The Fashion Businessinformal winter-wear. It dates from the mid-1950s and comprises an unfitted
jacket, rollneck sweater and matching ski-pants. Clearly, it contrasts very
strongly with French couture.
The only identified examples of boutique garments by a boutique designer
are by Pucci. However, more Pucci garments have been unearthed than by
any other Italian designer, at either couture or boutique level. This is probably
because so very many were sold, and also because they were seen to be so
very directional. In 1998, for example, the Fashion Institute of Technology
in New York, for example, had twenty-seven Pucci garments dating from
the 1950s, and a massive eighty-seven from the 1960s. Such numbers testify
to the increasing popularity of Pucci in America in these years.
Because there are so few examples in existence, contemporary media
coverage of boutique style is especially important. Bellezza covered this level
of production from the late 1940s. A typical example was published in July
1953, and was called ‘The Wind on the Beach’.^42 This piece included beach
shots of a young model with loose hair and no shoes, wearing a jersey two-
piece (trousers and a loose stripe top) by Simonetta and a halter top by
Antonelli, worn with shorts. This is a very different fashion ideal to that
proffered by haute couture.
Boutique coverage by Linea Italiana began in Winter 1949, with a feature
for ski-resort wear, entitled ‘Sport below Zero’. The magazine featured
swimwear and beachwear for the first time that summer, with items by both
well-known couture houses and boutique firms.^43 There is a variety of
outdoor and holiday settings: on deck, on the quayside, and on the beach.
Young girls are dressed in afternoon dresses, playsuits, smocks, capri pants,
wraps, bikinis, and hooded tops (figure 11.4). In another feature, two years
later, one jacket by Bronzini is described as a ‘rustic jacket’ in ‘green-red-
azure-yellow towelling, garnished with fringes’.^44 The use of such practical
fabrics for fashionable wear was also unusual and was a new post-war
phenomenon in Europe. The trend towards “easy elegance” continued
through the 1950s.
A subset of this boutique sector, which fits into this trend very neatly, is
Italy’s fashion knitwear. In Summer 1954, the knitwear magazine Linea
Maglia published an editorial entitled ‘Holiday knitwear synthesised for the
modern taste’. The feature included a range of beachwear by boutique
- ‘Il Vento sulla Spiaggia’,Bellezza, July 1953, pp. 22–3.
43.Linea Italiana, Summer 1949, p. 9. Beachwear by Marucelli, Gallia Peter, Ferrario,
Brunelli, Alma, Rina, Veneziani, Alda, Moro, Lilian and Rina, Tico Tico, Montorsi, De Gaspari
and Zezza.
44.Linea Italiana, Spring 1951, pp. 37–8.