Asnate Smeltere. Continuity
“Ola Foundation” Exhibition
20 March - 4 July
Riga’s visual character is shaped not only by light and architecture, but also by the layers left by time, its restrained Nordic tonal quality, the rhythm of the city, and the people in its streets. The way they move and dress, their presence in the urban space. How restraint and, at the same time, nuanced sensitivity in the details of their clothing come together in their appearance, creating a distinctive, difficult-to-define elegance through the ages. Many have noticed it and tried to put it into words, but these epithets have often proved too loud or clichéd.
As it launches a cycle of exhibitions dedicated to prominent figures in Latvian fashion, Ola Foundation is also seeking an answer to the question - what is the Latvian fashion code? Through highly personal stories, highlighting the connection between individual and collective aesthetics.
The first exhibition in the cycle is dedicated to Asnate Smeltere, - a truly unique figure in Latvian fashion. Her relationship with fashion has lasted for more than fifty years and began seemingly by chance, - at the age of 15, when she became a model at the Riga Model House and later also in the magazine “Rīgas Modes.” It continued as an uninterrupted presence – from model, Asnate became a designer and entrepreneur, creating the now-iconic Riga style label “Salons A”. In the first years of restored Latvian independence, it was not only a fashion space, but also a space for culture and style. “Salons A”, whose interior was designed by architect Zaiga Gaile, was a space with the city’s most symbolic shop window. Behind it, intense activity unfolded every day – Asnate and “Salons A” helped shape the wardrobes of many diplomats and cultural figures in restored Latvia. It served as both a fashion and an art exhibition space.
Asnate often emphasizes that fashion is a likeness that unites us all at a particular time. Her experience allows us to see fashion not only as a sign of visual identity and an industry, but also as an environment in which relationships between people and time are formed. Fashion as a language, a subtle network of style and feelings that connects the personal, the visible, and the invisible.
An important place in the exhibition is given to Ilga Sūna’s (1931 – 2021) photographs from the period of the Riga Model House. Chance also played an important role in their creation – the precisely captured moment that records the process, or the behind-the-scenes. Ilga Sūna’s photographs reveal the backstage – the space in which fashion is created before it becomes an image in a magazine or a presentation on the fashion “catwalk.” These photographs offer a close-up view of the rhythm of the era, the small details and mise-en-scènes unique to it that shape life.
The exhibition is a multilayered story - about the magazine “Rīgas Modes,” which once held legendary status and whose visual image and content, thanks to circulation figures unimaginable in today’s reality, largely shaped the aesthetics of its time and of Riga as a style metropolis. About the Riga Model House, which – although physically located behind the “Iron Curtain,” was a true epicenter of creativity that sensed and embodied the spirit of the era in the best possible way. Its contradictions, emotionality, desire to break free, and ability to convey a message – through color, nuances in the silhouette of a garment, and the model’s movement.
Seen through the prism of Asnate Smeltere’s experience, fashion is revealed in the exhibition as a living process – an uninterrupted conversation between people, environment, and time.
Exhibition curators – Una Meistere and Ilze Pīlēna
Graphic design – Linda Lūse
Exhibition architecture – Martins Vizbulis and Uldis Pīlēns
Special thanks: Guntis Lēmanis, Kristaps Pētersons, Liene Kupča, Agnese Upenika, Jeļena Strahova, Agita Putāne, Iveta Ķimse, Ingūna Smildzere, Māra Vimba, Vaira Lece,Gunita Smirnova, Linda Zaļā, the Latvian Museum of Photography, the Latvian National Museum of Art, Samsung
Photo : Ilga Sūna
