Italy: Fashion, Style and National IdentityAlthough US Vogue offers a more select perspective of Italian fashion,
stress was placed on informality from the start. In 1951, for example, the
magazine equated Italian style very firmly to outdoor casuals, with the
headline ‘Resort Fashions – the Italian Look’.^51 Under the sub-heading ‘Italian
Ideas for any South’, the article recommended Italian boutique design, such
as that by Pucci, for its ‘fabrics of great variety and beauty, colours
unconventional and full of character, and original taste’.
By 1960, even French Vogue devoted six pages to ‘Shopping in Italy’, its
first acknowledgement of Italian fashion.^52 Not surprisingly, Italian couture
was ignored in favour of ‘Italian purchases which speak of happy holidays’,
featuring Italian boutique designs, such as silk trouser suits with slim, cropped
legs. Presumably, the French felt that such clothes posed little threat to the
bastion of high fashion that was still Paris. Such media coverage demonstrates
that from the immediate post-war years the boutique collections were seen
to be the most stylistically interesting category of Italian fashion production,
and with hindsight it is evident that they were the most directional.
The stylistic evolution of Italian ready-to-wear is much more difficult to
pinpoint than that of couture or boutique. This is because there is no published
assessment and press coverage is limited, even in Italian magazines, until the
mid-1960s. Therefore the evidence for this section is in the form of a case
study of one of the leaders of the development of Italian ready-to-wear,
MaxMara, founded in 1951. The information for the case study comes
predominantly from interviews with the founder Achille Maramotti, as well
as the contents of the MaxMara archive.
MaxMara products were confined to coats and suits until the mid-1960s
and were aimed predominantly at the upper middle class. There was little
contact between the embryonic clothing industries of Europe when MaxMara
was established, so it was probably inevitable that its founder Achille
Maramotti looked to America for his initial stylistic inspiration. Maramotti
perused a copy of US magazine Harper’s Bazaar (which was available in
Italy in the bigger towns and by mail order), and was very interested by
advertisements for American ready-to-wear companies. Indeed, the first
MaxMara coat was a copy of one advertised in Harper’sby a smart American
ready-to-wear company called “Lilli-Anne of San Francisco”. It was a bell-
shape cut all in one with kimono sleeves. Figure 11.5 shows an example of
MaxMara’s style in the mid-1950s.^53 It is a relatively simple tailored suit,
photographed with a copy of Vogue for high-fashion kudos.
- ‘Resort Fashions: the Italian Look. Italian Ideas for any South’, US Vogue, November
1951, pp. 124–7. - ‘Shopping en Italie’, French Vogue, May 1960, pp. 103–9.
- MaxMara archive, Reggio Emilia.