Fashion under Fascism: Beyond the Black Shirt

Fashion Under Fascism

Fashion Under Fascism Beyond the Black Shirt

Eugenia Paulicelli

Oxford • New York

Dress, Body, Culture Series Editor Joanne B. Eicher, Regents’ Professor, University of Minnesota Books in this provocative series seek to articulate the connections between culture and dress which is defined here in its broadest possible sense as any modification or supplement to the body. Interdisciplinary in approach, the series highlights the dialogue between identity and dress, cosmetics, coiffure, and body alterations as manifested in practices as varied as plastic surgery, tattooing, and ritual scarification. The series aims, in particular, to analyze the meaning of dress in relation to popular culture and gender issues and will include works grounded in anthropology, sociology, history, art history, literature, and folklore. ISSN: 1360-466X Previously published titles in the Series Helen Bradley Foster, “New Raiments of Self”: African American Clothing in the Antebellum South Claudine Griggs, S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes Michaele Thurgood Haynes, Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz in Texas Anne Brydon and Sandra Niessen, Consuming Fashion: Adorning the Transnational Body Dani Cavallaro and Alexandra Warwick, Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and the Body Judith Perani and Norma H. Wolff, Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa Linda B. Arthur, Religion, Dress and the Body Paul Jobling, Fashion Spreads: Word and Image in Fashion Photography Fadwa El-Guindi, Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance Thomas S. Abler, Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress: European Empires and Exotic Uniforms Linda Welters, Folk Dress in Europe and Anatolia: Beliefs about Protection and Fertility Kim K. P. Johnson and Sharron J. Lennon, Appearance and Power Barbara Burman, The Culture of Sewing Annette Lynch, Dress, Gender and Cultural Change Antonia Young, Women Who Become Men David Muggleton, Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style Nicola White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion: America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry Brian J. McVeigh, Wearing Ideology: The Uniformity of Self-Presentation in Japan Shaun Cole, Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century Kate Ince, Orlan: Millennial Female Nicola White and Ian Griffiths, The Fashion Business: Theory, Practice, Image Ali Guy, Eileen Green and Maura Banim, Through the Wardrobe: Women’s Relationships with their Clothes Linda B. Arthur, Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from a Cross-Cultural Perspective William J. F. Keenan, Dressed to Impress: Looking the Part Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson, Body Dressing Leigh Summers, Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset Paul Hodkinson, Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture Michael Carter, Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes Sandra Niessen, Ann Marie Leshkowich and Carla Jones, Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress Kim K. P. Johnson, Susan J. Torntore and Joanne B. Eicher, Fashion Foundations: Early Writings on Fashion and Dress Helen Bradley Foster and Donald Clay Johnson, Wedding Dress Across Cultures

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. First published in 2004 by Berg Editorial offices: 1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements St, Oxford, OX4 1AW 838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003–4812, USA

© Eugenia Paulicelli 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Paulicelli, Eugenia, 1958– Fashion under fascism : beyond the black shirt / Eugenia Paulicelli. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-85973-773-0 (cloth) – ISBN 1-85973-778-1 (pbk.) 1. Fashion–Italy–History–20th century. 2. Costume–Italy–History–20th century. 3. Fascism–Italy–History–20th century. I. Title. GT968.P38 2004 391'.00945'0904–dc22 2003022920

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 1 85973 773 0 (Cloth) ISBN 1 85973 778 1 (Paper)

Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Wellingborough, Northants. Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn.

www.bergpublishers.com

A David e Anna, La nostra città futura

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Contents List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgements

xi

1

1 1

2

3

4

5

Introduction Fashion and Italian Identity: An Ongoing Process and Love Affair The Bella Figura and the Fashioned Self. The Birth of a Discourse on Dress and the Craze for Fashion in Renaissance Italy

6

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy Inventing the Italian Look: Between Modernity and Tradition Fashion, Culture and National Identity. Rosa Genoni and the Futurists The “New Woman” and Fascism. Lydia De Liguoro and the Project for an Italian Fashion “An Italian Fashion does not exist yet. We must create it”

17 17 27

Disciplining the Body, Language and Style The Discourse on Fashion Under the Fascist Regime. An Italian Dictionary and Commentary of Fashion by Cesare Meano Restless Voices. Femininity, Motherhood and Gender in Women’s Writing in Bellezza

57

Dress, Style and the National Brand The Commentario and Nationalism Sport, Gender and Models of Femininity Fashion, Film and the Politics of the Regime From Hollywood to France. From France to Italy: Alessandro Blasetti’s Contessa di Parma

75 75 79 86

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? The Intelligent Fibres: Between Innovation and Autarchy Grandi Magazzini and Standardization Cinegiornali on Fashion: Standardization, Stereotypes and Models of Femininity – vii –

36 46

57 68

91 99 99 121 128

Contents

6

I Grandi Magazzini by Mario Camerini as a Popular Novel The National Conference on “Clothing and Autarchy,” Turin, June 1940

130

Conclusion

147

135

Appendix: Interview with Micol Fontana

155

Illustrations

169

Notes

179

Bibliography

203

Index

215

– viii –

List of Figures 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Massaie rurali, Great Parade of Female Forces, Rome, May 28, 1939 Women rowers, Great Parade of Female Forces, Rome, May 28, 1939 Massaie rurali, Great Parade of Female Forces, Rome, May 28, 1939 From La donna, September 1933 From La donna, September 1933 Ente nazionale della moda. The ENM trademark Rene Grau. Cover of Lidel, September 1933 “Fashion and sport.” Left: suit in gray knitwear with red leather handbag. Right: brown skirt and top with a bright blue shirt “Fashion and sport.” Knitwear ensemble “Fashion and sport.” Knitwear ensemble “Female workers who press the print on the textile by hand” SniaFiocco – The textile of independence SniaFiocco – The textile of independence “PNF (Partito Nazionale Fascista) XVI Exhibition of National Textiles” “A fragment of Orient in Rome” “Eternal black feminine” Support for textiles. Exhibition of autarchic textiles and clothing. Venice, Palazzo Giustiniani, August 20 – September 7, 1941 Support for textiles. Exhibition of autarchic textiles and clothing. Venice, Palazzo Giustiniani, August 20 – September 7, 1941 Surrealist supports for textiles. Exhibition of autarchic textiles and clothing. Venice, Palazzo Giustiniani, August 20 – September 7, 1941 “Mannequins symbolizing the Venice exhibition.” Cover of the Rinascente catalogue (spring–summer 1939); Rome, Piazza Colonna Children’s clothes from the Rinascente catalogue (spring–summer 1939) Catalogue of “Gutteridge” English department store, Naples, Via Roma (spring–summer 1932) Shop window in the autarchic mode, with Mussolini’s profile

– ix –

18 18 19 22 23 24 41 51 52 53 103 104 105 111 114 115 117 118

119 120 125 126 127 136

List of Figures 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

Shop window in the autarchic mode, with Mussolini’s profile and map of Italy Shop window in the autarchic mode and “Sardinian Art” Textile in black-and-white print by Lucchini, featuring small letters. Caption reads: “Against the uniformity of polka-dot prints” Detail of embroidered evening jacket embroidered by MingoliniGuggenheim, Rome Micol Fontana and Linda Christian in the workshop where many people were involved in making her wedding dress The three Fontana Sisters and their mother Amabile Military-style overcoat, by Binello Sisters fashion house Dress in printed silk in blue, gray and purple, by Fercioni Sandal by Ferragamo, summer 1943 Gray suit in a male cut by Vanna. Handbag of the same fabric as the suit. Shoes in fabric, with sole in leather-covered cork, by Ferragamo Handbags in fur. Left: in leopard, like the trimmings of the coat, by Binello. Right: in astrakhan, by Gambino Suit by San Lorenzo in wool knit with stripes in vertical black velvet for the skirt and horizontal for the jacket. Gloves in black satin, hat in black reindeer leather by Vassallo Suit in black velvet trimmed in black silk. Shirt in white satin with an attached knot. Model with certificate of guarantee by ENM. Ventura fashion house Raincoats by Contex (Milan). Left: in transparent material lined with a checkered material in yellow and brown. Right: light blue raincoat lined with red fabric “Antiflex” fur by Dott. Paolo de Medici Confezioni (ready-to-wear) “Bounous” Turin Black velvet hat, black tulle trimming held in place by red and light blue knots Black redingote coat with black astrakhan trimmings. Amazon hat with veil on the face by Patè

–x–

137 138 144 161 165 166 169 170 170 171 172

172

173

174 175 176 177 178

Acknowledgments My interest in fashion was born of my research into the relationship between literature and the visual arts. In a previous study, Parola e immagine. Sentieri della scrittura in Leonardo, Marino, Foscolo e Calvino (Word and image. Pathways of writing in Leonardo, Foscolo, Marino, Calvino), published in 1996, I examined how word and image intermingled and interacted to produce a new understanding of both past and contemporary cultures. In moving to a study of fashion I found an ideal terrain on which to continue this path and also combine the threads that make up my field of research: feminism, literature and the arts, cinema and critical theory. I first started to write on fashion in 1990 while I was completing my PhD at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Giovanna Miceli Jeffries invited me to give a paper on fashion in a panel she had organized at the MLA meeting in Washington. My preparation for that paper, which also became the first essay I published on fashion in a book edited by Giovanna Miceli-Jeffries Feminine Feminists. Cultural Practice in Italy, took place while I was attending a class on critical theory taught by Professor Stephen Winspur. I am very grateful for a number of very valuable comments he gave on my work. I would also like to take the occasion to acknowledge those people who have encouraged me in many different ways from the very outset of the project. Their advice, critical comments and support have been vital and very much appreciated. My sincerest thanks, then, go to Grazietta Butazzi, for her kindness and help in the project’s early stages; to Bonizza Giordani Aragno for her generosity in opening up her private archive to me and for facilitating contacts with fashion designers Micol Fontana and Fernanda Gattinoni, to both of whom my thanks also go. I also would like to thank Rosaria Fergola, Damiano Iacobone and Silvano Nigro for their help in making available to me documents from Turin and Milan libraries. For their critical comments on various parts of the book, from the project description onward, I thank Zygmunt Baranski, Carole Turbin, and Barbara Burman. For their support for my work, I thank my colleagues from Queens College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York, Hermann Haller, William Coleman and especially the much missed Robert Dombroski, who also made helpful and pertinent comments on my plans. Thanks too go to the students who attended the seminar on “Fashion, Gender and Power” I taught at the Graduate School and for the productive time we had in our discussions. I would also like to express my thanks to the kind personnel at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, especially Maria Luisa Jacini and the Director Osvaldo – xi –

Acknowledgments Avallone; to Barbara Cartocci, Director of the Biblioteca della Camera dei Deputati; to Marziano Guglielminetti, Director of the Istituto Luce Archive, all in Rome; to the PCS Cuny Summer Awards that provided funds for my research and trips to Italy; to the anonymous readers of the BHE-PSC-Cuny Fellowship Boards; to the American Academy in Rome where I was a visiting fellow in the summer of 2000; and to Nancy Bareis from Photographic Services at Queens College. I also wish to thank Berg’s anonymous reader whose comments and suggestions I appreciated a great deal and found very useful. Lastly thanks to the enthusiasm of Kathryn Earle, her assistant Anne Hobbs and the staff at Berg. I also would like to thank the review Gender & History for permission to republish material that I have now included in the second chapter of the present book. Thanks also to Valerie Steele for inviting me to publish an article in Fashion Theory, using material that appears here in Chapters three and four. My endless gratitude and thanks go to my husband David Ward whose editorial and critical suggestions have made this book possible. Our engaging conversations about all subjects related to our work and love for all things Italian have provided at home and everywhere we have traveled the ideal place to write. To him, my companion of many adventures, this book is dedicated and to our daughter Anna, la nostra città futura, with much love.

– xii –

Introduction

–1– Introduction Fashion and Italian Identity: An Ongoing Process and Love Affair Italy is commonly credited, especially abroad and by foreign travellers, as being the cradle of an almost inborn sense of aesthetics, good taste and beauty that permeates the nation’s art, fashion, design and food.1 In the West and Far East alike, the “Made in Italy” label is synonymous with refined taste, elegance and care. Indeed, Italian identity itself, seen from this perspective, seems to be at one with the dolce vita of Italian style, glamour and sophistication. Fashion, of course, has played, and still plays, a key role in the discursive construction of what is now recognized as Italian style. In her article on contemporary fashion, “The Italian Look,” Valerie Steele has identified the distinctive elements of style that are now broadly recognized as “Italian” and that has garnered for Italy and the image it projects of itself, especially abroad, a massive amount of prestige and even envy. As Steele has noted: Italian style came to be “perceived as being in the realm of values.” Not only are there fine quality clothes “Made in Italy,” there also exists a conceptual category known as the “Italian look,” which is internationally recognized as a signifier of refined opulence and deluxe modernity, of casual, expensive, sexy elegance. Yet within this general category, there is room for a variety of individual styles, each of which apparently expresses some aspect of what foreigners perceive as la dolce vita.2

The dolce vita itself, in fact, has become an icon of Italian style, both in dress and more generally within a culture as a whole, that is seen to have succeeded in mixing beauty, pleasure, warmth and friendship. At the very least, this is how it has been romanticized by generations of Anglo-American travelers. What is at stake in this image of Italy that has gained the power of a mythology is the feeling that ingrained in Italy and in Italians is an aesthetic sense lacking in most other European nations, with the possible exception of France, and almost non-existent in Anglo-American culture. Aesthetics and creativity have been integral components of the image of Italian sensibility. In the 1980s, the aesthetic dimension went hand in hand with a glamorized image of Italy that was projected through fashion and style and which has since become one of the strongest, if not the strongest image –1–

Fashion under Fascism foreigners have of things Italian. It is not by chance that this phenomenon coincided with the emergence of the “Made in Italy” label, the “national trade brand” that was launched internationally in the early 1980s by governmental and trade institutions and which has incarnated all the allure and elegant design characteristic of Italian products.3 The aesthetic dimension that seems to be inherent in Italian identity and its people has not, however, as might be expected, had the same effect on Italians themselves. Indeed, the aesthetic side of life, represented above all by fashion, has often been dismissed by Italian intellectuals as an ephemeral or superfluous phenomenon, a weak answer to the strong question of on what basis Italy’s national identity is to be formed. This dismissal has had two consequences: first, the inability to understand that fashion and dress are important components of culture; and second, the downplaying of the incredible potential inherent in fashion for a historically based analysis of the question of national identity and its politics. One of the major aims of the present study is to rectify this imbalance by arguing that fashion has been one of the privileged vehicles with which Italy has sought to create, promote and define a national identity for itself. The national role to which fashion has been recruited is particularly visible in the years of the fascist regime, which is the focus of this study. But it would be wrong to assume that fashion’s role in the creation of a national consciousness was confined uniquely to this period. Rather, what we find under fascism is a strong affirmation of a tendency whose origins stretch back in time at least as far as the Renaissance and whose development stretches forward up and into the present. Commenting on its national role, Peppino Ortoleva has pointed out how fashion has the power to orient potential customers toward one country or another and (even more frequently) toward one aspect or another of a national image, inasmuch as it makes the public feel intimately contemporary: and this contemporary feeling is often surprising and paradoxical, because it can be based on ideas and styles found even in a distant era, though no less intimately perceived and felt for that reason.4

As a consequence of this complex process, Ortoleva adds, fashion has a great impact over time on the construction of both a stable and flexible repertory of images and mythologies with which one wishes to identify, belong and buy into.5 The case of Italy is particularly interesting insofar as the nation has exercised a special attraction to foreigners thanks to a composite identity that has been manifested in its arts, cooking, national language and local dialects, and the magnificence of its architecture and urban centers. It is this composite identity that has been taken on board by Italian fashion. Far from offering a monolithic image of itself and Italy, the “Italian Look” finds ample space for a wide span of styles and –2–

Introduction designs that range from the minimalist Armani, to the southern sex bomb look of Dolce & Gabbana or Versace, to transnational brands such as “United Colors of Benetton” and Diesel (both of which choose not to make specific reference to Italy in their advertising). In contrast to this transnational image are cases like that of Antonio Marras, a home-based Sardinian designer who has incorporated traditional dress and textile traditions into his creations. This picture, partial as it is, is still complete enough to give an idea of the successful cocktail of tradition and technology that the Italian fashion industry has succeeded in mixing.6 At the same time, and in more general terms, the cultural diversity of the nation, its perceived split between a backward, traditional South and a modern, technologically advanced North, has gone a long way toward engendering in Italians a “weak” sense of nationhood and national identity.7 Indeed, the opposition between local and national realities is a constant on the Italian political and cultural scene. Inter-regional rivalry, even rivalry between neighboring cities and the great differences between one part of Italy and another have often led, as noted by David Forgacs, to an “either-or” process and procedure about people’s identification. But, he writes, such affiliations, although considered weak in conventional terms, do have their own merits: There are a numbers of versions of the argument that the strength of local and regional affiliations in Italy has been the cause of a weak national identity. One is that attachment to one’s village or town, or campanilismo, and the power of local clientele networks have been more entrenched and persistent than in many other countries [. . .] Another is that loyalty to the family as one’s primary community, or “familism” has been more potent than loyalty to secondary communities [. . .] including the nation. A third is that subcultural loyalties (to the Church or a political party) and regional identifications [. . .] are unusually strong.[. . .] These claims all have in common an implicit ‘either-or’ assumption about identification: one must either identify with the smaller unit (family, locality, subculture, region) or with the larger one (nation). Yet, not only is this assumption at odds with the claims themselves (why should loyalty to family be compatible with loyalty to town or region but not with loyalty to nation?); there is also no good reason to assume that different forms of identification may not be co-present and mutually reinforcing one another. In fact there are many concrete instances in which the family, party or locality (in the form, say, of a local school or festival) may serve as effective channels for the dissemination and reinforcement of national identifications.8

The implication underlining Forgacs’ remarks is that we consider the notion of national identity in plural rather than singular terms as a constant process. It is against the background of this far more subtle approach to questions of identity that a study of fashion can be at its most productive. But, for this study to be productive, fashion has to be extricated from its conventional collocation in the realm of the frivolous and relocated to a far more serious intellectual and scholarly context. One –3–

Fashion under Fascism writer who understood this was Gianna Manzini, one of the many sophisticated Italian women writers who collaborated with 1930s fashion magazines such as Bellezza and La donna. One of the articles she published in La donna was entitled “La moda è una cosa seria” (Fashion is a serious business) in which she offered a series of reasons as to why fashion is a field worthy of study that shares equal dignity with the study of literature or any other manifestation of culture: The same kind of critical method with which we approach a novel, a poem, or when we write a review of a film or drama should also be adopted when we approach the so little approached field of fashion. We should pay, that is, attention to fashion as a language, as a witty manifestation of form, as one of the several ways in which the physiognomy of a people or an epoch shows itself.9

Manzini understood, as before her philosophers and sociologists such as Simmel, Tarde, Fluegel and Benjamin had understood, that fashion was worth studying in order to understand the complexity of its formal and artistic manifestations in society as well as its link to cultural identities. There is, however, one additional element in Manzini’s article to which I would like to draw attention. Besides the seriousness of the method she advocates for its analysis, she also touches upon the fact that fashion is a personal and intimate experience. No other objects are so close to our skin and close to our daily activities as clothing and accessories.10 In its materiality, its visual dimension and its feel, clothing has its own meanings which make up a tapestry of signs that impose their own language on the body of the wearer, whether out of choice or unconsciously.11 The intrinsic complexity of fashion, then, touches first and foremost the personal self. In order to stress this, Manzini mentions how the relationship between a customer and tailor or dressmaker might be a very interesting source of enquiry to know more about the psyche of a given individual. Commenting on an evening gown, illustrated by a drawing in the magazine in which she is writing, she gives emphasis to the power of the material object itself, how it is cut, its fabric, noting that a dress can be at one and the same time both serious and also “a joke, a restrained grimace with which to poke fun at respectable people, after having smiled at them.” Dresses in the mid1930s – the period in which Manzini was writing – took their inspiration from the fashion of the day, which was a return to the things past of the romantic age. But often they also revealed a surprise or two. The dress in question in Manzini’s article, in fact, has a double identity. Looking at it from the front one is struck by its restrained, chaste nature as if it were “a book of prayer”; looking at it from behind, however, one sees that its seriousness is mocked by the dress’s semihorizontal cut that leaves the shoulder blades exposed. According to Manzini, the anonymous creator of this dress expressed his playfulness by juxtaposing what we might call, on the one hand, references to virginal beauty with, on the other, references to the sensual femme fatale. –4–

