Italy: Fashion, Style and National Identitymajor international market for fashion in these years. The definition of Italian
style begins: ‘Italian clothes are inclined to be as extrovert as the people who
wear them – gay, charming, sometimes dramatic, but seldom imaginative or
arresting – it was difficult to discover any strong native current, except in
the beach clothes.’ The competitiveness of Italian prices was also stressed
and this remains a recurrent theme in the reporting of Italian fashion over
the following decade. The article concluded that ‘Italy has everything
necessary to a vital and original fashion industry – talent, fabric and plenty
of beautiful women.’ Since US Vogue was available in Italy at this point, it is
highly likely that many of those working in Italian fashion would have been
well aware of this type of constructive criticism, and indeed of this particular
piece.
In fact by this stage, Italian fashion journalists were also devoting attention
to stylistic emancipation from France. Bellezza, for example, continued to
cover the French collections in detail, but simultaneously stressed the
innovation of Italian collections, and pointed out that there was little
justification for what it called ‘pilgrimage to Paris’ or copying foreign
models.^15 Over the next few years, French haute couture found that a
combination of overt protectionism and high prices was beginning to have a
negative effect on exports. According to one French newspaper, by 1955,
Paris couture prices had risen 3,000 per cent compared to their pre-war level,
and the international market was getting a little tired of it.^16 With their
relatively low prices, there was thus a small gap which, if they could manage
to prize it open, the Italians might be able to fill.
The first collective presentation of Italian fashion to the international
market took place in Florence, in 1951. It was organized by an Italian buyer
of Italian goods for the American market, named Giovan Battista Giorgini.
Whilst this was clearly not the first attempt to promote an Italian fashion
industry, it marks both an awakening of international consciousness, and a
very deliberate effort to sever stylistic links with Paris. Italian haute couturier
Micol Fontana recalls that in return for his financial and organizational input,
Giorgini demanded that there would be ‘no more going to Paris’, and no
more imitation of French designs.^17 Fontana says that this represented a
request to literally ‘sever their lifeline’, because of course, all wealthy Italian
ladies traditionally wanted French style. It also meant operating in direct
15.Bellezza 16, 1947, p. 15, ‘we want to recall the period in which, encircled by war, the
Italian collections were all without duplicates, and the dressmaker cut and detailed in her own
way’.
16.Les Femmes D’Aujourd’hui, 3 April 1955, page unknown.
- Micol Fontana in interview, Rome, 23.10.95.