Futuring Venice: A One on One Fashion and Tourism Experience

Venice is one of the most investigated city in tourism studies for reasons that include overtourism, ecological survival, and housing exodus. Conversely, fashion studies are hardly interested in the relationship between this city and fashion in the 21st century. This article aims to fill this gap by investigating the relationships of fashion with tourism and urban space in Venice, through the eyes of those who are active in the conception, production and sale of fashion in the lagoon city. Can fashion be part of a new idea of the city? Can it represent a redirective practice, which stimulates compatible and sustainable relations between residential and tourist areas? The cases analysed in this article tell of experiencing access to fashion in a dimension that is defined here as one on one, in which the human and urban bodies are taken care of through a tailor-made approach. They represent an instrument of integration between local and global dimensions, capable of living with stereotypes, finding a new normality in the extraordinary of Venice, a daily life, as opposed to a rapid and temporary consumption of the city.