Introduction Furthermore, emphasizing the importance of dress as a field of study, she goes on to make reference to Italian Renaissance paintings, especially Bronzino’s wellknown portrait of Eleonora di Toledo with her son Ferdinando in which Manzini says her dress acts as if it were “a program, a prophesy,” a document of an epoch. The reference with which she concludes her article – to a specific dress worn on a specific occasion in Italy’s Renaissance past – suggests that Manzini is here arguing for an approach to fashion that is, to use her own terms, more serious and less frivolous than the one that had typically been adopted and which saw little intellectual worth in fashion. The reference to the Renaissance, in fact, is a strong hint that, for Manzini, fashion is seen to its greatest effect against the background of its historical and cultural context as an area of enquiry, that is, that has roots and traditions that stretch back into time. The approach to fashion that I have taken in this study of the fascist period takes very much into account the implications of the guidelines for the study of fashion at which Manzini hints. The burden of this study, in fact, will be to bring to critical attention the serious import of writings not only by Manzini but also by others who took part in the debate in and around fashion in the first decades of the twentieth century, most especially in the fascist period. As we will see, however, this did not imply that these writers were in line with the regime’s policies and ideology. Indeed, one of the most active protagonists in this debate was the dressmaker Rosa Genoni, a socialist activist, who at the beginning of the century was already approaching fashion as a political and economic phenomenon, indeed a dominant force in local and national economies very much as it is today. Fashion, then, is both serious and a business. But it is also, as both Manzini and Genoni knew, a serious business that has a history and is bound up with questions of self and national identity, which are the principal concerns of the present study. Broadly speaking, this history has not been the subject of intellectual enquiry. Although in the last fifteen years a great deal of critical attention has been devoted to the study of modern Italy, and to an in-depth exploration and reinterpretation of the process of the peninsula’s unification and its aftermath, very little work has been carried out to understand the role fashion has had in the shaping of a self and national identities.12 The work that has been done, however, has concerned itself mostly with the postwar years. I refer, in particular, to the chapters by Luigi Settembrini, “From Haute Couture to Pret-a-Porter” and by Steele, “Italian Fashion and America,” both published in The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943-1968; to the chapters by Ugo Volli, Peppino Ortoleva, Ted Polhemus and Steele in the volume Volare. The Icon of Italy in Global Pop Culture; and to the recent work by Nicola White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion. America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry. These studies certainly have the great merit of investigating the links between fashion and the formation of a “national” style or look that is recognized as such, especially abroad. None of the recent publications men–5–

Fashion under Fascism tioned above, however, has explored in depth how it was the Italian cultural and literary tradition that gave initial form to such icons and paved the way for their subsequent impact on popular culture. This is exactly what the present study proposes to do. Before embarking on an investigation of fashion under fascism, I would like to take the opportunity in the following paragraph to go some way toward creating the wider historical context that a subject of this nature demands. Both in the years prior to and during the regime, not to mention in the post-fascist period, fashion had a strong eye for the Italian Renaissance as its fixed point in a turning world. And for good reason. It was in the Renaissance, in fact, that we first find a manifestation of a discourse on dress as well as on what has become almost a commonplace, the rhetoric of the bella figura (especially for foreigners seeking to identify Italians and their aesthetic sense). It would be impossible to gain a fuller and more critical understanding of the icons of Italian style, in the way it has been perceived abroad, as Steele rightly observes, as a mix of elegance, the casual look and sexiness, if we did not take a step into the past and see how a most fundamental text like Baldassare Castiglione’s Il cortegiano established many of the premises on which the idea of the “Italian look” has since been based. Castiglione was, in fact, the first to give voice to what has become Italian style, that mix of informality and elegance, and the first in the Western tradition to construct a discourse on dress. In Castiglione’s lexicon, informality and style are called the art of sprezzatura (the art of concealing art), which I would like to call the art of “lightening.”13 In fact, in Castiglione sprezzatura, both in language and dress, is the complex and difficult art of eliminating any superfluous element that would encumber the discourse and the performance of self in dress with mannerisms and affettazione (affectation), by which we can understand the heaviness of somebody who is trying too hard to impress, somebody who is not at ease in his/her clothing, both literally and metaphorically. In addition, and not less importantly, the Italian Renaissance has in many different ways, become the point of reference in the creation of an “Italian identity” and creativity, especially during phases of social, political and economic transformations when the quest for a self was more urgent and heartfelt. It is for these reasons that I now will turn to offer an overview of some of the features that characterize the Italian Renaissance debate on dress, appearance and identity whose threads will be taking up again in our examination of fascist Italy.

The Bella Figura and the Fashioned Self. The Birth of a Discourse on Dress and the Craze for Fashion in Renaissance Italy The Renaissance – whether on account of the awareness that culture and society had for the importance of the economics, politics and aesthetics of appearance; or, –6–

Introduction in subsequent historical periods, on account of its romanticization as a model of ideal of beauty, originality and taste – is the key epoch for an understanding of the direction taken by Italian fashion in the twentieth century. The Renaissance not only laid much of the groundwork for the definition of subsequent Italian taste in fashion but also represented a privileged source of inspiration and an idealized point of reference for Italy’s sense of self in the quest to create a national identity and style in ensuing epochs. My aim, however, is not to consider and propose the Renaissance as a golden and idealized model with which to identify passively, but to show the relevance of it in the creation of a modern discourse and notion of fashion and its bearing in the molding of Italian identity. Indeed, as Carole Collier Frick has put it: “Clothing as a metaphor for the dream (or nightmare) of transformation was central to the society of Renaissance Florence from Boccaccio to Machiavelli. Its citizens wrestled daily with self-identity, appearance, and display.”14 It is the importance of the Renaissance for twentieth century fashion, in the prefascist, fascist and post-fascist periods, that explains my concern here. This is not to say, however, that in the intervening years fashion and its discourse did not exist or have any bearing on the search for a national identity. It is sufficient to note the iconic status of the black clothes worn by Italian patriots such as Giuseppe Mazzini during the Risorgimento to mark their mourning for the subjugated state of Italy or the red shirt of the Garibaldinians that epitomized the struggle for national unification. Both were vestimentary signs that narrated the political and symbolic charge of clothing.15 Nevertheless, my focus here is to show how fashion in the Renaissance becomes a scientia habitus as well as a political and a state affair via the sumptuary laws and literature on appearance, clothes and fashion in a way that was entirely similar to how the fascist regime dedicated great energy to regulating the way Italians expressed themselves in dress in both the private and public spheres.16 What fuelled the need to narrate the changes occurring in society and institutions were the technological transformations that followed the advent of printing, the geographical discoveries of the existence of “new worlds,” and the complex inter-exchange between models of the past and contemporary social practices.17 It is in the light of the upheavals taking place in 16th century Italian civil society that we can understand the massive presence of a literature that investigated both the possibility of expanding, but also of limiting, through the establishment of accepted canons, taste and laws, the potential of the human body and the self, as well as the role of dress. In times of great upheaval two tendencies emerge, one that embraces the turmoil as an occasion to forge new forms, the other suspicious of it and seeking to control it. Indeed, in the context of fashion, the humanistic euphoria of a god-like being in control of his/her appearance and place in the world would be contrasted by norms introduced to standardize beauty, good manners, taste in dress and style, and the sense of “saper vivere.”18 –7–

Fashion under Fascism The deep roots of the “Italian Look” are to be found in the plethora of conduct literature that flourished during the Renaissance. One such example is Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano (The book of the courtier), the first theoretical investigation into the social and political meaning of dress. Published in 1528, this was a text, however, that had already circulated in court environments several years before its actual appearance. Yet, Il cortegiano was far from being the only text that aimed at educating, prescribing and circumventing the sphere of action of the individual life in its public and personal functions. This trend had already had its beginnings in the 15th century with I Libri della famiglia (The books of family) by Leon Battista Alberti. Here, the identification of dress with modesty and moral decorum was to become a model that would be adopted throughout the following centuries. Alberti’s themes – the management of the body, the division into male and female roles within the family, the functional impact of this on the construction of a bourgeois society, public conduct, the concern for appearance in aesthetic and political terms – all became significant topoi in a wide variety of books belonging to different genres. We may think of works dedicated to the perfecting of one’s own body, health and image like Giovan Battista Della Porta’s Magia Naturalis (Natural magic) or Agnolo Firenzuola’s Trattato sulla bellezza delle donne (Treatise on the beauty of women), where in order to give a detailed picture of ideal female beauty the body is fragmented into little pieces so that the author can examine in detail the chin, the eyes, the nose and even measure their ideal shape, color and proportion. Further examples of books concerned specifically with a history of fashion, dress and style are Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti antichi et moderni di diverse Parti del mondo (Modern and ancient dress from all over the world), or treatises on good manners and social behavior, where dress has the important function of conveying identity as in Castiglione’s text, like Giovanni Della Casa’s Il Galateo ovvero dei costumi (Book on Etiquette and Manners) and Stefano Guazzo‘s La civile conversazione (Civil conversation). Although these works display great differences, apparent in their literary textuality and subject matter – medicine, cosmetics, philosophy – as well as in their language and style, what is relevant for the argument at hand is that through them can be traced a common thread: namely, that of a general awareness existing in the culture of 16th century Italy that a concern for appearance and the body was a vital component in the construction of an identity by individuals who saw themselves as agents of their own fate. The other common thread illustrated in these texts is the need to give shape and memory to the apparently ungraspable changes that were occurring in the world around them. Hence, these texts’ attempts to formalize their advice and instructions in writing while at the same time capturing in the web of words the very heart of the social and political transformations in progress. At the same time, the anxiety that was generated by awareness that changes were occurring at different speeds fuelled the drive to coagulate, and almost freeze, the emerging multiplicity of new forms through the creation of laws –8–

Introduction and limits. In a situation such as this, to be effective new forms had to be acceptable to the established order, and to be acceptable they had to square with the taxonomy of values of the elite groups in power. It is well that we do not forget that the 16th century is also the epoch of powerful preceptors and inquisitions against heretics. In this light, the way one chose to care for one’s body and personality, and the public display one made of them, carried a political charge in the scene of the world. Il libro del sarto (The Book of the Tailor), from the “Fondazione Querini Stampalia” in Venice, a text attributed to Gian Giacomo del Conte, a tailor at the service of Renato Borromeo, is another text that confirms both the interaction of the terms moda and moderno and the integral role change played in the fashion system of 16th century Italy. To add one thoroughly modern touch, this book is without doubt a forerunner of today’s fashion catalogues. The book, first studied by Fritz Saxl in the mid 1930s, takes the form of a rich pattern-book produced by a tailor’s shop that operated in Milan in the second half of the 16th century. In the book, the tailor reproduced a series of drawings, each one illustrating a variety of models, patterns, fabrics, festive and celebratory clothing, and ceremonial dress for those belonging to everyday professions. Also included are drawings of tents, trappings for horses, flags and embroidery. An atmosphere of war, however, seems to prevail since we see several drawings depicting knights in armor with swords. Saxl notes in his essay “Costumi e feste della nobiltà milanese negli anni della dominazione spagnola” (Costumes and feasts of the Milan nobility in the years of Spanish domination), that one of the knights bears a striking resemblance to the Emperor Charles V. Furthermore, references in the written text are made to Alfonso D’Avalos, a faithful servant of the Emperor and Governor of Milan from 1538 to 1546. Perhaps our tailor thought that the presence of such important icons like the Emperor and his collaborators would attract more prestigious customers. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Alfonso D’Avalos were, indeed, powerful testimonials, or spokespersons, as we might call them today, of the Milanese tailor. An extremely modern business logic lies, then, behind this tailor’s book. Books like Castiglione’s Il cortegiano found a ready audience. Indeed, Castiglione’s book and its culture will become very popular in powerful European courts such as Spain, France and Elizabethan England for instance.19 The strength and persistence of the cultural tradition of which Castiglione is one of the progenitors comes in no small measure from the reception his text received outside Italy. The theoretical contribution Castiglione and others like him made both in the Renaissance and later created a discourse on fashion that echoed all over Europe. The symbolic function of clothing in the context of the broader debate on modernity that Castiglione had a great part in inaugurating complements a similar debate among French authors in the nineteenth century, starting with Baudelaire, which resulted in the development of a distinct culture of fashion in France. The cultural –9–

Fashion under Fascism debate in which Baudelaire, Zola, Balzac, Mallarmé and their like participated succeeded in creating an identity and image of France that was synonymous with a sense of refined elegance and chic. Going back to Italy, the measures that are strongly recommended by Castiglione, such as dressing appropriately for the occasion, being aware of the symbolic meaning and power of dress, its signs, colors and accessories, the awareness on the part of the wearer of the dress codes regulating the hierarchical environments such as the court in the cinquecento, the aesthetic and political importance of creating one’s own style idealized in sprezzatura are the precursors of the rules and codes that can easily be found in the majority of Western European cultures. Castiglione’s precepts have spread not only over geographical borders, but also temporal ones. Many of these rules are still at work in today’s world of corporate business. Here the hierarchical environment leads to the codification of the vestimentary system where both hierarchy and uniformity constitute identity. Nevertheless, women working in the American corporate world, for example, often accent their traditional look with personalized details in the form of a haircut or an accessory in order to mark out their distinctiveness in what is perceived by some of them as a world of boring uniformity in dress.20 Castiglione’s “sprezzatura,” however, will be epitomized in the well known Italian myth of the bella figura which trickles down from elite court society to the city and piazze. The first importance of this text and others like it that belong to the same genre lies in the impact they had on the creation and codification of cultural models and patterns of behavior, in their role in forming a canon of common sense. Seen in all their complexity, these texts of institutio, as Quondam and Giorgio Patrizi have termed them in their relationship to fashion and allied fields of enquiry, constitute a largely unexplored “front-line history.”21 Despite the diversity of Italian and European courts, books such as Il cortegiano became best sellers and reached what was in those days a very large audience indeed. It was by virtue of the influence they exerted that they had a considerable role in laying the foundation for a sense of Italian identity and with a more general European sense of self. Il cortegiano was, in fact, translated into Spanish in 1534, into French in 1538 and again, in a new translation, in 1580; an English version appeared in 1561 and a Latin translation was published in London in 1569. Offering recognizable codes, manners and canons to be used by elites, books like this played an important role in the process towards the uniformity of social appearance and behaviour. Quondam, in fact, affirms that these books are “a first formidable phenomenon of the relationship, which will in the modern world become ever more intense, between information and cultural processes. Or, if we prefer: the relationship among the media, which in those days, making the due allowances, could even be considered mass media, and cultural standardization.”22 Cultural standardization, of course, translates into demand for the goods considered to be in fashion at the time and it is no surprise to learn that the success and –10–

Introduction wide readership of books like the ones thus far mentioned generated a desire for fashion items and, consequently, a consistent fashion industry.23 A text like La piazza universale di tutte le professioni (The universal square of all professions), published by Tommaso Garzoni in 1592, casts great light on the several skills and mestieri, from wool to silk and all their derived fabrics such as velvet and damask, called upon in the making of clothing, accessories and fabrics, which he splits up into two categories: that of the nobili and that of the ignobili professions. Among the professions Garzoni lists we find silk weavers, wool spinners, sartori (tailors), cotton and linen weavers, fregiatori (decorators), and ricamadori (embroiderers). Describing the different professions with sagacity, admiration and at times sarcasm, Garzoni reserves special praise for tailors since they “give decorum and beauty to everybody, but especially to women who received from their clothes a special ornament.”24 Garzoni’s text offers us a picture of an epoch in which parts of the local economy were nourished by the habit of people, especially women, to change the style of their clothing, as well as their physical appearance.25 Grace and elegance, however, were not necessarily natural givens, gifts of nature. The men and women of the courts in the 16th century, in fact, made great recourse to the means by which they could artificially construct their appearance and public image. For instance, historians report that perfumes and essences became so fashionable at this time that they were even used on the horses exhibited at various city celebrations so that they would emanate a pleasing odor as they passed by and so project, one imagines, a positive image of their owners. Noble ladies were known to possess hundreds of bottles in which fragrances were jealously kept as if they were alchemic and mysterious combinations.26 As well as offering instruction in embroidery and dress decoration, these so-called “Books of secrets” provided a history of chemical technology in the art of distillation and metallurgy, the source of cosmetic recipes.27 The ninth book of Giovan Battista della Porta’s Natural Magick (Magia naturalis), published in Naples in 1558 is entitled, “How to adorn women, and make them beautiful.” In his proemio, della Porta affirms that this is not a superfluous art, but one that helps women to modify or beautify their physical appearance. Beginning with hair, he gives instructions on how to dye it yellow, how to cleanse the skin, how to get rid of red pimples or, in the books on distillation and perfuming, how to render the body sweet-smelling and to make sweet powders. Also typical of this time are a number of books that instructed their readers in the meticulous techniques involved in the care of beauty, body, cosmetics, alchemy and adornment. Some of these works were called, in fact, ricettari di bellezza in which advice was given to women in order to beautify and refine their appearance and public image. In G. Marinelli, Gli ornamenti delle donne (The ornaments of women), published in Venice in 1574, we find many kinds of procedures, even some that served to render “small and hard the beauty of the bust” or change the –11–

Fashion under Fascism color of one’s eyes. In an earlier book, Experimenti by Caterina Riario Sforza, instructions are given on a great variety of beauty tips of various origin varying from medical literature to alchemic combinations of medieval provenance. Various elements are inscribed in the kind of literary genre with which we have here been dealing. On the one hand, texts like these confirm, once again, the modern idea that the body and the self are not natural givens. Or better: that the cultural and political value of the body and self do not reside solely in their biological nature. Rather, what we call identity is socially constructed, made up according to a set of norms and tastes defined by the intellectual leadership of a given society.28 Furthermore, we can also note an awareness at this time of the different ways and tricks by means of which ideas, ideology and power could be conveyed through appearance. Style, then, is constructed individually according to instructions given to the body through writing and conversation. The alchemic combinations like those of the Ricettari went a long way towards creating ideal images of beauty with which women could identify, recognize themselves or with which they could play for their own pleasure. Indeed, in early 16th century Italy a “scientia habitus,” a series of norms and codifications of social, political and aesthetic standards that regulated life in the social setting of the court and the city was already well in place. Clothing was, without doubt, a sign of power and status, but it also had such value that it could be exchanged for a piece of land or passed down the line of inheritance from one family to another, and so reaffirm through time the signs and traces of identity and memory. Dress, then, mattered, and so did its economics and its rhetoric of appearance. As we learn from Vecellio, Castiglione and others, different fashions existed according not only to age and status but also to geography. There was, in fact, great competition among Italian cities, as well as between Italian products and those coming from countries such as France, Flanders and England whose goods were becoming more and more conspicuous on the Italian peninsula. But it was France, and here we find a direct parallel with the situation in fascist Italy, that gradually gained the supremacy and control of the international fashion trade that would last until the second half of the 20th century. That France set the standard for fashionable items and fabrics is noted by Doretta Davanzo Poli in her essay on “The Fashion Trades in Venice”: “Nothing was capable of halting the prevailing craze for French products. Moreover, the brocades from Lyons were characterized by a play on intersected nuances, obtained with a technique called ‘point rentre’ which the Venetians, without the appropriate instruments, had to imitate by placing the colors by degrees.”29 These initial remarks on the popularity and success of books that offer advice on the care of one’s body and of the extent to which the fashion industry had developed in Renaissance Italy should suffice to illustrate the existence of the epoch’s great concern for the rhetoric and politics of appearance in dress and how –12–

Introduction a text like Castiglione‘s found a fertile terrain and ready readership. But a text such as Il cortegiano also reveals a more contradictory two fold process that is common to the discourse of fashion and modernity. On the one hand, the intent of Castiglione’s dialogues on appearance, dress and social performance is to bring uniformity and institutionalize social, aesthetic and political codes, in order to control the social body. On the other, however, the same process of codification is a strong clue to the political agenda and function that underlies it. Indeed, one of the suggestions I would like to make in my study is that the starting point in the West for the disciplining of the social body is to be found, to a great extent, in such selfhelp and conduct books, as well as in the political treatises written in 16th century Italy.30 Insofar, then, as it locates the deep roots of Italian fashion and its bearing on the politics and culture of appearance in dress and social performance in the Renaissance and goes on, as we shall do shortly, to analyse how the fascist regime bought into many of the precepts established at that time, this book differs from those studies that largely treat Italian fashion as a phenomenon of the period since World War II. In other words, the present study both differs from and complements Nicola White’s Reconstructing Italian Fashion. America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry. As its title suggests, this book examines the years since World War II rather than the liberal and fascist years or even earlier epochs. Yet, Italian fashion and the cultural discourse that has grown up around it were not born only in the period of reconstruction. Rather, the great strides forward that the Italian fashion industry took in the years following 1945, which White rightly and accurately chronicles, were posited on what the industry had already achieved in the pre-war period. My examination of fashion under fascism and before, then, aims to complement White’s study by offering an analysis of fashion that treats it under a broader historical span to see how and why the seeds of the post-war emergence of Italian fashion as a major player on the international stage were sown. As it turns out many of those seeds were sown in the Renaissance.31 Any style, for instance, that is associated with a given country, its people and culture, and what constitutes and is called its national character always has a long history that can be chronicled through the development of fashion. White, for example, is certainly correct when she affirms that the expression “easeful grace” was used as early as 1951 and was to become increasingly synonymous with “Italian style.” Nevertheless, the concept of mixing elegance and ease, as in the case of bella figura – looking good – and natural ease – grace – are both notions that have a long history in Italian culture and do not emerge only in the period since World War II. As we have just seen, at the beginning of the sixteenth century it was Castiglione’s Il cortegiano that first defined an Italian style in language, manners and dress. In fact, the ultimate point of reference for much Italian fashion, whether it be in the pre- or post-war periods, was the Renaissance. As we shall see with –13–

