The Sign Festival, from June 15th to 18th, features debates and events on eco-sustainable design and fashion, social responsibility, inclusion, food and wine, art, and photography in UNESCO World Heritage Sites. 2023’s special guests: Oliviero Toscani, Giuseppe Cruciani, and Alessandro Cecchi Paone.
The Il Barolo Fashion Show, now called SIGN Festival, has grown significantly over the years and concludes an eight-year journey that has seen us begin with sustainable fashion and, year after year, broaden the scope of our exploration of the Festival’s key themes to include other applied arts: design, photography, and contemporary art.
The Sign Festival, born in Barolo in 2015, has also spread over time throughout the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Langhe and Roero, an example of how protecting the landscape, the environment, and local traditions can be a lever for change and sustainable growth.
This year, continuing with sustainability and inclusion as guiding values for every initiative, we will host leading figures from the worlds of journalism, green design, art, and culture connected to the Festival’s themes. This is our underlying goal: to make our own small contribution, to leave a mark, to inspire everyone to build a better world. The 8th edition will place particular emphasis on ecodesign and inclusive design, on photography as an element of social denunciation – in dialogue with Oliviero Toscani – on inclusion and individual freedoms in dialogue with Alessandro Cecchi Paone and the caustic and provocative Giuseppe Cruciani.
Marina Garau
Artistic Director
of the Sign Festival
Alex Astegiano’s “Photographic Dialogues” at the WiMu Wine Museum in Barolo and “D/SIGN – Green Design Paths” at the Palazzo Mostre e Congressi “Giacomo Morra” in Alba are the international festival’s exhibitions; “The Colors of the Soul” is the Barolo Fashion Show’s Special Project for the Sign Festival.
The Barolo Fashion Show returns for its eighth edition, taking center stage in the heart of the “Langhe-Roero and Monferrato Wine Landscapes” site. It becomes the SIGN Festival, an international festival of change where eco-sustainable art, photography, design, and fashion, along with social responsibility, take center stage, condensing it into the valorization of the local culture and pursuing the goals of the Agenda 2030. SIGN will therefore take place on the UNESCO World Heritage hills from Thursday, June 15th to Sunday, June 18th, without ever overlooking the region’s food and wine excellence.
The inauguration of the SIGN Festival is scheduled for Thursday 15 June at 3:00 pm, at the Palazzo Mostre e Congressi ‘‘Giacomo Morra‘‘ in Alba – Piazza Medford, with a conference organised in collaboration with the Order of Journalists of Piedmont, on the theme « Communicating sustainability », focusing on environmental and social aspects, in the presence of important representatives of the world of business, non-profit, social and institutional sectors, including, among others, Giuseppe Bergesio, CEO of Iren Energia Spa, Enrico Collidà, and Francesco Cappello vice presidents of the CRC Foundation, and Gabriele Segre, director of the “Vittorio Dan Segre” Foundation, and Alessandro Longo, Head of Sustainability at Lombardini22, the largest Italian architecture firm.
The event, sponsored by the Piedmont Region and the Piedmont Regional Council, and the Municipalities of Alba and Barolo, is supported by the CRC Foundation, the Langhe-Roero and Monferrato Tourism Board, Confapi Cuneo, and CNA Cuneo, as well as many other technical partners and sponsors.
The President of the Region comments on the sIGN FESTIVAL
“Piedmont has launched a sustainable development strategy that encompasses all its areas, which we are implementing through PNRR projects and resources from the European Regional Development Fund, particularly €475 million earmarked for making our region increasingly green,” emphasized the President of the Piedmont Region, Alberto Cirio.
Events like the SIGN Festival are an important and original opportunity to explore and network virtuous experiences, even more so considering that this event is hosted by the splendid UNESCO hills, today an example in the world of beauty and sustainable coexistence between what is born from the hands of man and nature, which is the lifeblood of jewels like our vineyards.
Alberto Cirio
President of the Piedmont Region
La kermesse internazionale con Cecchi Paone e Giuseppe Cruciani will be full of round tables, shows, conferences, competitions for young designers and includes the inauguration of 2 exhibition events: « Photographic Dialogues » by Alex Astegiano, a well-known photographer from Savigliano, will be held at the Wi-Mu Wine Museum in Barolo from 16 June to 10 September, showcasing black and white photographic portraits of numerous personalities including Asia and Dario Argento, Luca Bizzarri, Francesco De Gregori, Abel Ferrara, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Werner Herzog, Reinhold Messner, Amos Oz, Iggy Pop, Enrico Rava, Lou Reed, Gustavo Zagrebelski, Vivienne Westwood and many others…
And also D/SIGN – Green Design Paths (we talk about it in depth HERE), curated by Romano Di Giusto, which will exhibit the “Sustainable and Inclusive Design Paths” and a Green Fashion showcase at Palazzo Morra starting Thursday, June 15.
Crucial moments of the event will be meetings and interviews that will be held at Palazzo Morra in Alba with internationally renowned figures such as the photographer Oliviero Toscani, who will be in live streaming with the public on Sunday 18 June at 3pm on the theme «Photography as a means of social denunciation», the journalist Giuseppe Cruciani who will present his book «Couples. Stories of Desire and Transgression » Sunday, June 18th at 9:30 PM, interviewed by Marta Perego, writer and journalist for XStyle (Mediaset). And again, at the Sign Festival, journalist and writer Alessandro Cecchi Paone, scheduled for Friday, June 16th at 7:30 PM, will talk about his journey on social issues, rights, and inclusion.
the great guests of the 2023 sign festival
Giuseppe Cruciani
Alessandro Cecchi Paone
Oliviero Toscani
SIGN’s shows and performances will be held daily and will also entertain the public for charitable purposes, such as the show “For Children” by Max Corfini, formerly of New Trolls, scheduled for Saturday, June 17th at 9:30 pm in Piazza Falletti in Barolo. Music and art will be presented in captivating, innovative, and inclusive ways to raise funds for policies against school dropout, through projects curated by the social enterprise Apdam (A Proposito di Altri Mondi).
The weekend will also feature hands-on workshops, including photography walks through the vineyards, hills, and vegetable gardens of Govone. The Vintage Market through the streets of Barolo is scheduled for Saturday, June 17th. Finally, a workshop on water saving will be held in the Council Chamber of La Morra with young people from Apdam and the Valdocco cooperative.
Don’t miss the live performances of the Barolo Fashion Show, featuring the Catwalk of Color, scheduled for 5:00 PM on Saturday, June 17, again in Alba at Palazzo Morra. This event is part of the larger special project “The Colors of the Soul” for sustainable and inclusive fashion. Through the fashion show, ordinary people will wear the color they feel best reflects their sensibilities and personalities, aiming to “make a mark” for the change they hope for.
On Sunday, June 18th, the grand finale of the eighth edition of the BFS, now SIGN Festival, will coincide, as in previous years, with the final of the Independent Style International Design Competition. This year, too, young talents will be invited to express their opinions on the themes of green design, sustainability, material recycling, and social inclusion, before a jury of national and international renown. This year’s competition also features an international partnership, thanks to the Festival’s collaboration with ANGI – Associazione Nuova Generazione Italo-Chinese (the Italian-Chinese New Generation Association) and the Design Institute of Wenzhou Polytechnic in China. The latter, having finally overcome the challenges posed by the health pandemic, is scheduled for November of this year to host a cultural exchange mission for the young winners of the 2020 edition through this year’s edition. We will discover the winners in the final hours of the 2023 Festival before the grand finale with Giuseppe Cruciani, who will close the 8th edition of the Festival.
