Portraits of Eva Perón in her different facets

The person dresses to be read, so that another knows who he is or pretends to be. This is how the sociologist Erwin Goffman taught in 1956. In an essay on this compilation, Mariano López Seoane recounts that Jeniffer López sings “don’t let my diamonds confuse them, I’m still Jenny, the one from the neighborhood”. Eva Perón would have told J.Lo: “I want to look pretty for my fats.” A decade before Goffman, Eva Duarte knew that her presentation made her be seen, heard, understood or not, in a certain way. Perhaps that understanding arose from having been a magazine model, a radio and film actress and having assumed the representation of heroines in history. But, when one observes in the wide iconographic gallery of this book, the number of roles that she had to assume when she became Evita, it is no longer a question of mere representation but of passion and genius. She is the youth activist, the first lady, the athlete, the diplomat, the great lady. Once, with her black satin dress in front of a crowd, Lali Esposito must have felt like this in a similar outfit. Eva Duarte knew how to chat from her clothes, walk in a shirt, or in a tailored suit, to speak hand to hand with the shirtless. Let British Norman Hartell tell her when to wear a hat. Follow with mischievous complicity the dictates of Jamandreu. And Paquito was not her only dressmaker, there were also Ana Pombo and Bernarda Meneses. She allowed that, after they discovered that she was an international influencer, Mr. Dior, Rochas, Balmain, Fath and Ferragamo did not stop giving her, with interest, clothes, hats and shoes. Evita, Patti LuPone and Madonna knew, gives prestige. The “standard-bearer of the humble” had groups of ladies who said “that capeline is not for her”, adding the corresponding name. “Avoid in front of the mirror. Essays on fashion, style and politics in Eva Perón” brings together 7 valuable essays for the variety of points of view, edited and prefaced by art historian Marcelo Marino.