Fashion under Fascism Rosa Genoni and others, either as a moment of national grandeur to be recovered, or as a moment when a national style was at its zenith, references to the Renaissance are legion in the world of fashion. White herself, in fact, mentions a fashion show staged in Milan by the designer Germana Maruccelli, whose “designs were inspired by Italy’s historical and artistic heritage and, in particular, the Italian Renaissance, in a specific effort to disengage Italian fashion from French style.”32 White adds that Marucelli’s clothes were featured in Bellezza, which had been since 1941, the mouthpiece of Italian high fashion. Using vocabulary that could in part have been drawn from the Renaissance discourse on fashion, her collection was described as “practical, graceful and [. . .] free from every useless, decorative encumbrance in contrast to the ‘ornamental luxury’ of French style.”33 Furthermore, when Giovanbattista Giorgini organized his famous fashion show in his family palace on February 14, 1951, in which the best of Italian designers showed off their creations to US buyers (thus opening the way for the massive and lucrative influx of Italian-made clothes on the US market), he did so in Florence, the quintessential Renaissance city, underlining the continuity he wanted to establish between the achievements of that period and those of the contemporary designers, heirs apparent to that tradition and glory. Fascism had particular recourse to the golden age of the Italian Renaissance in order to boost national pride and identity in fashion and style. In the fashion magazines and even the specialized periodicals of the textile industry, references to the Renaissance are countless. Here, the Renaissance is idealized as the epoch in which Italy seemed to have exported its style and taste to the most powerful courts in Europe. Indeed, fashion in fascist Italy, especially during the regime’s autarchic phase in the mid 1930s, aimed at creating a national identity and image. The regime’s nationalistic intent went hand in hand with the drive towards economic self-sufficiency, a policy that had been imposed on the nation by its isolation in the wake of international events from the mid 1930s onwards. It was then that fashion became a state affair, since the regime realized how countries like France (then the international capital of fashion) had, through its sales and exports of clothes, been able to pay off a consistent amount of its war debts, while at the same time acquiring international prestige as the nation that dictated what was chic and stylish. In this context, the campaign for the creation of an Italian fashion was inflected towards another project, that of forging and spreading a new image of Italy and Italians, a more glamorous image of the nation, no longer the “Cinderella of Europe.” In the study I review the regime’s policies in the field of fashion, considering them in the light of Mussolini’s concern with the construction of both a national consciousness and a policy that aimed to discipline the social body in dress and manners. I have drawn on a wide range of largely hitherto critically ignored sources, such as the Commentario Dizionario della moda by Cesare Meano, published in 1936 –14–

Introduction by the Ente Nazionale della Moda (National fashion body, hereafter ENM), newsreels on fashion, documentaries of women’s rallies, commercial films, and archival documents from the ENM, including the galley proofs of papers written by some of the most influential people working in fashion in the 1930s, such as Salvatore Ferragamo. In addition, I examine fashion magazines, specialized textile industry periodicals of the period, the in-house magazine for the staff of the Rinascente-UPIM department store, newspapers and oral testimonies from the fashion designers Micol Fontana and Fernanda Gattinoni, as well as the personal memories of ordinary women who grew up under fascism. From documents such as these a complex picture emerges not only of a modern history of fashion in Italy, but also of the role it played in addressing issues of national identity (the search for a national style independent from French influence). This was a phenomenon that was not unique to Italy. In the 1920s, the developing US ready-to-wear industry also sought to free itself of the influence of French couture in the process of defining its style and market.34 In the fascist project for fashion a crucial role was played, of course, by fashion designers, the majority of whom were enthusiastic about promoting – especially abroad – a distinct and recognizable Italian style through fashion. But, as a clear sign of the intricacy that characterized the world of fashion at this time, in most cases their enthusiasm was derived, in the first place, from the fact that they had already, independently of the regime‘s wishes and diktats, embarked on a similar project. Fashion, as we shall see, has had a key role in the creation of public, national and gendered identities in Italy as well as in the formation of stereotypes and mythologies.35 Complex and elusive concepts such as these make up the pattern of the intricate tapestry of the cultural, political, social and economic history of a nation and its people. As I hope to show in the pages that follow, fashion is a powerful tool that enables us to approach and understand the complexities of a nation’s history and its interrelation with the process of the formation of national identity.

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Fashion under Fascism

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Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy

–2– Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy Inventing the Italian Look: Between Modernity and Tradition An Istituto Luce documentary entitled La Grande adunata delle forze femminili (Great parade of female forces) provides me with an appropriate starting point to illustrate the ambivalent policy of the fascist regime towards the roles and images of women.1 It also offers an interesting link to fashion, to the policy that governed it and to political culture during the fascist regime. The rally that the documentary describes took place in Rome on May 28, 1939 and chronicles a massive female parade organized by Mussolini himself. This was a national gathering of women from all over Italy that aimed at celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Fasci giovanili di combattimento. The parade represented an occasion to put women on display as an integral part of the national body politic through their uniforms, their roles in the family and in society. In the film, in fact, we see women from the Red Cross organization, students, athletes from the Orvieto Academy representing a wide range of sports, women from the countryside and others, all gathered at the Circo Massimo, before going on to parade to Piazza Venezia for the welcome salute and speech by Mussolini and other gerarchi. Three distinct moments of the documentary juxtapose shots of women wearing sports uniforms with shots of the women from the countryside wearing regional costumes. These stills (Figures 1, 2 and 3) illustrate the sharp contrast between the military-like uniformity of the athletes and the women in traditional regional costumes, but also the differences in dress within the same group of women. This latter group – those in regional costume – wear accessory items such as necklaces, earrings, shawls, lace collars, ornaments, and headgear and have completely different body postures from the women wearing the regime-sponsored or sports uniforms, as if they were out taking a walk rather than marching. For the majority of these women, the differences in ornamentation were signs of their sense of belonging to strong local traditions of fine artisan craftsmanship, something that continues to characterize and distinguish the Italian style even today in the twentyfirst century. In an article entitled “Nationalizing Women. The Competition between Fascist and Commercial Cultural Models in Mussolini’s Italy,” Victoria De Grazia has described the contrast between the two female components seen in the –17–

Fashion under Fascism

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Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy

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documentary as a “shift from military to fashion.”2 Following on from this, she goes on to attribute to the women dressed in their regional costumes a kind of rebellious individualism that is at odds with and represents a tensional counterpart to the massive presence of military uniforms. It must be remembered, however, that in this section of her article De Grazia is relying not on the documentary itself, but on a written report of the parade from which she draws out what she perceives to be a tension between the militaresque and the fashion aspects of the event. In actual fact, however, the presence in the parade of women wearing local costumes, far from being a transgression of the dress codes prescribed by fascism, fell squarely within those codes. We must not be misled by what is here only an apparent contrast between uniformity and individualism, as it seems to be displayed in this popular spectacle. In fact, according to fascist regulations, the women from the countryside, the massaie rurali were encouraged to wear their local costume in order to highlight the nation’s rich and diversified traditions as well as to display the beautiful embroidery that the same women who were wearing it had created.3 The dress historian Patrizia Ribuoli in her essay “Le uniformi civili nel Regime Fascista” (Civil uniforms under the fascist regime) affirms, in fact, that: –19–

Fashion under Fascism Special attention should be given to the chance given to the Massaie Rurali to wear – instead of the official uniform – their regional costume. This was a concession that was perfectly in line with fascist ideology: in maintaining traditions the whole nation could be proud.

What we find illustrated in the documentary footage is a visual confirmation of the two-sided, indeed ambivalent, nature of the fascist attempt to include every single woman of the Italian peninsula in its purview. In this way, the regime could show off its “good face” in tolerating and appearing to exalt at one and the same time the modern woman wearing the military uniform and local time-honored traditions. This is especially striking in the perfectly symmetrical and geometric space occupied by the women dressed in uniforms seen against the more disorganized and scattered space occupied by the women in regional costumes. This, of course, does nothing to belittle the underlying thesis of De Grazia’s work, which questions the extent of women’s consent to fascism, a thesis that has been borne out by other important scholarship on the topic. But what is just as important to note is that, as a closer examination reveals, neither fascist policy on fashion (which allowed space for the cohabitation of both military uniforms and local costumes), nor attempts to circumvent that policy are simple, univocal questions. How fascism often manifested its two unmatchable ambivalent souls in the construction of the so-called “new Italian woman” has been extensively studied in recent times. Little work, however, has been done on the role that fashion and all its apparatus of diffusion has played in the project of nationalizing women, or on its role in the creation of a “national style” recognizable as such. Nor have serious attempts been made to gauge the extent to which its policies were successful. My aim in this section of the study is to offer an in-depth analysis of the political dimension of fashion under fascism, and how and why fashion became a concern of the fascist state to the point that it gave rise to a specially created government institution. In addition, the regime emanated policies in order to regulate dress, especially female dress, in a similar mode, as the Church and the state had tried to discipline the social body via sumptuary laws in the Renaissance. In the 1930s, however, more than morality and mobility of social classes, the state aimed at boosting and asserting a national style, as well as domestic production of clothes, by way of its bans on the import of foreign, especially French, fashion items. By way of introduction, let me mention a number of steps taken by the fascist regime in the field of fashion in order to create the context in which the spectacle of the women’s parade and its bearing on the fascist representation of gender is best viewed. The emphasis given to local costume had, in fact, an immediate link to the massive initiatives undertaken by the regime in the field of fashion in the 1930s. In 1932 Mussolini founded a government institution called the Ente autonomo per –20–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy la mostra permanente nazionale della moda (Autonomous body for the permanent national fashion exhibition, EAMPNM), to which was delegated the task of overseeing the complete cycle of creativity and production of fashion through two major biannual exhibitions and fashion shows held in Turin, the body’s headquarters. Later, in 1934, the name of the institution was simplified to Ente nazionale della moda (National fashion body, ENM). The ENM aimed at organizing and promoting the Italian fashion industry and, in furtherance of this goal, made various attempts to regulate women’s dress. In fact, one of the credos of the ENM was to persuade female consumers and dressmakers to seek inspiration in Italy’s domestic roots. As a result, regional customs were emphasized as a form of true italianità. Domestic traditions, then, were recruited with the aim of boosting patriotism and national pride. It was, in fact, one of the tasks of the regime to promote those sectors of the handicraft industry that were most closely linked to fashion, such as embroidery, lace, coral and straw, through the creation of another body, the Ente nazionale artigianato e piccole industrie (National body for crafts and small industries). Indeed, the emphasis given to regional costumes by the regime was seen as a reinforcement of the “true” rural Italian tradition as opposed to what was considered a “dangerous” cosmopolitism. Various articles and publications on these issues contributed to send this message, such as Emma Calderini’s “Il costume popolare in Italia” where she affirms that: “Folk costumes have a primary role nowadays in Italy, especially as they are now tending to disappear as a result of cosmopolitan fashion . [. . .] To collect all these costumes is equal to keeping a sacred memory of our country and to value the exquisite poetry of our people.”4 To rally support for this policy, one of the members of the Italian royal family, the princess of Piedmont, Maria José, was photographed in 1933 in the fashion magazine La donna wearing a regional costume (Figures 4 and 5). Interestingly, on the same pages of the magazine we find juxtaposed drawings of evening gowns designed by Brunetta Mateldi, inspired by regional costumes. The space, then, given to local costumes in the fascist rally was neither a sign of women’s dissent nor of their individualism. Rather, it was in line with the official policy of exalting nationalism through the inclusion of regional differences, a policy which had a key influence on fashion. Furthermore, there is a subtext to these photos: namely, that of using both the Savoy princess’s royal image and that of the more glamorous mannequins to convince well-off women and aristocrats not to go to Paris, but to remain instead within the national boundaries to purchase their dresses. Fascist fashion policy regarding the promotion of and emphasis on regional dress as a source of inspiration for Italian dress design is not without several tangled threads. Within the fashion world, in fact, it was not at all the case that fascist policies met with complete approval. Indeed, not everybody agreed that folkloric dresses could be an always valid and single source of inspiration. Brunetta’s –21–

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drawings published in the pages of La donna, set alongside the photographs of the princess in local costume, bear only a vague similarity to the clothes worn by Maria José. We can sense the tension between these diametrically opposed modes of conceptualizing the invitation to promote regional looks in the way the ambiguous expression of the models’ eyes, as they are depicted in the drawings, seems to betray a subtle sarcasm as they direct their gaze towards the costumes worn by Her Highness. In fact, the models, in the drawings seem almost to whisper, “OK we understand that what you are wearing is the dictate of the regime. However, it is we who decide what fashion we like the most.”5 Most striking in these pages is the –22–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy

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sharp contrast between the country look of the queen – a sort of populist attempt suggesting that royals were close to the ordinary people – and the glamour and sophistication hinted at in Brunetta’s drawings. The tension existing within the fashion world that is illustrated by the juxtaposition of images in the pages of La donna, between the fascist valorization of the local and the desire for more glamorous designs, is but one of the many tensions that undercut and ultimately destabilized fascist policies. Another was represented by how the fascist emphasis on the local ran counter to the regime’s policy of repressing regionalism and favoring a standardized national language over local –23–

Fashion under Fascism

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dialects. As we shall have the occasion to note, in 1936 the ENM published the Commentario dizionario Italiano della moda (Commentary and Italian dictionary of fashion) by the journalist and writer Cesare Meano, the specific purpose of which was to purge the language of fashion of all foreign terminology. Meano’s text is a great example of the formation of a fashion discourse in the cultural politics of fascism. It strove to uniform the social body and appearance in dress, but also and no less to create a national character that would fit fascist ideology and gender representation. The process of standardization also sought to erase the numerous differences of class, gender, geography and culture that were characteristic of 1920s and 1930s Italy and to a great extent still characterize Italy today. One example of this was the massive use of civil uniforms. In fact, some photographs show newborn babies wearing a fez, the headgear typical of fascist militants. To foster standardization, the regime made great investments in the creation of a national textile and apparel industry, a policy that was driven above all by the desire to wrestle Italian fashion away from the pernicious influence then exercised on it by French fashion, which had established its hegemony and was recognized by all as the indisputable world leader. The attempts to create the industrial bases for the appearance on the market of domestically produced fashion were part and parcel of the regime’s attempts to homogenize a stratified social body, divided by gender, region and class. As we will see in the following chapter, the initiatives taken by the regime after the implementation of the ENM sought, via the various channels available by the mass media of the time (newspapers, magazines, Luce newsreels, cinema, parades, –24–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy public exhibitions, etc.), to bring together the different social strata of the Italian population. We should not neglect to note, however, that all this happened only at the level of display and spectacle, and did little or nothing to work change in the underlying structures of society. In similar vein, the massaie rurali seen in the newsreel are presented as if they were participants in the regime’s achievements in the field of textile production and are thus rendered protagonists in the life of the fascist state at the same level as the urban and urbane middle-class woman of the slender and fashionable body, who was a consumer of make-up and trendy clothes. Pulled together in the most artificial of manners, these were two sets of women who had very little in common in terms of geography, class, consumer habits and power. Still, this kind of approach coincided with another tenet of fascist ideology, which was that of persuading the masses and social subjects who were weaker either on account of their gender or class – women and workers--to believe they were agents and protagonists of history.6 This same intent underlies the order to wear civil uniforms and so give the illusion of a sense of order and discipline, but above all to suggest a belonging to the fatherland and the Duce. In the world of fascist fashion policy there was room, then, albeit not without considerable tension, for both the local and the national, the traditional and the modern, the prolific mother and the Orvieto academist, opposite figures but who turn out to be two sides of the same coin, two products of the same ideology that aimed at controlling women in the same breath as it put their differences on display. Nevertheless, difference, especially in terms of resistance to the strict codes, was not to disappear even in the dream of the fascist totalitarian state. Despite the regime’s attempt to coagulate and control the social body in a centrifugal mode, influencing the masses, their customs, social habits and language, an opposite centripetal force, similar in a way to the dual mode of imitation and transgression inscribed in Simmel’s theory of fashion, was always at work almost side by side with it. Paradoxically, the very same institutions whose task it was to standardize and control also created conditions that were fertile for the construction of several niches of individual creativity. Indeed, this is a field characterized by a complex twofold process. Under fascism, fashion assisted, on the one hand, in the alignment of the regime’s policies while, on the other, it also produced from within its system visible forms of individualism and creativity that went in the face of fascist policy and sowed the seeds for the future success of Italian fashion in the world. What has been said thus far of individual and creative uses of fashion can also be extended to encompass the style of specific designers. I am suggesting that such elements, which are inherent to fashion, are not always controllable and can ultimately help bring about the crumbling and transformation of sedimented hegemonic political ideologies, cultures and styles.7 In the crucial years between –25–

Fashion under Fascism the two World Wars, fashion can be enrolled as an effective tool for the study of the social transformations in the various components of Italian society. It would, however, be a mistake to think that fascist policy on fashion was produced in an ahistorical vacuum. In fact, much of fascist policy, especially the nationalistic intent that inspired the creation of national bodies, had its roots in the debate in and around fashion that took place in Italy in the pre-fascist liberal years. Indeed, there is a strong line of continuity in the role ascribed to fashion that stretches from the early years of the twentieth century up to and into the fascist period. What the two periods have most in common is their shared assumption that fashion is to have first and foremost a role in the forming and cementing of national identity. By focusing on these two periods, we will be able to gauge the extent to which Italian fashion was already characterized by the high degree of creativity that would enable it to emerge on the world scene at the end of World War II and gradually impose its presence on a massive scale in today’s global market. Indeed, the seeds of that boom are to be found in these two periods. If, as we have been able to see, valorizing at one and the same time the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, fascist policy on fashion was complex and contorted, a further complication came as the result of the social, political and cultural transformations of social classes and individuals that took place in the nation as the process of modernization gathered steam in the latter fascist years. If Italy was, on the one hand, entrapped by the exasperated nationalism of a totalitarian regime, on the other, the nation wished to keep up with the modernizing pace of other Western capitalist countries. In this, the influence of the USA, and all it stood for in those years, cannot be underestimated. Since the 1920s, the US readyto-wear industry had been gradually improving and expanding both nationally and on the European market. At the same time, the culture industry via Hollywood films, popular female magazines and department stores directed its persuasive mechanisms towards a growing number of Italian consumers whose modes and responses helped to shape a new form of popular culture, now more open than ever before to embracing US goods and entertainments.8 Fascist Italy, despite the politics of self-sufficiency during its autarchic phase, turned out not to be completely immune – in common with other European countries – from a gradual transformation of the social body, as well as from a process of “Americanization.” Hollywood films played a key role in this, but so did the several visits made to North America by industrialists, such as Olivetti and Pirelli, economists and others destined to have leadership roles in the development of the Italian accessory industry such as Ferragamo who came back from America or Emilio Pucci who had studied in an American college.9 The process of modernization, begun in the pre-war years, never completely stopped but went ahead at an incredible speed in the post-war period. Italian creativity in design and color was marketed abroad –26–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy after World War II, but had been created much earlier, its premises already in place in the pre-war years. An analysis of the way fascism treated fashion enables us to gauge the apparent contradictory faces of fascist ideology and practices, caught between two opposing desires, that of tradition and that of modernism. These two opposing forces, however, are not only typical of fascist ideology and propaganda. Indeed the regime, exploited to its own ends and in order to increase its popularity, the extreme cultural and economic diversity of a modern northern Italy and a peasant traditional south. Still today, the intermingling of the twin image of the Armani suit and homemade pasta characterizes the picture of Italy that legions of foreign visitors and buyers have. The Italian icon is perceived, on the one hand, as the quintessence of the modern with its avant-garde design, and beautiful, well-made clothes; and, on the other, as an image of tradition exemplified by the cooking of its Mediterranean and peasant origins, the sex symbols of 1950s actresses, the existence of regional craftsmanship in leather, jewellery, embroidery, ceramics, knitwear, clothing, etc. As Ortoleva has noted : “the power of the [Italian] icon, its enormous allure, lies precisely in the coexistence of these opposing elements,”, the modern and traditional.10 This internal and only apparent dichotomy finds an immediate example in the twin figures of the prolific mother and the dynamic body of the athletic woman, figures that were both emblematically promoted by the regime.

