Italian Fashion

 

Italian city-states such as Florence were centers of fashion innovation during the Renaissance. However, for centuries after that, Paris dominated the world of fashion. Of course, fashion was produced in Italy at the time, but it was usually based on French styles. Only since the 1950s has Italy established itself as a source of fashionable clothing for the rest of the world.

Influence of the Italian Look

The emergence of the "Italian look" drew on significant historical advantages, such as the existence of fine craft traditions in textile production, luxury leather goods, high-quality tailoring, and other fashion-related trades. Mariano Fortuny's artistic textiles and garments were well known internationally in the decades preceding World War II, as were Ermenegildo Zegna's superb men's woolen suiting fabrics and Ferragamo and Gucci's fine accessories. Nonetheless, the fact that Italy's most famous prewar designer, Elsa Schiaparelli, was based in Paris is symbolic of the country's relative invisibility on the international fashion scene.

As Nicola White documents in her important book Reconstructing Italian Fashion, modern Italian fashion first rose to international prominence with the rapid post-World War II war reconstruction of the textile industry and the rise of ready-to-wear clothing production. The rise of Italian fashion after WWII was not coincidental. With the support of the Italian government, a number of Italian manufacturers made a concerted effort to establish an export-oriented fashion industry that would play an important role in Italy's postwar economic reconstruction. Beginning in 1949, fashion shows aimed at capturing the attention of foreign journalists were staged to highlight Italy's artistic and cultural heritage. A pivotal fashion show in Florence in July 1951 drew nearly 200 American buyers and journalists, as well as another hundred from Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Journalists and department store buyers attending the Paris fashion week started taking the train down to Florence. Fashion shows were created in part to meet the demand for creatively constructed, well-made ready-to-wear combining distinction and informality, adapted to the American love of sunny weather and colorful, reasonably priced garments. Originally, the Italian alta mode (couture) houses also showed in Florence, but the couturiers soon began to show in Rome, where many of them were members of Roman society, for a variety of reasons. They organized and presented their own unique creations for la dolce vita there.

The "Italian Look" was enthusiastically promoted by American journalists, who associated it with casual yet aristocratic elegance. Capri pants, sandals, gold jewelry, and stylish sunglasses were said to be essential elements of Italian style. Italian fashion provided an appealing (and less expensive) alternative to Paris couture.

Italian Fashion and Film

The commercial and cultural ties between Italy and America were crucial in the postwar development of Italian fashion. The close relationship between the worlds of film and fashion was one manifestation of this. The Fontana Sisters, for example, who opened their couture house in Rome in 1944, became synonymous with Hollywood glamour. Fontana dresses were worn by Ava Gardner in the 1953 film The Barefoot Contessa. Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Kim Novak all wore Fontana Sisters evening gowns, and Margaret Truman married in a Fontana Sisters wedding gown in 1956. Emilio Schuberth, who was born in Naples in 1904 and opened a couture house in Rome in 1938, was also influential in the glamorous world of film. Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren were among his clients.

Italian Designers

Emilio Pucci debuted in the fashion industry in 1948, quickly becoming known for his kaleidoscopic textile designs, which were turned into "featherweight" jersey scarves, shirts, and other separates. Pucci contributed to the reputation of Italian designers for simple, comfortable, and body-conscious clothing. His brightly colored clothes were part of a broader range of Italian products that became icons of modern style, such as Vespa motor scooters and Olivetti typewriters. By the early 1960s, it was clear that Italy had altered the way the world looked; the term "Italian" had come to mean "good design."

Roberto Capucci, born in 1930, was another important Italian designer who opened his own atelier in Rome in 1950 and quickly established himself as a master of both silhouette and color. As an artist, Capucci approached his work by pleating and manipulating fabric into fluid, sculptural forms. Valentino was arguably the most important and successful Italian designer to emerge during the 1960s. Valentino Gavarni studied couture in Paris before launching his own haute couture house in Rome in 1960; his career has now spanned more than four decades. He creates both ready-to-wear and couture collections and is known for his love of bright red fabrics. Many celebrities, from Sophia Loren to Gwyneth Paltrow, have worn his opulent gowns, but his most famous client was Jacqueline Kennedy, who wore a lace-trimmed Valentino gown to her marriage to Aristotle Onassis.

The Italian Look, which had such an impact on women's fashion, also had an impact on men's fashion. Even before World War II, Italy was known for producing high-quality bespoke shirts and men's accessories. By the 1950s, tailoring houses like Brioni had pioneered the "Continental look" in menswear. The luxurious, body-conscious suits created by Italian tailors offered a clear alternative to the dominant Ivy League look of American men's wear and the traditional styles of London's Savile Row.

The ongoing, unresolved rivalry between Florence and Rome, each with its own schedule of fashion shows, aided Milan's rise in the 1970s as the center of Italian fashion for both men and women. Some of the most forward-thinking Italian houses, such as Krizia and Missoni, relocated their collections to Milan, as did the influential stylist Walter Albini, who designed for several different firms that showed in Milan while also producing clothing for his own label.

