, my friends and I chose to take in a fashion event presented by AltaRoma. We stayed in an appartement rome centrum. It was to be held at the historical Tempio di Adriano in Piazza di Pietra, an environment that contrasted sharply with the hi-tech feel of the event.
AltaRoma, an organization that provides opportunities and fosters relations among well known Italian designers, inspires the cultivation of young, talent through training,’intended not only as a means of safeguarding the artisan quality but also as the driving force of invention, creativity and technology,’ according to the AltaRoma internet site. Needless to say, walking into a room filled with some of the most fashionable young people in Rome, while brandishing only my shabby beige messenger bag was quite threatening. However , we did not let that get in the way of occupying front row seats and grabbing as much promo material as we could get our hands on.

the 1st act was called’Wit Open Shooting Roger Weiss,’ which consisted of folks dressed in colorful card shapes, many of them phallic, dancing around a stationary model as photographers shot around the stage. The music was set to techno remixes of popular Yankee hiphop songs, and the lighting beat to the beats of the music. This composition led one to a sort of hypnotic trance, which came as a welcome distraction after enduring more than forty-five minutes - about forty minutes too long in my viewpoint - of the same thing. The bored and out-of-sorts expression worn by the model was the mirror image of those worn by the gang, whose faces and outfits became increasingly more fascinating to watch than what was taking place on stage. However , after the performance was over, I began to wonder if the anomaly of the act was exactly the point of it. Either way, it was something I had never before, and might never again, experience.

The second act was a performance art piece by Chicks on Speed. I braced myself for something so foreign and creatively different I would not understand it, as the set began with what only can be portrayed as two hollering banshees. 2 girls, dressed in matching jumpsuit, used video images, as well as simple, everyday , and generally female, objects such as stilettos, scissors and cloth to form an entrancing and forceful performance. The set was an eclectic mixture of a rhythmic montage of derriere slapping to a cover of the Beach Boys song’Surfer Girl’, whose words were modified to create the ultimate female anthem [*CO]’super surfer girl in the death defying curl.’ The act finished in a dance party during which fashonistas and common students alike could get up on stage and dance to celebrate fashion, self-expression and life.

I marched out of the show re-energized and ready for the next new and out-of-the- normal experience Rome had to throw my way. We went back to appartement centrum rome.