Fashion, Culture and National Identity. Rosa Genoni and the Futurists In order to trace the line of continuity that leads from the debate on nationalism, fashion and the search for a national style into the fascist period, we need to take a step backward and turn our attention to the years preceding the advent of fascism and consider the impact of and role played at that time by the most prominent figures in the battle for an “Italian fashion.” Rosa Genoni must be considered one of the pioneers and most fervent advocates of the project to wrestle Italian fashion away from its subalternity to France. Indeed, in this, her work represents the clearest element of continuity between prefascist and fascist periods. An article entitled “Il costume popolare in Italia,” published in La donna italiana in 1934 begins, in fact, by mentioning Genoni as being the first to attempt a historical account of Italian costume.11 Born in 1867, in the midst of the Italian unification process, Genoni, who possessed a wonderful sense of determination and courage, was the first dressmaker to become a writer, teacher and political activist. She immediately understood both the limits of Italian fashion and the potential it possessed for becoming independent from foreign –27–

Fashion under Fascism models, something she never tired of pointing out. In order to stress the importance the Italian tradition in creativity and art had in the field of fashion, Genoni turned to the Renaissance as a source of inspiration. She studied the paintings, fashion plates and sketches of the period in which the “Italian” style was spread for the first time in the major courts of Europe. In particular, she was very interested in foregrounding the role played at this time by women such as Beatrice and Isabella D’Este. In her contemporary Italy, she saw how the vestiges of the Renaissance tradition had their counterpart and heirs apparent in the incredible wealth of creativity and design of Italian local craftsmanship, as well as in the sewing skills of a good number of tailors and dressmakers throughout Italy. To give new blood to this patrimony, she put forward a series of proposals that sought to organize the then almost anarchic field of fashion in Italy: these ranged from providing better theoretical and practical training in professional schools to the establishment of formal links among the various branches of the sector, like fashion houses, workers, “case di confezione” etc. Some of her proposals – like the formation of a statecontrolled institution (later to be called ENM) charged with organizing the clothing and textile industry – along with those of another fervent advocate Italian fashion, Fortunato Albanese, were later to be taken up by the fascist regime. Genoni was, indeed, a remarkable figure, whose important role in the history of fashion has not been sufficiently acknowledged.12 She was the eldest of eighteen children and started her working life as an apprentice at a relative’s dressmaker’s shop when she was ten. It was here that she learned to sew. Gradually she managed to attend school in the evenings after work and gain an education, build her culture and learn French. In fact, in 1886, she had the opportunity to work as a “premiere” in a Parisian atelier where she stayed for two years. It was during this period that she made the best of her experience in the capital of fashion and even managed to sell some of her own creations. In Paris, she also studied history of art and costume, as well as technical and artistic drawing. It was here that she realized that the production of a dress was the result of collaboration between the dressmaker and a group of experts in the decorative arts. She also realized that some of the materials used in French dressmaking were imported from Italy. However, even if Italy possessed the raw materials for a fashion industry, she concluded, something important was still lacking. In fact, the major lesson Genoni learned from her Parisian experience, on her return to her homeland, was that the setting-up of professional fashion schools was a key for the development of an autonomous style. She was also convinced that the people working in the apparel industry lacked a sense of who and what Italy was and had been, especially in the fields of the arts and culture. It is for this reason that a vital plank in her project to organize and launch the Italian decorative arts and fashion was her turn back to the past in order to find the sense of identity, conspicuously absent in the present, that could be promoted both domestically and abroad. Genoni was well aware that Italy and –28–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy the people working in the fashion trade and industry lacked a sense of national identity and were still far from being aware of their potential. In fact, she never passed up the opportunity to point out that Italian decoration, fabric and other raw materials were often acquired by French couturiers at a low price and then found their way back to the Italian market as French-produced clothes and sold at extortionate prices. This kind of exploitation, she wrote, had to be stopped because: We Italians are like those who have prepared all the material for building a house, the bricks, the timber, the decorations, the plaster, the curtains, and have hired the engineers, the foremen, the specialized workers, and found the perfect place to build. But we never get started with building the house, and without ever knowing why.

Genoni firmly believed that it was important for Italians working in the field of fashion to discover and develop an autonomous style that was recognized as Italian and not a mere copy of French fashion. This side of her personal battle assumed a vital importance in her commitment to Italian fashion as a teacher. In fact, from 1906 until 1925, she taught history of costume in the Milan-based professional institution Scuola della società umanitaria ( School of the humanitarian society), a school that had been founded in order to instruct less privileged people in the pursuit of vocational and skilled jobs. Having taken all the steps on the ladder from the very beginning, and having had the opportunity to work in a French fashion house, she was in a perfect position to observe the backwardness of Italy in terms of organization and lack of proper schools. She denounced this situation in a paper she gave at the Primo congresso delle donne italiane (First congress of Italian women), held in Rome from April 24-30 in 1908, at which Genoni participated as a member of the Socialist Party delegation. The complete version of her paper “Vita d’arte nella moda” (Life of art in fashion) was then published in the October issue of the magazine Vita femminile italiana, to which she was one of the official contributors.13 The article itself is quite interesting. Genoni introduces her argument on the importance of creating a truly “Italian” style and fashion by making reference to the cultural environment of the time in which, on the one hand, one could see the triumph of positivistic thought in the praise she gives to scientific progress, and, on the other, the value of art and creativity seen in contrast to and belonging to a different realm, and therefore at odds with, that kind of progress. Again harking back to figures from the past like Leonardo, she claims that a more fruitful collaboration between the worlds of science and industry and the arts would be desirable. She finds this assumption especially true when she affirms that, similarly to other fields, in apparel design a modern style is the result of the harmonic combination between “the exactitude of science and the indefinite nature of art.” She points out, then, that the fields of technology – as we would say today – and –29–

Fashion under Fascism art are not separate, rather they work side by side. In addition, and no less importantly, she hints at a more accessible notion of art, one that is not to be intended solely as museum objects or works of art jealously kept in private houses and salons for the privileged few to admire. Against this, she advocated the idea of a more popular art that was visible in the objects on display in everyday life, on the street: architecture, the decorations of buildings, statues, clothing. What is interesting here is that Genoni had a very modern mind in promoting a century ago the power and importance of a performative and popular art. It is to this kind of discourse that she ties her claim for an Italian fashion and style that she thinks is not invented out of nothing. In her view, Italy already had a distinct artistic tradition in clothing and textile, as well as the other arts, that harked back to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. However, her reference to the Italian Renaissance is not intended as an inducement to steer Italian dress design in the direction of a passive reproduction of the nation’s past glories. On the contrary, she uses the past only as a source of artistic inspiration in order to elaborate new concepts of style and beauty that would draw on the tradition but also express the pulse of the present modern times. In fashion Genoni finds “The fusion of industry and art, of products of science and machines with the ideal of beauty, of the interests of commerce and speculation with the triumph of aesthetics, of the advantage our nation’s legacy gives us with the greater originality and dignity of production.”14 In her view, then, fashion is defined as art, but, borrowing Benjamin’s expression, with the loss of its aura. In her report to the Primo congresso donne italiane (First national conference of Italian women), held from April 24–30, 1908, we read that Genoni presented a motion in favor of a national fashion, which was then approved by the vast majority of those present. The motion was formulated as follows: Hoping for the prosperous awakening in Italy of all the industries with ties to the women’s garment industry and for the continued foundation of women’s professional schools; considering that the sense of art and beauty is the patrimony and tradition of Italian genius; remembering that never more than today in our nation do we see such a strong tendency toward original and independent aesthetic production in many fields of the decorative arts; we move that, just as with the embroidery and the lace industries, associations of women, institutes, artists and craftsmen and women be founded to foster the practical furthering of a national women’s fashion.15

Besides stressing the importance of producing more affordable clothes, Genoni realized the vital role that could be played by an organized and strengthened official body that would bring together the female crafts of lace, embroidery and –30–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy the decorative arts, something which represented an incredible source of wealth in the Italian peninsula’s female economy.16 In this way, she called attention to the enormous potential of Italian artisans, whose worth had been completely underestimated both in Italy and abroad, and the long-standing tradition of their artistic and fine work, a tradition whose roots she traced back to Italy’s splendid artistic past in the Renaissance. Moreover, she saw that the nation’s tradition in embroidery and textiles, which is still in existence today in the Italian regions, was something that needed to be not only further studied, but also taken as a source of inspiration. Two further crucial points that Genoni emphasized in her claim for Italian fashion emerge from her other writings. One is her firm conviction that the French style of elaborate decoration was not always suitable for the Italian woman and her lifestyle; and two, her realization of the importance of mass-produced goods, a phenomenon that was then in its infancy in Italy. In pointing out the differences between highly priced couture and the more democratic version of fashion, she was prescient enough to know ahead of time what the future of fashion was going to be. She writes, in fact, exuding the optimism common in those years about the positive, transforming effect she and others, notably the futurists, assumed the machine would have on daily life: The machine will not be an obstacle to the production of these stylish and beautiful articles. Far from it! In the realm of the industries that are ancillary to the garment industry, the docile, obedient, fast machine will be able to reproduce and distribute in an incalculable number the creations of the artist and craftsman/woman. The machine will mould and shape raw materials according to the decorative motifs that the modern Italian genius has imagined. It will also lend itself to the democratization, for those who are less well-off, of those beautiful works that the hand of man once produced at prices so very high that they were the reserve of the privileged few. 17 (emphasis mine)

Genoni’s approach to the history of Italian fashion bore political, cultural and aesthetic implications. Her tireless research for innovative and refined styles is intimately linked to her commitment to combine professionalism, craftsmanship and a profound knowledge of Italy’s historical and artistic traditions.18 It was not by chance that Genoni went back to exploring the paintings of Italian renaissance artists, as the names she gave to some of her dresses suggests.19 With these creations, Genoni went back to the splendor of an epoch that had no rivals in the richness of its experiments and achievements in all fields of creativity and science. Yet, her creations, far from being mere copies, were modern reinterpretations of Italian Renaissance paintings, like her ball gown inspired by Botticelli’s Primavera gown, which she presented in the decorative arts section at the Milan International Exhibition in 1906 (winning first prize), and her Manto di corte, after a drawing by the fifteenth-century artist Pisanello. Genoni was keen to draw the fruits out of –31–

Fashion under Fascism the keen sense of competition that had characterized the Italian cities and their surrounding territories during the centuries prior to the country’s unification and that had led to the elaboration and production of distinct traditions in craftsmanship. For Genoni, however, inspiration from the past was never intended as a passive act of copying and mechanically reproducing old models. Incidentally, the same concern with the Renaissance was also a characteristic of the fascist policy on fashion. In the fashion magazines of the 1930s, in fact, several articles analyze Italian art from the perspective of the fashions and styles of the Renaissance. Recourse to the Renaissance, seen as a source of both inspiration and reassurance in the uncertainty of the present, had long been a trait of Italian history, especially in moments of crisis of identity. Genoni’s writings on fashion also broached feminist issues. In one article, “Rivendicazioni femminili nella moda” (Women’s demands in fashion), published in Vita d’Arte, she insists on the fact that feminism needs to consider fashion and style not as something that diminishes women’s political claims on the social terrain. Rather, since this is a field in which women have expressed themselves consistently and in various ways, combined with the fact that legions of women worked in the clothing industry, feminism would do well not to underestimate the impact fashion had on women’s lives. In addition, she argued, the aesthetic sense that is part and parcel of fashion must be seen as a strength and not as a belittling of women’s intellectual ability. These are all issues that, as we know, have come to the fore only recently in the fields of feminism, history of fashion and fashion theory.20 But it is to the building of a culture of fashion that she gives here greatest attention. She had seen how in France institutions like the Museum of Costume – and the existence of important publications in the field of history of costume by Racinet and Quicherat, as well as a dictionary of costume, etc – supported and built a culture of fashion, which she sees as lacking in her contemporary Italy, but present in sixteenth-century Italy. In support of her argument, she refers, in fact, to writers such as Piccolomini, in whose dialogue Raffaella female elegance and wit are praised, or to Sansovino who “from that period on concerned himself with the Italianness of dress,” or Vecellio who wrote his treatise Degli Habiti Antichi e Moderni, and also left drawings and patterns of lace “that are copied even today.” Genoni affirms, then, that an Italian tradition had existed both in design and had built up a culture up around it, but this had been dissipated and almost lost. Yet, its stitches, she hoped, could be put back together in order to create the bases for the national fashion she so worked so ardently toward. In sum: the debate on fashion in which Genoni was a leading light bore on a number of issues: the return to the Renaissance as a moment of inspiration and pride, the need to update the institutions that governed the fashion industry in Italy, and the urgency to free Italian fashion from French hegemony. In other words, in the years preceding World War I, patriotism and nationalism were the order of the –32–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy day in the debate that saw participation by many political and artistic groups. For Genoni, the clothing and fashion industries had various roles to play: they had a political valence insofar as they went a good way towards the definition of a national character and a boost in national pride; but they also made a key contribution to the modern economy. Constructive and non-elitist, Genoni’s project is characterized by its sensitivity to workers’ rights and the attention she pays to women both as workers in the industry and as consumers. There were other participants in the pre-WWI debate on fashion. For many, and going in a direction opposite to that of Genoni, fashion became the terrain on which to effect a rupture between past and present. In this context, Genoni represents a voice of moderation when compared to, say, the Futurists, who were far more radical in their ideas. The experiments and creations of painters like Giacomo Balla and others such as Fortunato Depero and Ernesto Thayant (who designed for Madeleine Vionnet), but which did not become part of mainstream fashion at that time, were a far more elitist form of rupture and transgression, that were taken up later in France where there was a more fertile terrain in terms of contamination of the arts. Let us think of the Italian émigré Elsa Schiaparelli and her experimentations with surrealism and avant-garde artists. French couture drew inspiration from Futurist design, many of the exhibits at the Exposition internationale des arts decoratifs et industriels modernes, held in Paris in 1925, being particularly influenced by their work.21 Even if they did not meet with much enthusiasm in Italy, Balla’s designs of clothing and accessories, including hats, scarves, shoes and handbags, still remain an important historical document, a source of inspiration for new ideas regarding shape and colors and for what later fashion was going to experiment with in both male and female clothing. The Futurist project, as shown in their first Manifesto published in 1909, aimed at revolutionizing society and individuals. See, for example, the piece Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo (Futurist reconstruction of the universe), signed by Balla and Depero in 1915. As regards fashion, this project had personal implications insofar as it brought about the necessity to redesign wardrobes and design clothes that suited the revolutionary spirit of the times. Indeed, what is perhaps most interesting about the Futurist project is how it sought to effect deep ruptures in the symmetry of the cut in order to allow the wearer more movement and dynamism. Out too went the bourgeois dark and “neutral” colors of male clothing – Fluegel’s “great male renunciation.” In the fiery debate that preceded and, to a great extent, provoked Italy’s decision to enter World War I, the Futurists were amongst the most vociferous. In fact, in Balla’s manifesto “Il vestito antineutrale” (The anti-neutral dress), published on September 11, 1914, the text’s outspoken nationalistic component is blended with the exaltation of war, as illustrated by his opening quotation from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s 1909 Manifesto: “Let us glorify war, the only hygiene of the world.” Balla’s nationalism –33–

Fashion under Fascism is also evident in the accompanying design of a white, red and green male suit, the colors of the Italian flag. Balla writes: The Futurists want to liberate our race from every neutrality, from the fearful and peaceloving indecision, from negative pessimism and from nostalgic, romantic and spineless inertia. We want to color Italy with daring and Futurist risk, give at last to Italians joyous and bellicose clothes.22

For Balla, neutralità has the double meaning of referring not only to those who are not among the interventionists, but also to the neutral tone of colors which he sees as added confirmation of the audacity and courage that is lacking among Italians. According to Balla, in fact, “One thinks and acts the way one dresses. As neutrality is the synthesis of all that is in the past we Futurists today put our antineutral, festively bellicose clothes on display.” After an introduction in which he elaborates on the contrast between dark colors, especially black, and its association with the mediocrity of bourgeois culture, and bright colors that boast a new bellicose vitality, the Manifesto goes on to list all the characteristics of new Futurist clothing: first of all, it is to be “aggressive” in order to “multiply the courage of the strong and upset the sensitivity of the vile”; its new geometric and colorful print fabrics, especially what he calls the “muscular colors, ” “rossissimi, verdissimi, gialloni, aranciooooni, vermiglioni” (deep deep reds, green greens, big yellows, oooooranges, and vermilions) must be dynamic; and lastly Futurist clothing must be “short-lived in order incessantly to renew the pleasure and erupting animation of the body.” But it is red that is the color exalted at the end of the manifesto, and that at the beginning is chosen as a color to honor the heroes who died in the war and who are to be remembered in this way, instead of being wept for with the black color of mourning. Later in 1933, Marinetti together with Francesco Monarchi, Enrico Prampolini and Mino Somenzi was a signatory of “The Futurist Manifesto of the Italian Hat,” in which was taken up once again “the indispensable and longed for revolution in Italian men’s attire” that had been initiated by Giacomo Balla and his manifesto on “The Antineutral Suit.” In affirming, “The aesthetic necessity of the hat,” they write: 1. We condemn the Nordic use of black and of neutral colors that give the wet, snowy, foggy streets of the city the appearance of a stagnant muddy melancholy, as if it were raining tortoises and chunks of stone swept along by brown torrents. 2. We condemn the types of traditional headgear that jar with the speed and utilitarian aesthetic of our great mechanical civilization, like for example, the pretentious top hat that hinders swiftness of foot, and attracts funerals like a magnet. In August, in the Italian squares flooded by dazzling light and torrid silence, the black or gray hat of the passerby floats along sadly, like dung. Color! We need color to compete with the Italian sun.23

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Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy There is no doubt that the Futurist approach to fashion was innovative and playful, more so in the ensuing years when it could be taken out of its immediate bellicose context, especially in its use of bright color, fabrics with abstract prints that recalled the painters’ work and style, all characterized by its great emphasis on the asymmetrical cut. However, the Futurists did not really have a political project that envisioned links with the branches of fashion already existing and operating in Italy. If, on the one hand, the Futurists stressed the political and communicative charge of clothing and linked it to the debate on intervention in the war, as shown in the 1914 manifesto, on the other, their nationalism never took the form of a policy that aimed at creating the conditions for the emergence of the kind of national fashion for which they argued. It is interesting to note that in the 1930s Marinetti will write to support fascist policies on fashion. Even his manifesto of the Italian hat might be seen in line with the needs of the industry at the time to keep up with a decrease in the use of hats by Italian males, and so encouraging the domestic production of a distinct “Italian hat.” Such an “Italian hat,” according to the futurist manifesto, would appeal to foreign visitors touring or vacationing in Italy. The manifesto, in fact, states: In this way the ideal hat will emerge – a work of Italian art, both uplifting and multipurpose, which, while intensifying and propagating the beauty of the race, will impose one of our most important national industries upon the world once again.24

Genoni, however, was neither a futurist, nor a fascist. A convinced pacifist, she gave vent to her position on the war in articles published in the socialist newspaper L’Avanti, which provoked an aggressive reaction from the conservative daily newspaper Il Secolo. This latter, in misogynistic mode, advised Genoni to return to the usual tools, the “scissors and pins” of her work as a dressmaker instead of speaking out in the ideological debate about Italy’s intervention in the war. To this, strongly reaffirming her commitment to her “nationalist utopia” of an Italian classic fashion, Genoni responded in another article published in L’Avanti on January 11, 1915. She wrote that, first, “scissors” are tools not solely used by tailors, but are also used in journalism; and, second, that it is a mistake to underestimate the importance of the relationship between clothing and politics. Her use of the adjective “classic” here seems to be in polemic with the Futurists as is the charge she levels at those “nationalists” who instead of working toward a common project waste their time and energy in defending the war. Moreover, she concludes, what she had done was to give a voice in this debate to all women, the vast majority of whom were likely to lose family members in the war, and who anxiously read newspapers terrified of finding the names of their beloved ones among the dead. These were women, she went on, who were silent only out of discretion and modesty and not because they supported the war. Here Genoni calls attention to the –35–

Fashion under Fascism importance of translating into political practice, as well as economic projects, the ideas and experiments of artists, something which in her view was lacking in the Futurist vision of fashion. The very fact that later in France couturiers drew inspiration from Italian Futurist designs was proof that Italy did not lack ideas. What it lacked was the structures to harness those ideas and channel its creativity profitably. The patriotism animating Genoni’s project of creating an autonomous Italian fashion was, in the years before and immediately after World War I, light years away from the kind of bellicose and expansionist nationalism that animated parts of Italian cultural and intellectual debate of the time. The war, however, was going to have a profound impact on the social and political transformation taking place Italy, as well as the rest of Europe, and was to bring to women’s lives new forms of agency and subjectivity.

