Italian Fashion: The Art and Business of Elegance
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Is IT not possible that Italian fashion had much to do with restoring the popularity of Italy abroad in the years just after the War? We had been defeated and we were poor, penitent, and without justification. At that time, our good points and our suffering had not found expression. Roberto Rossellini was still putting together the fragments of his film Open City, which he had shot secretly in rented rooms and in the outskirts of Rome, using a momentarily deserted betting-hall. Cartier-Bresson, Coffin, Leslie Gill and those who came after them had not yet photographed the mutilated beggar-boys, nor had our artists, from Giorgio Morandi to Marino Marini, emerged from their country hide-outs. John Horne Burns had not yet written The Gallery, and the translators were still to turn their attention to the novels of Berto, Pratolini, Vittorini and Moravia.
That was before the allied officers’ messes had discovered that Neapolitan cooks could ennoble even canned rations, and could infuse instant coffee with some of the excellence of caffé espresso. And yet, among the WACs and WAFs, the nurses and auxiliaries of the victorious armies, women were beginning to modify their uniforms with a pair of earrings, a handkerchief, or a buckle. Thus, before our country’s regeneration was evident, the odd handkerchief or pair of sandals appeared as witnesses on our behalf.
It was an enterprising elegance, created out of rags. Emilio Pucci of Florence, a veteran of war and exile, suggested to his friends new ways of putting to good use haberdasher’s scraps and odds and ends from the wardrobe. Clairette Gallotti, who had just lost both husband and fortune in Africa, rediscovered the ancient looms of Capri and, gathering about her other women left poor and alone like herself, wove materials which, for lack of dye, were always black — as if it were hope that was missing.
The famous “ 1947 Black” was created by Emilio Pucci with Clairette Gallotti’s materials; it won two pages of admiration in Harper’s Bazaar. This black did not so much symbolize mourning as, if you will, the stubbornness of elegance. On beaches that were still menaced by drifting mines, and along shattered, bombed-out promenades, black slacks and blouses, black tunics and hats were gracefully displayed. The protagonists in this struggle for refinement were our princesses and our working girls who, with perfect, equality, learned to work and to dress.
The first foreign journalists to reach Italy in 1947, even if they represented high fashion magazines, were amazed to find such a profusion of titles — Marchese Pucci, Baronessa Gallotti, Contessa Gabriella Di Robilant, Marchesa Olga De Grésy — and at the same time such a positively feudal solidarity between the owners and the workers. Many of the new ventures in fashion design were started by ladies who wished to make work for the people on their estates, or, as in the case of Contessa Di Frassineto, evacuees from nearby areas: the Rovezzano Mill was founded to provide employment for the displaced persons who were squatting in the ruins of a country house.
Italian cutters and seamstresses had always had impeccable craftsmanship. The next step was logical, but difficult — to win for Italy a reputation for brilliant high fashion design which might challenge the long-established leadership of Paris. With his first show in his villa in Florence, G. B. Giorgini served notice that Italy must be watched. Giorgini, of course, was only one among many in what has become a sensational movement. Italy now has a thriving fashion guild with a number of related organizations, and a fine variety of “schools,” if we may borrow this term from the painters and apply it to trends in apparel design.
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As despairing husbands the world over well know, in haute couture fluidity and rapid change are endemic. Thus, it is difficult to make labels stick on the different schools, or to expect that the same names will be grouped in the same way from season to season. But, as of this moment — and without regard to precedence — let me attempt a rough division under such headings as: the “Rational Revolutionaries” . . . the “Voluptuous Conservatives” . . . the school of “Rational Suavity.”
Prominent in the first group, the “Rational Revolutionaries,” are Simonetta, Fabiani, Capucci, and Marucelli. All of them have a great flair for the sophisticated novelty which adds a distinctive note to an international tendency. To accuse them of borrowing would be an injustice; such gifted creators do not need to refresh themselves with the ideas of others. Certainly it was Germana Marucelli who first suggested an Empire line, though her lead was overlooked because everyone else was absorbed in the New Look. We must concede, however, that Balenciaga has had, and still has, a considerable influence on the Italians — a fact which is surely justified by the Latin roots which we have in common. Nevertheless, a “Simonetta” or a “Fabiani” can be recognized on sight, among the crowd at an airport or in a theater, while those frail actresses, such as Elsa Martinelli, whom Capucci encloses in his woolen or silken cocoons, have a style that is unmistakable.
Nobody can accuse the “Voluptuous Conservatives” of affinities, either elective or otherwise. In this group we find Veneziani, Schuberth, Fontana, Antonelli, Curiel, Mingolini, Gugenheim, and their many adherents. Anxious to follow the wishes of their clients — not to frustrate them — they put the accent on coquetry, and one cannot imagine Linda Christian, Ava Gardner, Gina Lollobrigida, and many other famous beauties deprived of the veils and sparkling arabesques which these designers have created for them. The “ Voluptuous Conservatives” do not look to Paris, nor do they accept hints from New York; let us say that they uphold ancient convictions: the waist must be slender, the neckline décolléte; the texture rich and captivating.
Correctness, discretion, and technique are the essence of “Rational Suavity.” Carosa, Garnett, De Luca, Guidi, Biki, and a few others are always prepared to sacrifice an effect which they think too brilliant, and to reconsider too clamorous a success. Biki is the friend and confidante, as well as the dress designer, of Maria Meneghini Callas, for whom she made both the robes for Norma and the little tailleurs for her transatlantic flights. But Callas is an exception for Biki, who cultivates the patronage of the wives of heavy industry, the “grandes bourgeoises” who would so have amused Stendhal. And while De Luca creates Audrey Hepburn’s Italian wardrobe (her French one is by Givenchy), he usually concerns himself with ladies who run art galleries, or those who attend intellectual conferences— and with dowager duchesses. Eleanora Garnett, who sends off three hundred made-tomeasure suits and dresses to her New York branch every week, provides a close link between two very different worlds.
Apart from these schools, there are the “Individualists": Fernanda Gattinoni, who dresses so many ambassadors’ wives with deliberate simplicity; Clara Centinaro, who is said to dress Signora Gronchi; the tailor Litrico, who, without much doubt, ministered to Khrushchev and specializes in our horsewomen; La Gregoriuna and Baratta and many others in Turin, Genoa, Milan, and Naples.
We still have the traditional dressmakers who buy in Paris and copy, but mass production is getting under way, and more and more boutiques are springing up. In Rome, both in the ancient center of the city and in the new suburban quarters, there are many little shops where for five or six thousand lire (nine or ten dollars), payable in installments, you can buy Parisian trapezes in cotton, or the original designs of the proprietor himself.
I began by saying that Italy might owe much of its initial popularity in the postwar years to fashion. Today the position is somewhat reversed, and Italian fashion undoubtedly owes part of its popularity to the enthusiasm abroad for grissini breadsticks and Parmesan cheese, Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani, the sculpture of Marini and Manzù, and the music of Vivaldi. If Emilio Pucci’s aprons and blouses may now be bought in thirty-seven different countries, perhaps it is because everywhere the flavor of Italian living — the tempo italiano — has so strong an appeal. The bottle of Chianti in its little straw basket, the recording of the Sicilian singer Modugno, even film star Giulietta Masina’s bangs, are different expressions of a phenomenal popularity which naturally gives us in Italy keen pleasure.
Translated by Patrick Brasier-Creagh