Italy: Fashion, Style and National Identity

11

Italy: Fashion, Style and

National Identity 1945–65

Nicola White

The Italian fashion industry is currently one of the leading players on the
international fashion stage, and ranks parallel with Paris and New York.^1
Yet before 1945, there was no industrial production of fashionable womens-
wear in Italy, and little innovative made-to-measure haute couture. The well-
known Italian fashion style currently seen in the world’s glossy fashion
magazines rose seemingly from nowhere in the post-war years, and was not
widely recognized until the early 1980s. It is perhaps not surprising therefore,
that the early post-war period has been seen simply as a preparation for the
recent “miracle” of Italian fashion. This chapter considers whether a distinct
Italian fashion look existed in the mind of the international fashion industry
well before this date, in fact, by the mid-1960s. It attempts a definition of
Italian fashion style in the two decades after the Second World War, through
the top three levels of production: haute couture, boutique and quality ready-
to-wear. It is confined to the upper levels of Italian fashion manufacture for
women, because these led the move towards international recognition, and
can be more accurately documented.
The “style” of objects has been the subject of a lot of recent research, not
least, as Stuart Ewen has explained, because it is ‘a basic form of information’
and ‘has a major impact on the way we understand society’.^2 Although the

1. This chapter uses Christopher Breward’s definition of fashion as ‘clothing designed
   primarily for its expressive and decorative qualities, related closely to the current short-term
   dictates of the market, rather than for work or ceremonial functions’. Breward, Christopher,
   The Culture of Fashion, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p. 5.


2. Ewen, Stuart, ‘Marketing Dreams: the Political Elements of Style’, in Tomlinson, Alan
   (ed.)Consumption, Identity and Style: Marketing, Meanings and the Packaging of Pleasure,
   London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 41–56. See also Ewen, Stuart, All Consuming Images: the Politics
   of Style in Contemporary Culture, New York: Basic Books, 1988.