The “New Woman” and Fascism. Lydia De Liguoro and the Project for an Italian Fashion In Europe and the USA, in the years immediately following World War I, a new image of woman, such as the “flapper,” and the “garçonne,” or the italianized version, “la maschietta,” came to the fore. It should come as no surprise that this masculine image of woman did not meet with the approval of the fascist regime. As a consequence of the cultural changes brought about by the war, women’s clothes went through a process of simplification in terms of fit, decoration and length. This, along with the lowering of the waist-line, in a style similar to that of children’s clothes, gave women a younger and fresher look, which was taken further by the fashion of the “Eton crop” haircut. This image gave the women who chose to adopt it a more dynamic and independent outlook and was in step with the gradual independence they were gaining at the social and political level in the fight for suffrage. The protagonist of the French novel by Victor Margueritte La Garçonne is a dynamic model of just such a young woman, a student at the Paris university La Sorbonne, who borrows male clothing.25 She borrows, in fact, not only outfits from her male friend’s wardrobe, but also his more liberated costumes. In fact this “new woman,” in the act of appropriating the male wardrobe and occupying a role in society that was originally conceived for men, represented a challenge not only to the political and economic establishment, but also to the very core of the classic humanistic notion of a centered subjectivity. It is not by chance that fascism rejected violently the fashion, iconography and politics of the “maschietta.” In fact as we shall see in the following chapter, under the entry “maschietta,” Meano, in his Commentario, damns this female fashion as particularly distasteful since it was

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Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy no longer possible to tell women’s age and status. This was a case of gender trouble that had the effect of subverting the perception of the social hierarchy then in place and that was organized according to age, gender and class. Moreover, homosexuality – both male and female – the masculinization of women, not to mention the new aesthetic that went someway toward the femininization of men, all challenged a compact and self-contained notion of gender. In this vein, it is sufficient to think of the experiments in Surrealism, Dada and Futurism, as well as of the prominence of lesbian writers and public figures such as Gertrude Stein whose salon was frequented by international artists and intellectuals. This was a subversive culture that continued to survive into the 1930s. In fact, as Caroline Evans affirms, a woman like Elsa Schiaparelli: articulated the “problem” of the New Woman, a “problem” that was seen to be as much one of the appearances as of behavior. [. . . .] The “New Woman,” in the form of the sexually independent woman in particular, was a source of much anxiety in the interwars years as she destabilized the conventional association between appearance and identity.26

Against the background of the rich ferment of ideas and experiments in different fields of knowledge that characterized Italy after World War I, those women who belonged to the middle and working classes were gradually able to enjoy more freedom to choose how to live their lives. In Italy, as elsewhere, an increasing number of middle-class women were engaged in political activity, especially in the feminist struggles for the right to vote and for better conditions in the workplace. Many more women worked in industry, in family-run businesses, and frequented artistic and intellectual circles. The wake of World War I brought with it drastic changes to society, the economy and the organization of the family. In fact, many women whose husbands, fathers, brothers and sons were at war took positions of command in the many sectors of economy left vacant by men called to fight in the war. Of course new problems arose when the men returned from the front and, as in other countries, in Italy too, women were pushed outside the industrial workplace. However, the new political situation and the growing sense of unease and instability which followed World War I, did not erase completely for women some of the benefits that the tragedy of the war had paradoxically brought, not even in fascist Italy. Women, in fact, proved they were capable of doing men’s jobs in addition to fulfilling their role and work as caregivers and house-makers, so gaining agency and greater freedom and power. In addition, the gradual changes in the economy in the direction of a more industrialized society and the influence of the USA through Hollywood cinema and the spread of US-produced goods in the European market led to an increase in

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Fashion under Fascism consumption. Indeed, most advertising was now directed at female consumers, many of whom were now administering the household budget.27 A further illustration of the growing demand for goods aimed specifically at women was the gradual proliferation of women’s publications. In fact, given the shifting patterns of demand, a number of periodicals, oriented towards a female audience, came into being, grew in number and were on a constant increase from the beginning of the century and throughout the 1930s. It needs to be said, however, that this was a trend that had already been established in the decades preceding Italy’s unification, especially in Milan and the rest of northern Italy. Although this trend was shared by other northern European countries, it had its own history in Italy, due to the fact that contributors and journalists were faced with the deep gap between existing classes and the problems related to a non-unified language, which was a question of no little import for a periodical.28 Moreover, the ambition of nineteenth-century Milanese periodicals on fashion was to launch a cultural project and publish as a series an illustrated history of Italy to be read by a larger female audience. In fact, as the historian Silvia Franchini shows, at the end of 1856, the Lampugnani publishing company decided to publish a volume entitled Storia d’Italia narrata alle donne italiane (History of Italy narrated to Italian women) in which all the articles were collected.29 A detailed history of these periodicals, which had a predominantly female audience, has yet to be written. However, I would like to underline that despite the differences in their cultural and political orientations, these periodicals still played a significant role in the creation of a space for women in which their voices could be heard or be connected with those of other women, thereby creating for themselves a genealogy of popular culture. In fact, since their inception, female mass publications provided both a space and a forum in which women could address issues pertaining to their personal and public lives, as well as spreading information about a variety of female grass-roots organizations. On a more literary footing, these magazines also offered space for women writers to publish their short stories, an increasingly successful literary genre in these opening decades of the twentieth century.30 The short stories by Anna Banti, Alba de Cespedes, Carola Prosperi, Gianna Manzini and others that appeared in these magazines gave women a very important slant on the productive lives of other women – not solely confined to motherhood – and facilitated the creation of and eased the way into alternative models of women’s subjectivity. Interestingly, these texts did little to conform to the genre of the “edifying short story with a moral” that served a middle-class audience and were devoid of any pretence at emancipation or thoughtful reflection on women’s roles in everyday life in the family and society. By not succumbing to the literary conventions of the time and taking a more ambitious task, these short stories set themselves the task of valorizing women and their work in society, regardless of class or ideology.

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Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy In these magazines, we find a growing number of articles on sport and outdoor activities, especially during fascism, illustrated by women dressed in casual clothes and sportswear. In addition, the pages of the magazines contained photographs and stylish drawings by well-known artists such as Marcello Dudovich, Ester Sormani, Rene Grau and Brunetta Mateldi, as well as film stills accompanying reviews of Hollywood and Italian films. Advertising now began to play a key role in everyday life and in the magazines we find spreads publicizing perfumes, face lotions and cosmetics from Elizabeth Arden and other French and Italian brands, slimming and exercising machines, tanning lamps, as well as laxatives to create a body free of superfluous weight. The cosmetic and beauty industries were in expansion in all Western capitalist countries and Italy was by no means excluded from this process. Yet, to privilege the articles on women’s rights to vote to which the magazines gave space, as well as the dissemination of news from a variety of female organizations in the fields of pedagogy and education for women, should not lead us to underestimate the effect on ordinary women’s lives of the attention given to fashion, to its function in the construction of a female public image and its impact on the creation of a new, modern sensibility and style. In general terms, fashion has always represented for some women one of the ways in which they could fantasize, manipulate and forge their own image and identity. In such a context, I would like to take into special consideration the magazine Lidel, founded in 1919 and aimed at a female bourgeois audience endowed with spending power. The name of the magazine comes from the initials of the founder’s name, Lydia Dosio De Liguoro, but also for Letture, illustrazioni, disegni, eleganze, lavori (Readings, illustrations, drawings, elegance, works). Highly sophisticated in design and appearance and counting among its literary contributors some of the best-known writers and artists of the day, such as Grazia Deledda and Luigi Pirandello, both of whom were later to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature, Ada Negri, Carola Prosperi, Sibilla Aleramo, Amalia Guglielminetti, Goffredo Bellonci, Matilde Serao, Eugenio Treves and others, this was a magazine in which fashion and its related activities, as well as work, played a central role. It was also beautifully illustrated by well-known artists, one of whom was Marcello Dudovich. The reason why Lidel is important is that starting with its very first issue, its mission, as clearly stated on the first page in the table of contents, was that of transmitting a sense of italianità, of Italian national identity and nationhood. This, of course, was a tall order. In a variety of fields a sense of nation seemed to be always in tatters. Yet, using fashion as a major vehicle for the development of its cultural, aesthetic, political and economic project, Lidel was strenuous in its promotion of a modern Italy and in the acquisition of a sense of pride and belonging among its people. It is in this light that the first concrete attempts, following on from the earlier solicitations of the likes of Genoni, to create an autonomous Italian fashion and style – as always, independent from the hegemony of France – should be read. –39–

Fashion under Fascism At this time an independent Italian fashion industry did not really exist, if we compare it with the far more advanced professional organizations of schools and maisons existing in France. For instance, France had already established a government institution La chambre syndacale de la haute couture that organized and coordinated the various branches of the industry. In France, big department stores flourished and gave rise to the culture of the Paris of the Second Empire, which fascinated writers like Zola and passersby and philosophers like Benjamin. As stated in the first part of the study, in France the discourse on fashion and modernity, together with aesthetic and sartorial experiments, had long found a common terrain of investigation, at least since the second half of the nineteenth century, as the writings of Baudelaire and others attested.31 This meant that in France, the culture, art and economy of the nation had ascribed to fashion a distinct role in expressing and recounting the pulse of the time. The ephemeral and transient sides inherent in fashion, far from being reasons for treating fashion as a superficial phenomenon unworthy of respect, had already been taken seriously in France and had, along with the paraphernalia of consumption, the creation of department stores, specialized magazines, etc., become integral components of a modern, developed and developing industrialized, capitalist society. In such a context, collaborative efforts among artists, poets, painters, couturies were already a reality. We might recall, for instance some of cubism’s and surrealism’s most significant experiments, carried out by Sonia Delaunay and later Elsa Schiaparelli. This latter was an Italian emigrée to Paris, a city and environment where she had found an ideal terrain in which to express her innovative modern designs that had been the product of her collaboration with Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau and others. All these factors explain why French couture had a special flair and was so far ahead of other European countries in attracting buyers and consumers from all over the world, including the USA, and had become a mecca for artists like Pablo Picasso, or writers like James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, who settled there and took part in the cosmopolitan intellectual life of the capital. It was, then, the culture that had been created around fashion that gave it its literary and sophisticated aura, which in turn was enlisted in order to sell its products. For the wealthy buyers who could afford them, French clothes were synonymous with what was chic, simply by virtue of being French. One of the effects of this in the USA, as well as in Italy, was that French-sounding labels were put on domestically designed and produced garments.32 Moreover, while Italy had several centers of art and culture, not to mention long and equally diverse sets of traditions in craftsmanship, food, etc., in France, since the revolution, Paris had established itself as the center of the nation. Italy, in contrast, was a de-centered nation – and still is in a way – and no matter how much postmodern appeal this term contains, the result was a weak sense of the nation as a united entity. It was for reasons such as these, starting in this period and continu–40–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy

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ing in much more polemical and violent terms during the fascist regime, that French couture and design were the enemy to defeat or, almost in Oedipal mode, the father to kill in order to build an autonomous identity.33 This, as we know, was only really achieved in the 1950s when Italy started to export abroad, especially to the US market, its distinct and original styles and trademarks. However, it is at the beginning of the twentieth century and, more massively, during the 1930s that we can locate the modern premise on which what became known as “Italian style” was built. Genoni was also a contributor to Lidel. Despite the ideological differences that were to emerge in the next few years as fascism came to power, Genoni and De Liguoro shared a great deal in their struggle to breathe new life into the Italian fashion industry. In the aftermath of World War I, in a special Spring 1919 issue of De Liguoro’s magazine, Genoni wrote an article entitled “Moda d’armistizio” (Fashion of the armistice). Once again, she argued strongly for the need, during the difficult phase of reconstruction at the end of the war, to recover an Italian style in fashion. This was a phase of Italian history marked by lively, highly polemic, often –41–

Fashion under Fascism violent debate on nationalism that would, as it went forward, push Genoni and De Liguoro along differing paths. It is in polemic with the futurists above all that in her article Genoni underscores that her notion of nationalism rather than being “bloody” was “fruitful.” Insisting that political independence for any country is posited on economic, artistic and cultural autonomy, she argued that a “remunerative [nationalism], which attested to the taste of the epoch of Isabella D’Este, had not ended. Isabella D’Este reiterated here that her epoch was a time in which Italy held sway in the art of adorning female beauty.”34 Underlying her argument is her perception of the need for a country like Italy to produce and project certain images and tastes that bear a distinct national identity. Indeed, her proposal on style, along with her commitment as a teacher, political activist and dressmaker, are all signs indicating her understanding of how fashion can be an important agent in the formation of cultural models, as well as a tool for understanding the mechanisms which produce it. Moreover, this also tells us that fashion is something more than a passive reflection of the spirit of an age. Thus Genoni was far ahead of her time, if we take into consideration the context of the confusing and almost anarchic landscape of Italian fashion and its culture in the years in which she was active. Her achievement was that of having traced the paths Italy needed to take if it were to acquire an important role in what was to become a key entry – the world of fashion – in the nation’s economy. No less important a contribution was to have given dignity to the status of the tailor or dressmaker as an artist and artisan proud of his/her work and the importance it assumed when displayed in the context of social and political events. In the same Spring 1919 number of the magazine we find an article by De Liguoro entitled “Ritornando da un congresso” (Coming back from a congress) that also draws on one of Genoni’s earlier proposals for the setting up of a government institution with the brief to oversee and coordinate the fashion industry. This article is particularly important because it lays bare the internal rivalry between cities that had hindered the creation of a national fashion industry able to challenge France. The congress in question was the first national gathering of the clothing industry, under the aegis of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Work, led by the Minister Cartoni. The congress was made possible thanks to the initiative of Fortunato Albanese, a key figure in the creation of a state-controlled institution in charge of organizing the national fashion industry. He came up with the idea after his stay in North America in 1912 and upon his return to Italy he presented to the Minister for Industry, Cartoni, a report entitled “Per una moda italiana” (For an Italian fashion).35 It was in this paper that Albanese not only began to lay down the major scopes and functions of an embryonic version of the ENM, but also pinpointed the weaknesses of the Italian apparel industry. Albanese thought that it was key for Italy to produce better couture dresses and create the premises for a “highquality product,” a sector that was far behind North America. Stressing the need to –42–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy link the various branches of fashion production, he suggested setting up professional schools able to prepare people to work in the sector and better valorize the raw material the nation had available in terms of fabrics and personnel, while at the same time emphasizing the value of local craftsmanship. In order to achieve this ambitious project, Albanese aimed at the collaboration of all the textile industries, which were located, for the most part, in Northern Italy. Unfortunately, absent from the Roman meeting, where these proposals were launched, were the Milan-based firms, which was one of the reasons why, from the pages of Lidel, Liguoro complained of a lack of unity in the industry. One of the main issues on the agenda of the Congress was that of voting for an “Italian fashion.” But what stymied the conference was the reluctance of the Milan-based firms to embrace with enthusiasm what they saw as a project emanating from Rome, the national capital and home of central government. It was essentially for this reason, De Liguoro tells us, that the representatives of the Milan-based industries decided to boycott the conference. Another reason not to go along with the conference was that one of the issues under discussion was the demand for an eight-hour day being made by the workers employed in the clothing industry. In fact, this was a time in which several strikes were organized by the trade unions in support of better working conditions in the factories. The absence of the Milan-based industrialists was not considered a good sign for the future development of a strong national industry and was an indicator of the competition between Italy’s provincial cities and Rome, which was perceived as a distant capital, unresponsive to local needs, imposed from above on the Italian peninsula. It is in the light of this sense of suspicion, which has often accompanied debate in Italy on national questions, that De Liguoro felt the need to stress the role her magazine had in fostering understanding of the importance of such a highly “national” cause as that of Italian fashion. Stating her case in the same 1919 article, she reaffirms that the creation of a governmental institution would not only organize the clothing and textile industries, including tailors’ and dressmakers’ shops, but also promote better professional education for people working in the field. In more practical terms and seeking to find ways to bind clothing companies into a common project, De Liguoro also mentions that the city of Turin had been designated to hold the next national congress and this fact, she thinks, would facilitate the participation of the industries from Milan. Turin, in fact, from 1932 onwards was to be chosen by the fascist regime as the capital of Italian fashion. Perhaps one of the reasons why this city was chosen for the congress and why under fascism it would become the capital of Italian fashion – the regime-sponsored biannual fashion shows and other initiatives took place there – was because it acted as a compromise to smooth out the friction that existed among cities like Rome and Milan. We must also take into consideration that Turin was the Italian city which was closest geographically and culturally to France. In addition, Turin’s –43–

Fashion under Fascism status as the city of the royal Savoy house and its leading function in the unification process must also have played a role, insofar as the city itself seemed to hark back to another kind of nationalizing process, this time in a field that, after the war, was to become one of the most important components for the rebuilding of the Italian economy. Turin was also a city with a distinctive tradition in clothing manufacturing, with the presence of well-established and refined fashion houses like Mattè and Fumach. The proposal De Liguoro and Albanese, and earlier Genoni, put forward for a national institution would see the light of day under fascism. In 1928, a sort of ENM was born on paper under the direction of the Hon. Titta Madia, a member of the Chamber of Deputies. This institution, however, was never really to take off, and in 1929 it was absorbed by the Comitato Italiano Abbigliamento (Italian clothing committee) in Milan, the episode offering yet a further illustration of the sharp competition among the Italian cities to become the headquarters of Italian fashion. Although many of the proposals put forward by Genoni and De Liguoro mirror each other, differences between them certainly existed and came to the fore once the fascist regime came to power. Unlike Genoni, who did not have any sympathy at all for fascism and Mussolini, De Liguoro belonged to the female ardite from Milan, a precursor group to fascism that was made up by a significant number of men and women unhappy about the outcome of World War I and with the state of liberal Italy in general. Their sense of dissatisfaction with the nation’s present was especially identified with their belief, common to conservative nationalists, that at the Treaty of Versailles Italy had been cheated out of the territories it had been promised by its wartime allies. This was what became known as the “vittoria mutilata” (mutilated victory), and produced a deep sense of resentment as a feeling grew that Italian sacrifice and heroism in the trenches had not been rewarded and that the great powers, Italy’s time-honored rivals Great Britain and France, were not taking Italy’s claims seriously. De Liguoro’s turn to the regime also necessitated some fine-tuning to her vision of the Italian fashion industry. Her participation in the Fasci femminili milanesi and particularly in the “do not buy” campaign against luxury, offered as a response to the economic crisis that followed World War I, and in which women who spent too much money on clothes were accused of irresponsibility, was at complete odds with the policy of Lidel. The magazine, in fact, had been vociferous in publicizing and glamorizing the consumption of luxury items. De Liguoro was forced to rectify her position at the Secondo congresso nazionale dell’abbigliamento (Second national clothing congress) held in 1920, at which she participated as a member of the Fasci milanesi.36 She began her speech by stating that her claims were not “political” but “economic,” since at the heart of her argument was the desire to strengthen Italian industry in response to the “awakening of a new –44–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy women’s consciousness.” It was in this context that she decided to modify the initial position she had elaborated with the League against luxury, of which she was part, in calling for the nationalization of Italian fashion. Now luxury goods were not to be fought against per se, rather it was only those luxury goods that were imported that needed to be banned. One of the initiatives De Liguoro took with the League against luxury was the referendum promoted by the Genovese newspaper La chiosa, encouraging the adoption of standardized dress for women. In response to this proposal, an aristocrat from Florence, Countess Rucellai gave a ball in her palace in which the members of the Florentine aristocracy gathered and wore the simple tuta designed by the painter Ernesto Michahelles, who under the name of Ernesto Thayant designed for Madleine Vionnet in the 1920s.37 However, the Countess said, this must be considered an isolated episode, since in her view it would be unlikely that a simple uniform dress would be adopted in Italy, as this kind of standardization plays against “the costume of the whole nation.” She believed that the post-war years represented only a short difficult phase common to other European countries, but which soon enough, she predicted, would give way to a time in which everyone would be back thinking of “exotic fashion.” It is in this context that De Liguoro emphatically exhorts wealthy Italian women not to go to Paris to buy their dresses and to reflect on the prejudices that discouraged them from patronizing Italian fashion houses. She says, in fact, that a very fine dress presented proudly as its own creation by a Milanese fashion house and called “Villa D’Este” was refused by clients as it had an Italian label. Later the model was labeled “Ville d’Orleans,” and presented as the creation of a made-up Parisian house called K.Y. – two letters that do not belong to the Italian alphabet – and was sold immediately, a successful strategy that continued for the whole season. Similarly to what Genoni had previously done, De Liguoro stresses the fact that fabric from Como and Florence, initially purchased at a low price and then used to create French models, came back to Italy to be sold at very high prices.38 Using very patriotic language and emphasizing the potential of Italian artisans and artists for the development of an Italian style, she mentions several steps intended to boost local craftsmanship in lace and embroidery in a number of Italian cities and regions. In addition, she mentions the work of artists like Maria Monaci Gallenga and the painter Zecchin for their painted fabric and dresses. A Roman artist who became successful as a designer of clothes and fabrics, Monaci Gallenga participated in several national and international exhibitions as part of the group known as the Secessione romana, which had been founded in 1915. She exhibited her work in the decorative arts section at the Panama-Pacific exposition held in San Francisco in the same year and at the Exposition international des arts decoratif, held in Paris in 1925. Monaci Gallenga collaborated with other contemporary artists and opened her own boutique in Rome in which she put together art objects, fabrics and other creations in such a way that it resembled an art gallery more than –45–

Fashion under Fascism an ordinary shop, her aim being to stress the relationship, which was common to the artistic avant-garde of the 1920s, between fashion, textile and art.39 Like the above, a series of experiments in textile, decorations and design exemplified how close a relationship there was between fashion and art and in which women had a key role. The history of fascist fashion policy is one of continuities rather than ruptures. The massive steps taken in the field of fashion by the fascist regime drew immensely, especially in the regime’s first nationalist phase, on the cultural ferments and proposals that had characterized the world of fashion in liberal Italy. In many ways, the foundations on which fascism built its policy on fashion were very much in line with the project envisaged by Genoni, Albanese and De Liguoro, but co-opted and turned to the regime’s own overtly nationalistic end.