Milan, a northern Italian industrial city, lacked the historic allure of Rome and Florence, but it could draw on the long-standing Italian tradition of fine textiles. Northern Italian textile producers provided financial support to Italian clothing manufacturers who exhibited in Milan. Furthermore, Milan was known for modern product design, and Vogue Italia began publishing there in 1961. The rise of the ready-to-wear clothing industry was an unavoidable result of these circumstances. In this environment, two designers in particular rose to prominence and worldwide fame: Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace.

In the 1970s, Armani revolutionized men's fashion by designing unstructured jackets that were as comfortable as sweaters and exuded a seductive elegance. Armani's clothes were featured prominently in the 1980 film American Gigolo, and by 1982, his picture was on the cover of Time magazine. His women's clothing was also distinguished by an easy elegance and luxurious minimalism. Meanwhile, other Italian firms long known for fine fabrics and superb craftsmanship, such as Ermenegildo Zegna, benefited from the rise of Italian tailoring to world leadership beginning in the 1970s.

Gianni Versace, who founded his own label in 1978, was very different from Armani. Whereas Armani emphasized understated luxury, Versace's designs were grounded in an aesthetic of flamboyance and display; he created some of the most sexually expressive clothing ever made within the mainstream of fashion for both men and women. After Gianni Versace was assassinated in Miami in 1997, his sister Donatella took over as the company's head designer. She was able to build on her brother's aesthetic while also making her own contributions to the Versace style after working closely with him for many years. Gianni's passion for popular music, for example, became even more central to Donatella's style. Her body-revealing and consciously outrageous gowns, worn by top singers and actresses, became an eagerly anticipated feature of the annual Oscar and other entertainment business award ceremonies by the early 2000s.

Franco Moschino was commercially overshadowed by Armani and Versace, but his witty take on the fashion system was popular with women who wanted to be seen as stylish but not as "fashion victims." Other notable Italian designers from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries include Romeo Gigli, Gianfranco Ferré, knitwear designer Laura Biagiotti, and Renzo Rosso, founder of the edgy sportswear label Diesel.

The revival of Gucci under the direction of the American Tom Ford, the rise of the firm Prada, and the impact of Dolce & Gabbana are among the most remarkable success stories of Italian fashion in the late twentieth century. Miuccia Prada took over her grandfather's small, well-known leatherwear company in the 1980s, and it grew into an international phenomenon in accessories, shoes, and clothing. Her first big hit was a black nylon backpack with a triangular silver label, which became a cult item among fashion-conscious women. Prada bags and shoes had become the international standard for cool by the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, Gucci, founded in the 1920s as a leather goods company and famous among jetsetters in the 1960s, had fallen out of favor until its reinvention as a source of ultrasexy fashions and accessories in the 1990s. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana founded Dolce & Gabbana in 1982 and rose to prominence with fashions inspired by 1950s Italian sex-bomb stars.

Italy as a Fashion Capital

Italy's success as a center of modern fashion is due in large part to a uniquely Italian fashion industry model that is quite different from that of other countries. For example, it is clear that the family unit remains an important feature of the Italian fashion system. Craft traditions are also still alive and well. At the same time, cutting-edge technology is readily available. While a few well-known designers from Milan and Rome garner public attention, hundreds of anonymous but highly trained creative talents work at family businesses and large corporations across the country. A skilled labor force is available for factory jobs as well as small-scale production by independent contractors. Florence, Rome, and later Milan were all important fashion centers, but the geography of Italian fashion is diverse, with different regions of Italy specializing in different materials and goods. The Italian fashion system is distinguished by vertical integration of production from fiber to finished product, in addition to regional segmentation of production in specific geographic areas known as "the Districts."

In the early 2000s, the Italian fashion system integrated cutting-edge production of modern apparel, relaxed tailoring, luxury leather goods, and knitwear, as well as research into new modes of design and production, as well as thread, yarn, and fabric innovations. Understated luxury and modernism, as well as glamour and sensuality, characterize Italian style. Fashion designers are not considered "artists" in Italy, but rather skilled workers within an industrial system. The interdisciplinary nature of the Italian fashion industry is one of its distinguishing features: the seamless integration of product development, new materials and technology, new communication methods, celebrity, tradition, and art.

Since the Biennale di Firenze in 1997, which included a city-wide exhibition examining the relationship between art and fashion, more opportunities for this type of convergence have arisen; for example, the Fondazione Prada in Milan has an exhibition policy that promotes contemporary art. A flagship store could not be more representative of a designer's aesthetic spirit. Prada Group hired eminent architect Rem Koolhaas in 2000 to design new and technologically innovative retail spaces for presenting products in new and ultra-modern ways. Carla Sozzani, the proprietor of Corso Como 10 in Milan, presents Italian and international luxury brands in a "true theater of commerce," as Guy Trebay wrote in the New York Times.

Italian fashion has evolved to provide the market with styles that incorporate both cutting-edge technology and traditional craftsmanship. Designers agree that the Italian Look is founded on imagination, research, and experimentation.