“An Italian Fashion does not exist yet. We must create it” The construction of a new Italy and new Italians, for men, women and children alike, was a vital plank in the fascist regime’s political and cultural project. The concept and image of the “new woman,” however, had been debated in various environments in the years preceding the fascist seizure of power in 1922, and involved components of society who belonged to a wide range of political orientations, going from the nationalists and Futurists on the political right, to Liberals, Socialists and Catholics. The sub-text for much of the intellectual debate of these years is the question of how to rescue and render great the recently born Italian nation, how to awaken it from the state of slumber into which it had seemed to have slipped and how to produce a new national subject, no longer prey to the perceived inadequacies of the national character that had led Italy into the state of near crisis it was then experiencing. Fashion played an important role in this process both in the pre-fascist years and in the years of the regime itself. In fact, De Liguoro had been far from the first to ascribe a political valence to clothing, as we have seen with Genoni, or as we have seen with the Futurist project, which had attempted to revolutionize society and individuals, or at least change them, by redesigning their wardrobes. During fascism, De Liguoro continued to be one of the strongest voices in arguing the need to build a national, efficient fashion industry able to compete and counteract the hegemony of French fashion. But with the advent of fascism her voice took on much more decidedly fascist overtones. Believing that the key to a successful domestic fashion industry was demand from within Italy itself, she argued, long before the regime’s autarchic phase, that the fashion industry, working in conjunction with the regime and its press, needed to create a form of consensus among Italian upper-bourgeois women and encourage them to direct their vanity –46–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy towards the acquisition of more Italian products instead of French ones. Tying her argument to economic concerns in an article she wrote for the Corriere Padano in June 1926, and so prior to the formation of the ENM, she polemicized with a journalist who had written an earlier article in the same newspaper on a fashion show organized by a number of Milan-based fashion houses. She gave particular emphasis to the role of political and economic questions in achieving a more rational organization of the textile industry, which, she argues, must not be dependent on the ability of single individuals working in isolation in the field of fashion. For all these reasons, stressing the bravura of Italian artisans etc., she insisted on the formation of a regime-backed institution to coordinate, supervise the various crafts linked to fashion.40 According to De Liguoro, the cultural politics of the regime needed to direct its attention in two linked directions: namely, that of encouraging female consumers to buy domestic goods and that of coordinating the various branches of the clothing industry. In her articles she insisted on the importance of organizing exhibitions to showcase new fashion and present designs and ideas. In 1927 two important events – a national silk exhibition held in Como where Paul Poiret was among the guests of honor, and a fashion show in Venice in which Italian and French models were presented together for the first time – were organized. The first had the support of the Italian Government and grouped together representatives of the silk industry, among whom numbered the industrialist Ravasi and the important atelier Ventura, represented by its head Montano, who had been very active in the organization of steps to promote Italian fashion. In fact, in Milan he had organized a high fashion syndicate within the Federazione nazionale fascista dell’abbigliamento (National fascist federation of clothing) that worked intensely in order to eliminate French influence from Italian fashion.41 These initiatives were an important step towards the consolidation of structures that organized the fashion industry and its production. De Liguoro praised the Como event and in an article published in Seterie d’Italia stated the importance of this first official attempt by the textile industries, now grouped in a national institution called the Ente serico nazionale (National silk body), to bridge the gap between them and the actual producers.42 In order to reach the level of the industry in France where, De Liguoro notes, in 1925 the clothing industry exported goods to the value of 3,254,000,000 Francs, she underlines that much organization and marketing study needed to be done in order to compete with the offers coming from foreign markets, especially the French, English and American ones. The fashion show held at the Lido of Venice was organized by two magazines, one Italian, Fantasie d’Italia, and the other French, Foemina. De Liguoro gives a glowing report on the Italian models presented, affirming that the well-known illustrator and costume designer Brunelleschi, of Italian origin but living in Paris, was surprised to realize that Italy could now produce clothes of such refined and original taste:43 –47–

Fashion under Fascism Commenting on the Italian fashion show, Brunelleschi, who has been living in Paris for many years and who we regrettably only see when we read Foemina or follow the fortunes of foreign fashion houses, told us of his sincere enthusiasm for what he had witnessed: “I confess that I was surprised and in awe.” We can forgive Brunelleschi’s surprise as he is not fortunate enough to follow at close quarters the awakening of our nation. However, what we neither can nor must tolerate is the surprise, the irony and the doubts expressed by our fellow Italians.44

The following year, however, it was only the French magazine Foemina that organized and sent models to the show. The majority of the various sectors of the Italian clothing industry and artisans did, though, go to Palazzo delle esposizioni in Turin on the occasion of the tenth anniversary celebrations of the end of World War I in 1928. In the same article, De Liguoro’s usual faithfulness to the fascist regime and especially to Mussolini, expressed in the triumphant and emphatic tone of her prose, is only hinted at when she notes that the Italian fashion houses missed an opportunity to display their bravura and invite comparison with their French rivals. Indeed, she reports that some of the Italian models presented the previous year were copied by French collections. This is followed, in more overtly nationalistic mode, by her statement that Italian women should distance themselves from French models, which she considers to be too skinny and, as a consequence, not a “healthy” expression of “femininity,” and a liability for the reproduction of the race. Emerging from her article is a more domestic model of femininity, one with rounded hips, a large bust and the more reassuring outlook of the housewife and angel of the home. De Liguoro’s reference here is to the demographic campaign, initially launched by Mussolini in 1927 with his famous speech of the Ascensione, which unsurprisingly enough was strongly misogynistic in tone. Nevertheless, De Liguoro’s articles notwithstanding, not a great deal of attention seems to have been paid by fascist authorities to the economic and cultural benefits that could accrue to the nation through a more energetic promotion and organization of fashion. An anecdote that De Liguoro herself narrates serves as an illustration of this. The Paris office of Fairchild Publications had asked De Liguoro to write an article on Italian fashion. In their letter making this request, Fairchild Publications made it clear that they were interested in investigating what was a clear new tendency in the environment of Italian fashion: As you know, there is a pronounced tendency in Italy that aims to develop an independent Italian style, free from the influence of other countries, both for men and women. As a result, a long article on the clothing created and produced in Italy would be of great interest. We hope you can write this article for us.45

To accompany the article, De Liguoro requested that a photographer take pictures of the models presented at the annual Milan Trade Fair. But after taking –48–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy the photographs, the photographer received an order from the Federazione fascista dell’abbigliamento (Fascist clothing federation) forbidding him from delivering his material.46 To this, De Liguoro, not hiding her disappointment, responded in a note, under the heading Protesta, saying that although she was one of the disciplined journalists who accepted orders, she still could not understand how Italian fashion could be publicized without pictures. She concludes by saying that, given what had happened, it was not so surprising that female consumers eagerly go to Parisian couturies. This small anecdote testifies to the contradictions, lack of organization and unwieldy bureaucracy that beset the fashion industry under fascism. As we will see in the following chapter, some of these problems were never to be completely resolved even with the inception of the ENM. Divisions still persisted among various cities like Milan, Rome and Turin, all of whose distinct regional traditions in craftsmanship and industry hindered the development of a univocal direction for fashion policy. Milan, especially through Montano’s initiatives and leadership, tended more towards the development of an Italian high couture, which had been missing in Italy. Frictions also persisted between the artisan tailors and the industrial sector that was more directed towards mass production.47 De Liguoro continued her lobbying from the columns of the Popolo d’Italia, the fascist newspaper, in which she expressed her profound admiration for the Duce through her recurrent use of fascist mottos such as “credere, obbedire, combattere” (believe, obey, fight). More importantly, she endorsed the Duce’s pronouncements on fashion: “An Italian fashion in furniture, in decoration and in dress does not yet exist: it is possible to create it, it must be created.”48 In the same article she reveals the paternalistic ideology underlying her writing in the fascist years when, according to dominant fascist codes, she states that women working for the clothing industry would be much happier working at home instead of “tiring out their brain” at their desk working in an office: “The range of small and large creations will flower like lilies and roses from the hands of our intelligent italian ‘Mimis’. They will be so much happier at home making something they themselves have created than tiring out their brains at an office desk” (94). This, of course, is firmly in line with fascist policy, which was not to give women the same opportunity as males in clerical and professional work. It was also a policy dictated by the fear that in the time of crisis and unemployment women would steal men’s jobs. As a result, it seemed easier to control women’s lives while they were working from home and receiving low wages, but at the same time producing goods of the highest quality for their patrons. De Liguoro’s support of fascism, however, did not stop her from criticizing from time to time the way other fascist leaders treated the fashion industry. For example, in a 1927 article in which she praises the creation of the ENM as a vital step in the awakening of Italian fashion, she takes issue with a fascist gerarca – –49–

Fashion under Fascism whose name is not given – for having dismissed Italian fashion as the rag trade. Nevertheless, she never refrained from praising the initiatives of the regime, as she did in a long and detailed article that appeared in Il Popolo d’Italia in 1933, which gave an account of the support offered by the regime in the previous years. Here De Liguoro emphatically affirms, that after twenty years of battles and various attempts, some of which had failed, the official formation of the ENM would at last mean decisive steps had been taken toward her goal, the creation of an Italian fashion. Indeed, this was something both of a self-fulfilling prophecy and of selfcongratulation as it had been De Liguoro’s own proposal that served as the basis on which the ENM had been created. The consolidation of the regime’s policy on fashion was part and parcel of a more general move to consolidate control in other areas of Italian life. The 1930s saw the creation of several government institutions that were set up to ensure fascist control over areas like sport and leisure time. Along with fashion, in fact, the regime used the cinema and sport to convey and solidify its message of modernity, discipline, order and amusement. Sport and cinema, in fact, thanks to institutions such as the Organizzazione nazionale dopolavoro (National after-work organization, hereafter OND) presided over a consistent part of the Italian lowermiddle and working-classes’ free time. It goes without saying that both cinema and sport took on important roles in the diffusion of cultural models, in the construction of gender and identities, and in the politics of style. It is not the aim of this study to offer an in-depth analysis of how fascist institutions exercised control over these areas of leisure time. However, I will limit myself to pointing out some of the most salient features of this policy and to illustrating their pertinence to fashion. One of the first fascist institutions of sport instruction forming future teachers was the Female Academy of Orvieto, founded in 1932, the year in which Mussolini’s regime approved the creation of the first Ente autonomo per la mostra permanente nazionale della moda (Autonomous body for the permanent national fashion exhibition), which later became the ENM. Fashion, sport and cinema – Cinecittà was inaugurated in 1937 – were interrelated in many ways, arguably the most important being the visual power inherent in the spectacle and the feast for the eyes they provided in displaying dynamism and modernity. As a consequence, cinema, sport and fashion were also linked in the diffusion and the creation of national models and bodies with which women of all classes could identify or fantasize. Movie-going became, in fact, one of the most popular pasttimes. Especially in less urban parts of the country, where fashion magazines were a luxury item, films were the source of inspiration both for ordinary women and dressmakers, who often copied the fashionable items they saw on the screen. For those living in the grayness of a provincial life under a totalitarian regime, there can be little doubt that fashion and cinema added a stroke of color to their existence.

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Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy

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As emerges from a variety of sources I have consulted, it is clear that the Duce himself considered fashion not only as a fundamental component of the Italian economy, but also as a powerful and appealing vehicle for the process of modernization and the projection, both domestically and abroad, of an image of “new Italy” and “new Italians.” For instance, in the fashion magazines of the 1930s, among other things, we find a great number of articles about the importance of sport and the new image of woman that came with it. The diffusion of sport influenced –51–

Fashion under Fascism

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Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy

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women’s fashion a great deal, in terms of simplifying the line without, however, giving up on elegance. A number of pictures in fashion magazines (Bellezza, Lidel, Per voi signora), as well as the photographs of women attending the Female Academy in Orvieto, provide us with confirmation of this, showing snugly fitting, yet comfortable clothing and suits, composed of different interchangeable pieces, as well as shirts and skirts showing slender and attractive bodies.49 This fashion –53–

Fashion under Fascism intensified during World War II when, despite the lack of material and fabric, Bellezza, in fact, continued to offer new ideas for women’s fashion. The emphasis was given to clothing, coats, raincoats and accessories embodying a casual elegance and which were made out of autarchic fibers.50 For example, gloves were made out of fabric because of the lack of leather and Ferragamo designed shoes made out of the more easily available cork and transparent plastic, using bright colors and an avant-garde design. Bellezza also showed a series of pictures called “Fashion and Sport,” emphasizing the relationship between the two, which had gradually changed women’s lives as well as self and public images (Figures 8, 9 and 10). The women in these pictures are wearing dresses, deconstructed suits and cardigans in wool mixed with fiocco (an artificial fiber); their raincoats are lined with fabric in bright colors and are worn over simple yet stylish dresses.51 This kind of relaxed elegance suggests that the relationship between sport and fashion would eventually lead to experiments in the design of clothes for the modern woman who works and has a busy life outside the domestic walls. In fact, the Italian designer Emilio Pucci, who became one of the icons of success during the Italian economic boom of the late 1950s, made sportswear his trademark.52 Interestingly, in 1935, Pucci, born to a Florentine aristocratic family and a keen sportsman, went to study at an American university where he designed the uniforms for the college ski-team, which were produced by the American company White Stag. However, his personal creativity in design had, in the previous years, already found a means of expressions while skiing with his brothers. In a ski resort he realized that he could not stand up while wearing knee-length breeches and so decided to custom make an outfit – ankle length and fitted trousers – with the help of a skillful local dressmaker.53 These were all personal experiments since Pucci was not, at this time, involved with the clothing industry, but skiing certainly was part of socialite life in which Mussolini’s daughter Edda, one of Pucci’s best friends, participated. However, Pucci’s experience tells us about the individual creativity that went on to be pressed into the service of the growth of Italian fashion and style. The overall aim of the ENM, then, was to regulate women’s and men’s clothing and appearance, so creating a distinct Italian style with which Italians could identify, and which would be the basis for an increase in Italian clothes exports. The move to organize fashion was in line with Mussolini’s keen nationalist intent, which also informed other sectors of culture.54 As the extant documents testify, however, the policies, activities and initiatives of the ENM were often marked by contradictions, the clearest of which is the fact that government bureaucracy actually hindered instead of facilitating individual initiatives. These contradictions were also inherent in fascist political and cultural ideology.55 Stricter policies emerged from the ENM after 1935, following the fascist invasion of Ethiopia and the subsequent sanctions applied against Italy by the League of Nations. The economic hardship that had been intensified by foreign –54–

Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy sanctions required a new set of regulations and led to the development of autarchic fabrics and fashion, so that the economy could become self-sufficient and not rely on foreign imports of raw materials. In these years, in fact, the textile industry was engaged in the production of the so-called “tessuti-tipo” that were to be approved and recognized as Italian by the ENM and to be used for clothing, interior design and furnishing.56 Still, one of the major and time-honored obstacles this policy sought to overcome was the sense of inferiority and provincialism felt by Italian fashion when compared, almost always in an unfavorable light, with its French counterpart. It is for these reasons that Italian fashion houses – including the most famous such as Ventura, Testa, Sorelle Gori, Palmer, Montorsi, Zecca, MingoliniGuggenheim and Battilocchi – continued in the fascist years either to copy French models or to make their creations look “French” in order to attract and keep their wealthy and sophisticated clientele.57 Even someone as close to the regime as Margherita Sarfatti, the well-known writer, journalist, biographer and lover of Mussolini went to Paris to buy her special dresses. In their Il Duce’s Other Woman, Philip Cannistraro and Brian Sullivan report on how the outfits she wore, designed by Elsa Schiaparelli, on the special occasions organized in her honor on her visits to the USA were highly praised, admired, indeed envied by other women present.58 The deeply entrenched habit of the Italian high bourgeoisie to go to Paris for its clothes was something of a hindrance to the regime’s policy, especially if that policy was flouted by high-level fascists themselves, like Sarfatti. To show the economic loss this bad habit brought about, from the pages of the fascist newspaper Il popolo d’Italia, De Liguoro reported the official statistics that showed how in 1931 the import of fashionable goods from France had reached astronomical figures. Even the autarchic policies of the regime and the ENM were not able to halt completely the amount of luxury goods coming from abroad. In fact, of the four billion Lira shortfall in the balance of payments, half of it came from imported furs, jewels, high-fashion clothes, etc.59 To this “indiscipline” on the part of Italian women who, despite the strongest of hints that they should buy their clothes at home, continued to be seduced by the cachet of French chic, the regime responded with a twentieth-century version of the sumptuary laws emanating further policies, all of which tended at the disciplining of the social body.

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Disciplining the Body, Language and Style

–3 – Disciplining the Body, Language and Style The Discourse on Fashion Under the Fascist Regime. An Italian Dictionary and Commentary of Fashion by Cesare Meano And what is to be said of the language of fabrics? As it is born a dress chooses naturally the fabric that suits it best. That is, the fabric that serves to determine its character and, as a result, define its discourse.1

By way of Cesare Meano’s Commentario dizionario italiano della moda (Commentary and Italian dictionary of fashion), we can see how the fascist regime’s policy on fashion worked towards achieving one of its main diktats, the purging of the Italian language of words and expressions of foreign and dialect provenance. This was a policy that had an immediate impact in the fashion world whose specialized language, used both by the people working in the field and by the public, was replete with French terminology. This should come as no surprise since France was the leading country in couture fashion. The hegemony the French language exercised on Italian fashion was such that the ENM was persuaded to act on this matter and in 1936 published Meano’s Commentario dizionario italiano della moda. Meano, as well as the fascist authorities, had two aims with this book: one, that of eliminating the French terminology that was so widely used in the language of fashion; and two, that of creating an Italian lexicon of fashion to plug the gap in the Italian language left by the purge of the French terms. The ENM bureaucrats were of the opinion that the creation of a national fashion went hand in hand with the construction of a proper specialized lexicon that had strong and direct links to the Italian language, to Italian literature, to the conventional codes and to the history that had marked its cultural context. Therefore, the publication of Meano’s text had the paradoxical aim of both establishing and “retrieving” a national tradition in the culture of fashion. In the official presentation made by the ENM – written most probably by the president of the institution Giovanni Vianino and the general director Vladimiro Rossini, who had given Meano the task of compiling the fashion commentary and dictionary – special emphasis is given to the function of propaganda inherent in verbal language. It is for this reason that the ENM dedicated particular attention to the “discipline of the use of words, considered vehicles not only of spiritual –57–

Fashion under Fascism influence, but also and above all, in the delicate field of fashion, as vehicles of material import from abroad.”2 In fact, in “Linguaggio della moda” (The language of fashion), Meano specifies that: “The battle for the Italianization of the language of fashion is going ahead. No other branch of today’s activity, not even activity in the field of sport, has brought with it such a quantity of foreign words and expressions, many of which are obvious and easily replaced by Italian locutions.”3 Meano’s project, however, was far more complex than a straightforward nationalization of the language of Italian fashion. Indeed, a close and critical analysis of Meano’s text reveals the two-pronged result its rhetorical strategies achieved. On the one hand, Meano fulfills the nationalist scope of translating French terms into Italian as well as offering an Italian glossary of specific items of clothing and styles. On the other, he offers what Barthes will later call a “description of fashion” that does not limit itself only to proposing a model as a mere copy of reality. Rather, and more especially, the aim of Meano’s project was to circulate fashion as a meaning and therefore as an ideology.4 Words and their organization in narratives, then, have the task of providing the necessary tools with which to create the “culture” for an appreciation of “Italian” taste and fashion both at home and abroad. As such, in Meano’s Commentario, language is identified with its performative and persuasive qualities. Insofar as it describes fashion and so constructs a discourse, Meano’s text can be compared usefully with other texts drawn from the world of fashion in Italy in the 1930s, especially those which use a similar rhetorical and linguistic organization and can be found in the fashion magazines of the period. In the analysis that follows, as well as concentrating on Meano’s text, I will also make ample reference to these magazines. In selecting an impressive number of entries that he connects to fashion, costume and culture, Meano lingers particularly over definitions of “style,” “beauty,” “elegance,” etc. and offers tips on these subjects for females, males and children, according to the taste and accepted codes of the epoch. He stresses however, the importance of looking back at the Renaissance, a period he singles out as one of the golden ages of Italian history.5 The text, then, is a useful window onto the common sense of the world of fashion and manners in 1930s Italy. In his project, Meano does rather more than simply list entries. As well as this, he also creates a series of links among the single entries so that a micro-world is shaped that ultimately has ideological connotations and emphasizes the politics of style supported by the regime. See, for example, Abbronzare (sun-tanning), an entry that is linked to Sport. On the one hand, Meano stresses that exhibiting a tanned body has started to become a synonym for being both sexy and modern. The link to sport, in fact, explains how this latter had become one of the most important leisure activities encouraged by fascism. In a not so distant past, however, a suntan was the tangible expression of low social standing. Only peasants –58–

Disciplining the Body, Language and Style sported a suntan, which they got while working in the fields. In those days, whiteness and pallor, especially in women, as celebrated by the Giosué Carducci poems quoted by Meano, were emphasized as signs of both beauty and distinction. Despite his initial gestures in the direction of a more modern sensibility Meano is at pains not to associate the idea of social dynamism that emerges from the entries on sun-tanning and sport to any image of modernity. The entry on maschietta (the tomboy fashion popular then), for instance, which would seem a possible candidate as an image of modernity, and which Meano links up with razionalismo (rationalism), costume (costume) and storia (history), is presented in the most negative of terms as an affront to nature when compared to the model of femininity packaged by the regime: With the neologism maschietta, Italian equivalent of the French garçonne, a typical female model was designated. This new model had the fortune to be spread largely in the years that preceded the revision and the elimination of the disorder that followed WWI. With shorter dresses, flatter heels, a more slender body, shorter hair, all following the fashion that was known, in fact, as alla maschietta, almost all women attempted to make themselves look younger beyond all limit [. . .] In order to multiply itself according to the model of the maschietta, the world appeared as if it was inhabited by an eighteen year old. The daughters, the mothers, sometimes even the grandmothers were 18 years old. The same dress (a kind of little dress that could be folded like a handkerchief and contained in a purse) was worn indifferently by fifty, forty or twenty year old bodies.6

Note here the emphasis Meano puts on the notion of disorder in the style embodied by the maschietta and the subsequent revision and elimination of that disorder that he identifies with the advent of fascism. What Meano is here seeking to do is to guide his readers along pre-established paths so that s/he can acquire a fuller definition of a given entry, whose meaning is ultimately charged with the fascist politics of gender representation. In order to support his argument and his propaganda, the author digs into some of the most important literary figures in Italian literature – spanning the Middle Ages to the present – assembling quotations that refer to clothing and its relation to gender, identity formation and national character. In offering several hints at colors, accessories, descriptions of ideal beauty, manners and style, Meano establishes a series of reference points and connections within Italian high culture in order to bolster his attempt to create a discourse on national fashion. The Commentario, then, is testimony to the interrelation between the search for an “Italian” fashion and the process of national identity formation. In this, Meano’s choice of texts is quite eclectic: from literary texts written by major figures of Italian literature such as Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Pascoli, Carducci, D’Annunzio, Pirandello, etc. to samples of popular culture, notes on customs, as well as strictly political propaganda and statistics. However, it is exactly this mix of genres and eclectic texts that renders Meano’s –59–

Fashion under Fascism work a key document for our analysis. Among the most recurrent literary authors he cites are Agnolo Firenzuola and his dialogical treatise On the Beauty of Women, Giacomo Leopardi from his Pensieri and Canti, as well as several of D’Annunzio’s novels. Often, in fact, Meano lets quotations from the literary texts themselves do the job of defining the entry, without any further comment. The entries for Bellezza (beauty) and Grazia (grace), for example, consist of quotations from Firenzuola; the entry for Semplicità (simplicity) is a quotation from Leopardi. At other times, the text takes on a more recognizable form as a dictionary. This characteristic, then, confirms the anomalous structure and style of the text itself and its lack of consistency in the treatment of the various entries. At the end of the text we find a list of references with the names of the authors he cites from Italian literature and the works from which the quotations are taken. We also find a Guida per la versione delle voci e dei modi stranieri (Guide for the translation of foreign entries and modes) where a series of French terms is listed in alphabetical order with the corresponding Italian words to be used in their stead. This list corresponds more to the genre of a dictionary, whereas the bulk of the text (about 430 pages) takes the form of a commentary. As a result of the publication of Meano’s text, fashion magazines regularly published a list of foreign terms with their Italian equivalent whose use was made mandatory.7 The text, then, is a mixture – as its title suggests – of a dictionary and commentary written in a language that bears all the signs of a blunt nationalism, but which is also at times entertaining and literary. Before giving a more analytical account of Meano’s Commentario, let me briefly outline the importance of this document for our study. This text represents a further illustration of the cultural politics of fascism in general, and the specific role played by fashion in this. It also gives us a clear idea of how close is the relationship between fashion and the culture of an epoch and country. If we read, in fact, the Commentario in conjunction with other visual and discursive sources, we are able to arrive at a deeper and more nuanced understanding of fascist involvement in the creation of a national fashion and its parallel attempt to manipulate the social body. Moreover, it is interesting to see how the re-use and interpretation of Italy’s historical literary past fuels and justifies the ideological and political initiatives of the totalitarian regime in the field of fashion. The choice of authors and quotations, together with the comments and definitions elaborated by Meano himself, as well as the general frame of the book are, without doubt, both the illustration and the result of a distinct ideology. As a consequence, the text creates the perspective from which one reads or constructs a given national tradition. The book, in fact, offers a glimpse into the Italian customs of the day and helps us detect how the dress choices, together with the propaganda that informs the text, determined the entries the author selected for inclusion. Yet, it is also a very wordy text, which seems at first glance paradoxical insofar as it deals with what is certainly one of the most visual of mediums, that of fashion, –60–

Disciplining the Body, Language and Style where communication is given over to the power of the image. But this is only a superficial paradox. The text’s wordiness, its reliance on verbal communication, is part and parcel of its quest to furnish visual images with a narrative that then becomes a discourse. This leads us to a vital question that bears on the communicative power of verbal and visual language. It is clear that for the fascist authorities, in pursuit of their disciplinary aims, the visual power of fashion images was not considered penetrating enough to act alone as a means of fascist propaganda. In this, the fascist authorities had recognized something that Barthes would focus on many years later. Barthes, in fact, in The Fashion System, underlines that specific functions of language and speech are key elements in the definition, establishment and circulation of signification. Without verbal language, he argues, images or garments alone would fluctuate indefinitely in a vague half life or like clouds. In any given context or event, it is the rhetorical organization of language that ascribes the denotative and connotative dimensions to a garment, or to any image. In other words, for us to make sense of a given object, or especially to sell it, we need “to immobilize our perception” via the verbal text or a given narrative. By this, Barthes means that verbal language disciplines the potential polysemy of the visual sign reducing the space for free interpretation. In fact, Barthes affirms that: The primary function of speech is to immobilize perception at a certain level of intelligibility [. . .] We know in fact that an image inevitably involves several levels of perception, and that the reader of images has at his disposal a certain amount of freedom in his choice of the level [. . .] Language eliminates this freedom, but also this uncertainty; it conveys a choice [. . .] Thus, every written word has a function of authority insofar as it chooses – by proxy, so to speak – instead of the eye.8

Fashion, however, is both visual and discursive. In fashion, in fact, the two languages coexist and live side by side. Any kind of analysis of fashion must take account of this fundamental theoretical assumption. Fashion is a complex entity, not only on account of its dual status as verbal and visual communication, but also because it is linked to fields and histories that span the social, the political, the economic as well as the personal and collective narratives of individuals, whether they are producers or consumers of styles. As we have already had occasion to point out in the previous chapters, the written texts that always accompany and comment on the production and creativity of fashion – be this in the form of articles, legislation, documents, descriptions of clothing in catalogues and magazines, literary texts, etc. – represent the rhetorical organization and codification of its narratives. These fashion narratives sometimes present a number of recurring mechanisms. But on other occasions they require individual analysis according to their specific characteristics and features and to the historical context in which they appear. In our case, going back now to Meano, both the rhetorical and –61–

Fashion under Fascism formal structure of the specific text under consideration must be analyzed accordingly. His entry dedicated to Colori (colors) in the dictionary is an act of “semiotic awareness” that reveals some sophistication about the performative power of language, in this case of the name. As Barthes would state, it is the name given to a garment or fabric that gives rise to a process of both signification and desire.9 More precisely, in Meano’s description of colors and in some of the related entries we find a clear example of the connotative function of language in general and of fashion in particular. Meano, in fact, again preceding Barthes in this, firmly states in the entry Nomi (Names) that the names given to textiles and styles of dress actually create or perform their signifying process.10 He affirms that what counts in fashion is not solely the colors or the objects we see in nature, the actual clothing which in Barthes’ classification becomes the “technological structure” of the fashion system. Rather, it is the names attached to the objects – the verbal structure – that create their power of attraction in possible buyers. On the back of the connotative power of words to evoke stories, and adventures, one can invent and symbolically become, through dress, an imaginary character, and take on a new identity by way of the iconic structure.11 Speaking of the color named Tango, a vibrant orange, a term derived from the dance form that “came to unsettle, together with other things, the old world,” Meano comments:12 And we have stated the names of the colors, rather than the colors themselves, because from season to season fashion proclaims not only the reign of one color but also the reign of the name by which the color is to be called. It imposes, that is, a new name on an old color, and the color becomes new. The case of the color called tango is typical.13

The entry on colors ends with a quotation by Tommaso Campanella in which the author identifies the mores, the sociopolitical background of an epoch by way of its predominant colors: The colors that delight every century and nation show what its customs are [. . .] We see in the history of Rome that the first color was candid blue; then red in the cruel bellicose period; then came various colors at the time of the seditions; then white at the time of Jesus, when all those who were baptized wore white tunics; and from various colors we have now come to black. Still, we will come back to white, as the fatal wheel turns, and as the prophets show, the cardinals will dress in white.14

If not in the cardinals’ garb, as Campanella sarcastically suggests, the color white, however, did become the source of inspiration for an article by the novelist Gianna Manzini, who was a regular contributor to the fashion magazine Bellezza. The article to which I now turn appeared in the issue of Bellezza that accompanied the 1941 summer collection, whose predominant color was white. Manzini’s text –62–

Disciplining the Body, Language and Style is a fine example of how fashion and fashion writing together create multiple semantic and visual associations through descriptions of fabrics and accessories. We know that the fashion of the season starts with the new colors and fabrics, in this case white. However, it is not only the names given to colors that, for Manzini, give them an imaginary life, but, no less importantly, the visual perceptions of their viewers and wearers. Indeed, it is the chromatic and visual perception of the color white in general that inspires Manzini’s article rather than the fashionable color of the day. In fact, what she gives us is not a description of the summer clothing and accessories presented in the pictures accompanying the text. Rather, she gives us suggestive evocations of the color itself, which in her text seems to have an autonomous life in memory and imagination up until the moment in which its “sense of the absolute” is captured and transformed by the fashion of the season. She writes: If fashion were capable of hesitations, I would say that what intimidates it is the sense of the absolute that the color white brings with it; and without ever reneging on that sense of the absolute, fashion paints it, commercializes it, and so presents it, astutely mixed, as the spiritual exponent of every new season.15

She continues: “For me the alarm bell that rings with the word ‘white’ is tied to the memory of an exorbitant apparition in the mysterious twilight atmosphere that annihilated the tenuous, forbidden colors that had certainly been transported from another life, almost ghostly colors.” She goes on to evoke an urban landscape, the color of its light and sky surrounded by whiteness. This gives her a starting point from which to create images in a richly connotative prose, but a prose that bears no relation, save the color, to the pictures of the new collection. For Manzini, the suggestions offered by the color white and its association with spring and summer become pretexts for the writing of her sophisticated fiction. Manzini’s article accompanies (but does not complement) images in Bellezza of pairs of autarchic shoes designed by Ferragamo, a number of drawings by Brunetta and other photographs illustrating the summer creations of some of the best-known fashion houses of the day – Montorsi, Matté, San Lorenzo, Robiolo – all manufactured with autarchic fibers. Among the accessories on display in the magazine pride of place goes to a pair of white sandals whose uppers are made out of cellophane net, which was one of the models for which Ferragamo was to become famous worldwide. Here they are worn together with a white and crimson dress, net gloves and headgear. For reasons of price, these items were certainly not everyday purchases, if not by the more wealthy customers. It is in circumstances like this, when the cost of the fashion item is prohibitive for ordinary pocket books, that fashion writing is at its most connotative and is required to reach its highest degree of “intransitivity,” as Barthes called it. It is now that the verbal component of –63–

Fashion under Fascism the fashion discourse “permit[s] the utopian investment,”16 the escape into the fantasy engendered by the text that is, on account of the high price, otherwise unobtainable. Similarly to the names and colors, and the chromatic effect they produce, fabrics also exercise a similar sensuality, this time tactile that evokes imaginary worlds built in a temporal mix of past and present. Let us think, for instance, of Meano’s entry Taffettà, Taffetà, Taffetano. Around the light and compact silk, the author writes a little story about the rustling produced by long taffeta gowns as the wearer walks in a distant past, now lost and only recovered in memory: Our grandmothers loved taffeta, they particularly appreciated it for skirts and petticoats so that as they walked it made an ample rustling sound (see the entry: Fru-fru), that was a sign of distinction and, for their suitors, was a pretext for talk that alluded to the rustling of the gardens under the wind, or to the dead leaves in Autumn parks, or water running through the pebbles of desert valleys; all things our grandmothers liked even more than the taffeta itself.17

Writing, as we gauge in the fashion magazines or in Meano’s Commentario, is a very complex act that needs to be analyzed in its subtle manifestations. As a sign of its complexity, we can note in Meano’s text a number of decidedly lyric moments. On one occasion, in fact, he offers a kind of hymn to the insubstantiality of fashion, finding in this fashion’s charm, something that hardly squares with official fascist ideology. In “Incostanza della moda” (Inconstancy of fashion), Meano pulls together a series of quotations that stress the transient quality of fashion and its subsequent attractiveness. It is from this that its subtle beauty and the melancholy it produces in us derive: The beauty of clothes, their most exquisite, most romantic, most secret charm lies in their precarious nature. We have just the time to accustom ourselves to them and they are already dead and gone, already ridiculous, but at the same time they have acquired the ineffable poetry of things that were and are no more [. . .] In a decade or two, women who are curious about old elegant styles will flip through our designs and say: But however did women wear hats tilted at such an angle [. . . .]? Fashion comes and goes: it is both beauty and melancholy.18

Meano is here not very distant from some of the most sophisticated theorizing on fashion, especially that of Leopardi who sees fashion and death as twin sisters. In such theorizing the role of memory is key. By way of the linguistic structure, fashion weaves the fabric of memory, while in its iconic status fashion describes its transient parable. Memory is, in turn, a complex texture of intertwined mechanisms of an opposed nature: namely, remembrance and forgetfulness, both of which are always at work in the various cycles of fashion as well as in any narrative. The –64–

Disciplining the Body, Language and Style trajectory of fashion seems to describe an endless circle, inevitably marked by a sense of the transient and the memory of a discarded detail, style, color, pattern, etc. Fashion nourishes itself on the principle of change, as Benjamin wittily reminds us in his Arcades Project: “Each generation experiences the fashions of the one immediately preceding it as the most radical antiaphrodisiac imaginable.” This necessarily entails that the most recent styles need to be forgotten before they can regain attractiveness and thus be reinstated in the fashion of the day.19 In any case, however, fashion is a powerful system of signification that reveals the political agendas that live in the folds and the hidden stitches of clothing. As Meano’s lyricizing illustrates, the evocative power of fabric and textiles is very much present in literary texts. Here Meano plays out the performative side of his writing on fashion and dress, revealing the pleasure which for him came with it. Often his descriptions owe their effect to the connotative power of language and its tactile images and metaphors. For example, the rustling of long gowns is a recurrent image in Il gattopardo (The leopard) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and is often associated with feminine erotics within the context of social gatherings where dress and the body become a site of performance.20 The Leopard is punctuated with descriptions of clothing, uniforms and dress. Through them the reader gathers a strong sense of the sartorial competence and expertise in etiquette of the author. Indeed, dress and uniforms play an important role in the narrative of The Leopard, acting as a clue to the political and social transformations occurring in the complex process of Italy’s unification. In fact, a sign that not much has actually changed, that the Risorgimento was little more than a passive revolution, to use Gramsci’s phrase, can be glimpsed in the fact that the dress codes of the old order, that of the aristocracy, are enthusiastically imitated by the nouveaux riches, who are illustrated in the novel by the Don Calogero, a clear example of the political and social phenomenon known in Italian as trasformismo.21 Again in reference to the role played by clothes in the novel, the painstaking description of the several garbs of the Prince of Salina before important social gatherings and appearances in the background of the political events serve to offer detailed pictures of the fading “aura” of the aristocracy. Similarly, the inner and hidden emotions of the Prince are vividly rendered by way of the sensual and physical touch of fabrics. In fact, figurative language connected to clothes, fabrics and weaving etc. plays a large role in the novel. For example, to describe the Prince’s jealousy when he realizes that Angelica, the soon-to-be wife of his nephew Tancredi, prefers the younger man to the elder, Tomasi di Lampedusa has recourse to a complicated weaving metaphor: “‘Prince’ in Angelica’s mouth did not, alas, mean him, Don Fabrizio, but the little Garibaldino Captain: and this provoked a strange sensation in Salina, woven from the warp of the crude cotton of sensual jealousy and the woof of silken pleasure at his dear Tancredi’s success.”22 –65–

Fashion under Fascism In a similar vein we find in the narrative prose, letters and articles published in several newspapers describing the “cronaca mondana” in Rome of Gabriele D’Annunzio, one of the authors most cited by Meano, a deep fascination with clothes both male and female.23 D’Annunzio offers a series of interesting pictures of the social life and gatherings of the Roman aristocracy and the bourgeois elite that, as in The Leopard, seeks to imitate the upper classes: glimpses of a Roman street and the passage of a carriage where a lady’s toilette is spotted, or scenes at the theatre, weddings, horse races, etc. D’Annunzio painstakingly describes the clothes worn on each occasion focusing on details of color, fabric, ornamentation and accessories, as well as on the manners that accompany the social display and performance of which they are part and parcel: Since it is very bon ton not to miss the opening night of a play and since this aristocratic habit has been imitated for a while, as always, by the bourgeoisie, I think that out of disgust at this imitation gentlewomen are no longer coming to such events and thus are leaving the field open to bourgeois women. In this way, opening nights will become vulgar and the most exclusive evenings will become those of the subsequent performances [. . .] Yesterday evening, in fact, the bourgeoisie was dominant, together with the foreign colony.24

D’Annunzio also lingers on the descriptions of fabrics and fur, highlighting the sensuality they provoke in the viewer with their associations with moments of intimacy: “Velvet. Very fashionable for five o’clock tea. It has such sweet and harmonious reflections! It would be an enchanting costume for fire-side intimacy [. . .] The preferred colors are: fraise, bleumagnier, tilleuls, lillas de Perse, gris-argent. What a triumph with these tenuous colors at Five o’clock tea.”25 In typically snobbish fashion, D’Annunzio fills this description with an abundance of foreign terms in both French and English, illustrating the strong influence the two countries exercised on the fashion world of the Italian elite, something that is completely dismissed by Meano. Upper-class women, in fact, chose to go to Paris to buy their clothes, upper-class men to England. Descriptions, literary and non-literary, that bear on fashion, however, assume a variety of features, each time embodying a different politics and striking a different sensibility. If D’Annunzio’s ever-present obsession with the aesthetic and with the eroticization of clothes, fabrics and the atmosphere they describe lead to what critics have called a decadentism that is somehow similar to that of the solitary Prince of Salina, in other instances, as in the example below, the purpose of other descriptions of clothes that appear in the fashion press has a far clearer political and propagandistic aim. Going back to the fascist period, let us consider the following passage, drawn from an article published in Bellezza in 1941 by Diego Calcagno

–66–

Disciplining the Body, Language and Style that illustrates a narrative strategy similar to D’Annunzio’s above but here put to the service of propaganda for the new autarchic fibers. Here, Calcagno focuses his attention on the quality and surprising results of angora rabbit hair, the production of which was greatly promoted by the regime owing to the scarcity of wool. In order to render such fabrics attractive, the journalist introduces his topic by describing their imaginary quality and their sensual association with love: Have you ever thought of the relationship between fabrics and love? Fabrics are distant, malicious, exceedingly delicate. Linen has a nuptial splendour; organza brings thoughts of little ballerinas at the end of the 19th century, light as pink clouds; velvet brings to mind large ladies from the provinces studying the harp; taffeta, unreachable queens; silk, violently perfumed, ephimerous and catastrophic sinners. Silk is fatuous, sinful, sensual. When I was a boy I remember I used to love shiny ladies, their cleavage showing, with large bolsters that rustled as they passed on winter evenings, under the splendour of chandeliers. I would stand for hours at the windows of fashion shops looking at models and their provocative lives, clad in red satin. Then, as time passed and many flowered skirts passed into my memory I began to prefer wool: wool, less sophisticated, more familiar, more trustworthy. Now I love wool, it’s warm, affectionate, chaste.26

It is interesting to note how this overtly aestheticized description of the fabrics serves also as a vehicle to portray two opposite female identities that become stereotypes. We can gauge, in fact, how the representation of the femme fatale blends with and transforms itself into the domesticated and far less threatening figure of the “mother.” The kind of aestheticization offered here is the means by which one arrives at an authoritarian and paternalistic message. Yet, although the final emphasis is always on the image of woman as motherfigure, we would do well not to lose sight of the dual nature of the representation of the women we find in the fashion writing of the fascist years. In fact, the fashion magazines and the newsreels that covered fashion shows did not always portray a single female model identified with the reassuring image of the angel of the house. That traditional model, in fact, went side by side with other more glamorous representations of women. Moreover, the publication in fashion magazines such as Bellezza and Lidel of short stories written by women writers who were to become very well-known such as Alba de Cespedes, Anna Banti and Gianna Manzini did very little to offer the typical model of the regime sponsored “edifying literature” that was shorn of any social and psychological depth. These interesting and surprising texts are almost unknown to the Italian reading public as, to the best of my knowledge, they have never been republished and are completely unknown to Anglo-American audiences as they have never been translated.

–67–

Fashion under Fascism

Restless Voices. Femininity, Motherhood and Gender in Women’s Writing in Bellezza These texts not only powerfully illustrate the complexity inherent in the culture and condition of women in the 1930s, but also shed light on the development of women’s subjectivities and social transformations in process. As we have seen in other cases mentioned earlier in this study, women were able to carve out a space of their own in which they could speak, write and publish. These, of course, were spaces and activities that had traditionally been considered male, and so women writers had to struggle against the social and political constraints inherent in a totalitarian regime that by definition aimed at annihilating their agency at home, in society and within institutions.27 In addition, talented writers such as Manzini, Banti and De Cespedes made their voices heard from within what was considered the frivolous space of a fashion magazine like Bellezza, which was then the mouthpiece of the regime’s policies in the field of fashion. As we have had occasion to note for the magazine Lidel, we would do well not to be misled by the apparent escapism of a magazine such as Bellezza. Rather, in these pages we find at work a sophisticated narrative engine that in turn produces various forms of politics and politics of style.28 These women writers speak about women’s condition and their world from the pages of a magazine read mainly by upper-class women, which could be one reason for considering these texts unworthy of attention from a “traditional” feminist point of view. Au contraire. As I shall argue, as we listen to the voices of the female protagonists of these stories, we hear a narrative of crisis and resistance that broadens the context of our analysis of fashion and its intimate bearing on culture and politics. The focus of the narrators in these stories is always directed towards the everyday life of women and constitutes an exquisite example of intellectual vivacity in the way they treat and recount the not so obvious lives of women. At times these stories occupy a paradoxical position within the regime-sponsored magazines in which they appeared. For example, in the same issue of Bellezza in which Mormorio’s previously quoted article appeared we find the publication of Manzini’s short story “Una cena” (A dinner). Here the patriarchal figure of the family – the father – is openly described in “macho” terms devoid of any appeal, in sharp contrast to the mother who lives elusively in the shadow of others in the family. Through the eyes of the narrator, a friend of the children of the family, the mother is described thus: “Her hands as puzzled as her smile, the mother was without doubt more childish than we were, although she was so estranged from happiness that the noise we made, which always surprised her, caused her almost to wobble.” Embodying a mysterious delicacy, the silence of the mother figure appears both fragile and eloquent, especially when the father comes back home after the rest of the family has finished dinner. And yet, according to the narrator, –68–

Disciplining the Body, Language and Style it is the father’s exuberant presence that seems to bring a previously lacking vivacity to family life. The scene is described by way of a mixture of colors, grey for the mother, sparkling tones for the father: “In the middle of the reproachable silence of his family, the father sat next to his wife who turned her gaze away from him and almost held her breath as if she bore a self-sacrificing quietness. He, though, had a sparkle in his eyes, in his words and in his rings.”29 In contrast, the figure of the mother is perceived and described in terms of a halo of melancholy glimpsed through her almost opaque presence and nonbelonging to a ritual – dinner – that seems to have been emptied of its meaning of togetherness and communication between members of the family and friends. The mother, here, somehow reminds us of the dinner scene in Ettore Scola’s Una giornata particolare (A Special Day), when at the end of the film, the protagonist, a housewife with many children feels almost completely estranged from her own everyday life and her role as caregiver and food-provider who has breakfast after drinking the last drops of the coffee left by the other members of the family. It is in this way that the image of the mother in Manzini’s “Una Cena” is quite subversive especially if we compare it with the triumphant and generous mother figure, the happy bearer of many children that was promoted by the regime, images of which were legion in all forms of propaganda, including posters and photos in the press. At the end of Manzini’s story the mother confesses to her son Alfonso that she knows of his father’s infidelity. Alfonso then decides to sketch a portrait of his mother, as if giving her the voice and more tangible presence in art than she has in real life. In Alfonso’s choice of the pastel tone pencils he wants to use for his mother’s portrait, we find a strong echo of the delicacy Manzini ascribes to her figure. What both the narrator and Alfonso express, then, is a desire to bring the mother’s identity from the folds of existence to center stage.30 Calling the readers’ attention to women’s domestic life and their sense of unfulfillment, the portrait of the mother takes shape in the narration of the story by way of identification with the most delicate of colors. Indeed, it is with a feeling of unease and half shade that readers are left. In another short story entitled “Giornata dell’inquieta” (A day of the restless woman) by Anna Banti, the protagonist is again a mother figure named Antonia (whereas in Manzini’s story the mother has no name).31 In Banti’s story, Antonia is an upper-class woman once again presented as being out of place in her own home. She is surrounded by her children and seems to be almost entrapped in the typical rites of a bourgeois wife. But, as the title of the story hints, she is a restless character. The opening paragraph is emblematic as it introduces Antonia as she is being almost annihilated by her children’s loud voices. Through the narrative voice, she asks herself whether it is good or bad that the children are so loud:

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Fashion under Fascism Antonia’s children are so loud, this is good, isn’t it? It is a sign of health and intelligence. This is what Antonia is thinking as she rings the bell that summons her maid. She thinks of this in an acted out self-evident way in order to convince herself again of her own voice that said the same exact thing yesterday when she spoke to her friend Maddalena, and the day before yesterday when she spoke with Clotilde, and a week ago to Virginia, all of whom thought she was right.32

Here, Antonia looks at herself as if she were on a sort of automatic pilot, repeating time and again the sentences that are part of the daily discourse of her environment. She seems to have turned her back on opening up spaces for a fresh understanding of the reality of her daily life. Indeed, the commonplace here is that for Antonia language and beliefs become like “a repository of a familiar thought, a fold that, despite being uncomfortable, is nevertheless as safe as a dog’s bed.” What is fascinating in this story is how Antonia’s sense of disquiet manifests itself in the crevices of everyday voices, gestures and conventions, hiding itself in the oversaturated language that envelops basic communication among human beings. In fact, what irritates her maid most about Antonia are the smallest details of life in the household: the food, the rituals accompanying breakfast, Antonia’s mannerisms and affected way of eating with her little finger raised. Antonia is a character who is supposed to have everything a woman of her social standing might wish for: material goods, children, the luxury of the house, the presence of helpers in the home. And yet, within the domestic space Antonia perceives a sense of unhappiness and unfulfilment that, as she supervises the work of the maid and the nanny, ultimately turns itself into solitude. Unable to communicate with other women, whether they work for her or are the friends she meets at the café in the afternoon, Antonia, feels a sense of estrangement. It is only at the end of the story and towards the end of the day that we see Antonia, sitting at her desk, with her book of household accounts caught in a state of both nostalgia and regret as she touches a notebook, a journal she keeps in the drawer. In this apparent simple gesture is hidden a sense of intimacy that she attributes to the notebook and the concomitant act of writing that is, it seems, her only occasion for disclosing her self. For a moment she would like to re-read a page and perhaps she thinks she would like to add a line or two, but then she stops, unable to follow her desire: “with a puritan sense of rigidity, suddenly, she concluded that this game is not appropriate for a married woman. She closes the book, closes the drawer and feels so wise as to deserve her great prize: a perfect family, a miraculous beauty that knows no end, devoted friends; and the fame that comes with all these things.” Yet, despite the rhetoric of happiness, a lonely Antonia turns to her role as mother to seek fulfillment in the idea that with her children she has finally created worthy human beings who have her grace. But when she leaves her desk to go to her children’s play space, she finds them busy with their own things and not at all interested in her presence or company. Antonia is imprisoned in her own perfect –70–

Disciplining the Body, Language and Style doll’s house, but differently from Ibsen’s, Antonia’s is the space of her own inability to act and do something in order to interrupt the vicious cycle of an unhappy existence that seems solely confined to motherhood and wifery. Emblematically the story ends with these words: “Antonia’s docility knows no boundaries. To the detriment of the future,” a statement that in and of itself has the power of a warning sign for other women. Most ironic of all in this story is the fact that Banti’s protagonist, because of her class, could be easily identified with the possible buyers of Bellezza. And yet, Banti does nothing to soften the blow as she focuses readers’ attention on an unhappy character who, guiltily aspiring to an intellectual life or an autonomous space (the journal, a good book to read on her own when she is at her desk ) precludes to herself a more fulfilling existence or a future that is different from the present. Again we are presented here with an image of the submissive nature of a mother and of motherhood that is in sharp contrast with the image of the happy prolific figure promoted and trumpeted by fascist propaganda. It is through the representation of female characters and through the complex psychological traits of their nature that the transgressive narrative mode of Banti and Manzini lies. In contradicting the mainstream image of motherhood and allowing women to see themselves and reflect on their condition, these writers perform the important task of creating a third eye for women, that critical eye which escapes the binary opposition of representing male/female spaces and subjectivity. Indeed, women here articulate their resistance to patriarchy and to an identity that is the product of a male gaze and perspective. This new women’s sensibility allows us to see the multilayered quality of women’s life and history as well as the language and signs in which this complexity is articulated. Along these lines, I would like to turn to two other texts in order to show how women’s writing in the fashion magazines became a sort of literary gymnasium in which women could explore their subjectivity in a variety of ways. The two stories in question are, respectively, “Delitto e castigo” (Crime and Punishment) again by Banti in which the author calls for a solidarity among women from different classes and backgrounds and “Eva e le piume” (Eva and the feathers) by Alba De Cespedes, a witty narration of the seduction of Eve and its interrelation with fashion and adornment. Lavinia, the protagonist of Banti’s story, we learn, is a young woman who habitually dresses in purple, who, we are told, is an able manipulator of words. Indeed, it is on account of her ability with language that she would like the people who listen to her to recognize her talent: “She would start with a down to earth topic, she would illustrate it and then she would turn it upside down [. . .] And then people would usually say: How amusing Lavinia is. The people who said this were more women than men, even if she believed the opposite.”

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Fashion under Fascism After Lavinia is introduced, we also learn from the bold statement she makes to an occasional male listener that she has no female friends. Indeed, she continues, she has never had female friends and cannot stand women. At this point in the story, the narrator interjects the comment that she would like to make fun of Lavinia and punish her nonsense by having a fairy or witch appear who by magic would transport her to a desert island populated entirely by a group of 107 men, the survivors of a shipwreck. It is on the island that Lavinia, suddenly realizing that she is the only woman among a conspicuous group of men, begins to feel a mixed sense of uneasiness about her predicament and nostalgia for her past and for all the women she had met. Out of a desire for survival, she starts to invent a cast of new female characters to keep her company on the island: O Giuditta, Susanna, Margherita, she said softly, as she collapsed on her makeshift bed, her mouth tickled by the dry grass. She called the women she would have met if the spell of the desert island had not worked its effect, being careful that none of them had a name that was dear to the 107 men. She was transported back to certain distant afternoons she had spent alone with women conversing about things that seemed silly to her, but which were the language of an innocent friendly happiness.

Emphasizing the political importance of sisterhood, communication and solidarity among women, Banti shows how terrible a condemnation it would be for a woman to live in a world without women.33 In the short story, she emphasizes the need for women to be together and share a variety of experiences, not all of which are solely intellectual: “Lavinia concluded that some of the wealth of friendship that she had haughtily dismissed came from her most opaque girl friends such as the post office clerk or the typist. She now realized that that wealth lies deep in the ocean together with her civilized woman’s baggage.” Alba De Cespedes’ “Eva e le piume” is a divertissement somewhere between irony and parody that seems to evoke the lightness of the feathers of the title. In the magazine, the text of the story itself is placed in the middle of a lavish and stylish photographic report on the use of feathers in hats and dress. The text, in other words, appears in a box, surrounded on all sides by photos that illustrate the symbolic female body. And what is more quintessentially or archetypically female than the seduction of Eve? Nevertheless De Cespedes playfully intertwines the biblical Eve with the more down-to-earth Eve who might live next door. Surprisingly, however, right from the opening paragraph, she suggests that we do not seem to have very precise information on what Eve really looked like, but that we only know for sure that she was blond. She then adds that her physical features have changed greatly according to how generations of painters have imagined her and on how one generation or another had a stake in recreating her beauty and physical appearance. But one thing is certain, the narrator tells us, and that is Eve’s charm

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Disciplining the Body, Language and Style and coquetry. These are the attributes that seem to have made her the model and ideal for many women. But De Cespedes is far from convinced that this is an uncontestable truth. Indeed, in De Cespedes’ view, Eve appears to be almost naïf and romantic when compared to the women of the day. Writing in the playful tone that characterizes the story, she recounts how Eve was at first bored and hurt by Adam’s indifference in the Garden of Eden. Adam, in fact, considers Eve to be no more nor less beautiful than all the other beautiful things that surround him in Paradise. Walking alone around the Garden, Eve happens upon some beautiful and colorful feathers that had been left by birds. She adorns herself with the feathers, first on her face, then with a bright green sash she winds around her waist. After she has completed her toilette she mirrors herself in the water and, surprisingly, finds her image fascinating, both amusing and pleasant. The act of adorning her body, of covering it with a new texture transforms the way Eve perceives herself. As a result, she chooses not to divest herself of her new appearance and decides to wait for Adam under a tree. It is, in fact, Eva’s adornment of her body that seduces Adam who finally acknowledges her beauty and sexual power. Indeed, De Cespedes tells us that Adam is mesmerized when he sees a new fashion-conscious Eve. Equally, Eve is mesmerized when she sees the effects her new adornment – her new image – have on the up to then indifferent Adam. It is the woman, then, who realizes and masters the potential of her sexual attractiveness: Eve lowered her head, and not only out of a sense of modesty. She knew by now that as the feathers moved they would create mysterious shadows on her face. And she enjoyed this, and immediately mastered this new and unknown potential. Something came to life in her like a secret satisfied smile, a certainty, the first, in the face of the man’s mesmerized gaze. An ambiguous silence weighed over them, but it was the woman who was the first to recover herself: “Would you like some?” she said, offering him one of those beautiful ripe fruits.

Through the awareness of her own sexuality and seductive power, it is Eve who asserts her control over Adam, but without ever thinking that she is committing a sin. De Cespedes’ text represents an exemplary illustration of how dress and any kind of ornamentation makes the body culturally visible and how relevant this is for any understanding of fashion and its interrelation with fantasy.34

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Fashion under Fascism

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Dress, Style and the National Brand

– 4– Dress, Style and the National Brand The Commentario and Nationalism According to the ENM, the Commentario aimed to establish a national tradition in fashion and to define its relations with high and popular culture, economics and the disciplines of style and language. Therefore, Meano’s text was in line with the general fascist project of initiating a process that would eventually lead to the “emancipation of Italy.” What are the implications of a term such as “emancipation” in the context of politics and the culture of fashion? First of all, we must say that the idea of emancipation is intimately linked to the fascist goal of projecting an image of a nation with a strong identity that would no longer permit it to be dismissed as it had so often been dismissed: that is, as the greatest of the small powers, but the smallest of the great ones. In the context of fashion, however, “emancipation” meant two main things; first, to build a textile industry able to compete in the foreign market and second, to create a distinctive style recognizable as Italian and admired abroad as such. Indeed, as Gundle has recently noted: “For Mussolini, style, beauty and appearance were central to the fascist project.”1 In the ideological plan of fascism, fashion was identified as a privileged terrain that would make a significant contribution to the achievement of the nation’s sense of self. This process, however, was extremely complex and intertwined with various and opposing forces. If on the one hand, we can pinpoint the conservative project to discipline the language of fashion, as in the case of the intentions of Meano’s text; on the other, we cannot but fail to note that the steps taken by the ENM, especially in the field of textiles and synthetic fibers, represented a modernizing project whose outcome, together with the individual creativity of designers, was to form the basis for what much later would be identified as the “Italian style” and the “made in Italy.” Major achievements in terms of production and experimentation with textile and design occurred, in fact, in the autarchic phase, at a time when the Italian nation, because of foreign-imposed sanctions, was forced to be self-sufficient. First and foremost, economic reasons pushed Italian industry in general, and the fashion industry in particular, to rely on and to exploit domestic resources and inventiveness. In fact, a number of articles in the fashion magazines of the late 1930s emphasized that the consumption of fashion items desperately needed to gravitate –75–

Fashion under Fascism around Italian products. In addition, then, to a concern to Italianize the language of fashion, the regime gave great attention to the need to foster the consumption of domestically produced goods. This was argued by Maddalena Santoro who, writing in 1934 in the Almanacco fascista del popolo d’Italia, brings the nationalistic agenda inherent in the fashion discourse to the fore. She writes that: This season’s fashion is rich in elements that can satisfy everyone‘s taste [. . .] Even those with little spending power can wear, with a few light and wise changes, the clothes, cloaks and hats that were worn last year. This season’s fashion also extends an invitation to those who are more fortunate to become even more beautiful and elegant, not only to satisfy egotistical whims, but also and above all to drum up business, not in the interests of individuals, but of the nation.2

In the background of such appeals is the issue of Italy’s emancipation. Fascism, according to the Duce, represented a “new” course in Italian history, a break with the liberal past that had enabled Italians and their country to regain the dignity it once enjoyed in more glorious and past epochs, such as imperial Rome and the Renaissance. By achieving emancipation, the implicit message sent by the fascist regime was that previous liberal governments had been unable to serve the best interests of the Italian peninsula. Hence, the emphasis on both recovering and inventing an identity, that of italianità which would penetrate – through massive propaganda – everyday life in customs, manners and lifestyles. Perhaps the most marked trademark of italianità, which survives even to our day, is the myth of the bella figura. As we have noted in reference to the Renaissance, bella figura, a concept and a practice common both to the upper and lower classes, is indicative of a deep sense of the importance of taking care of one’s appearance. This has become a central part of Italian culture and identity that joins, as so rarely happens in Italy, North and South, lower and upper classes. It is also central to the romanticization of the idea of Italy abroad and its stereotypes. Paradoxically, the author who theorized the bella figura, Castiglione, is absent in Meano’s entries and quotations. It is indeed, an absence that it is difficult to explain, either because of an oversight on the part of the author or out of choice, since the discourse on clothing in Castiglione describes an explicit narrative of power that is perhaps too explicit. Another glaring absence in Meano’s work is any reference to uniforms, which played a vital role in fascist dress sense. In fact, the wearing of fascist uniforms inscribed itself in the re-use of the concept of bella figura, especially when parades were organized. These became moments when smartly dressed Italians could feel proud of themselves and their appearance as they marched through the streets of their town or city before congregating in the hallowed space for showing off one’s bella figura, the town or city square. Here, fascist fashion policy squared completely with time-honored practices. Spaces in Italian cities and towns were architecturally conceived with a center and a square where generations of people –76–

Dress, Style and the National Brand used to gather on Sundays, after mass, and on holidays. The organization of the urban space also represented a major factor in the performative display of dress and its social meanings. In some provincial places a stroll through the center of town is still an occasion for showing off, for everybody, males and females alike, and is a constant opportunity for gossiping and socializing. During the fascist dictatorship, the piazze became the sites for sport-related spectacles and events in which the appropriately dressed local population was invited to participate. Under fascism, there existed a great variety of civil uniforms, their number increasing in the colonial period because of the differences in weather and lifestyles in the Italian colonies. Interestingly, the whole text by Meano, whose focus is on the aestheticization of appearance where its socio-political meanings are well hidden in the texture of the performance in dress, is completely devoid of entries on camicia nera (black shirt) – the emblem of fascism – divisa (uniform, civil or not), and definitions like piccola or giovane italiana (little and young Italians, members of the fascist-sponsored youth organizations). Only the term fez appears, and explanations are offered as to how this headgear of oriental origin had currently become a fashionable accessory in ladies’ wardrobes after previously being worn by the Italian Bersaglieri. Subsequently the fez was used by the first fascist arditi and later passed on to the balilla, another fascist youth organization. Indeed, the absence of an entry such as vestire alla fascista is quite surprising, given the emphasis the regime gave to the public display of order, combining uniformity and distinction according to age group, gender, etc. The intent behind all the uniforms, however, was that of putting on display a disciplined social body that belonged to the fatherland and bore allegiance to the Duce. In 1934, prior to the publication of Meano’s text, Francesco Salvori, among others, had strongly encouraged the adoption of civil uniforms. In his opinion, they expressed a disciplining of civil society as well as illustrating a sense of modernity. He wrote: We live in a corporative epoch, an epoch of permanent civil militarization. All citizens are split into organizations and categories according to their profession. With military style clothing one can attach badges or the colors of the profession to which each one belongs. In this way, even in private and communal life, and even in external affairs the new social and political organization of fascism would find its harmonious and complete application and the people would feel included in a stronger and more formal manner, always under the yoke (and this is what is most important) of a strict law of discipline, self-control and honor. With civilian clothes this would be almost completely lacking. In a more fluid and acute way, a greater love for one’s own profession would flow into the veins of each man, a more marked sense of solidarity and a more intimate understanding that life is discipline and rough weather. [. . .] The new Italians must live like heroes; if not all of them with magnanimous gestures, which is impossible, at least with their thoughts and desires. Being heroes in style at least is very often the first step toward the substance of real heroes.3

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Fashion under Fascism For Salvori, to dress as a fascist and to dress italianamente was the precondition for the birth of a new type of Italian, of a new national identity. However, this new type is little more than a discursive construction born of fascist ideology and its cult of beauty. Having deep ramifications in the nation’s cultural and social traditions and practices, the cult of beauty meshes with the discourse on style and its impact on the construction and perception of what here is called “substance,” the real thing. Moreover, through the author’s stress on the relationship between style and the political messages the wearer wishes to convey, we clearly see how fashion works as a system of communication and how fascist propaganda exploited to the fullest this key component of fashion, making style one of the major concerns of fascist ideology and aesthetics. In particular, Salvori seems acutely aware of how the performance of a heroic role achieved by dressing the part makes of the wearer something of a hero. Likewise, dressing as a fascist, for whatever reason, the desire to make a bella figura included, makes one something of a fascist, or at least not an anti-fascist. This finds confirmation in Gundle’s point that: “In nationalist and right wing opinion, democracy was incompatible with beauty and style. Thus, ‘to give style’, the aesthetic expression that reflected Mussolini’s political aim to transform the populace had as a pragmatic counterpart the expression ‘to fascistize’.”4 This is the reason why Meano privileges a more general cultural politics of style and the new codes of beauty and identity operating within civil society, rather than lingering over the more external and less subtle projection of fascist style through a focus on official military uniforms, of which he has very little to say. In this regard, some of the entries contained in Meano’s text are illuminating, especially the very first one: Abbigliamento, a term that in the Italian language contains ramifications with verbs such as abbigliarsi (to adorn oneself, to dress), hence the common Italian expression farsi belli (to make oneself beautiful). Here, Meano aims at emphasizing the acts of dressing and adorning oneself, which he exemplifies by quoting from D’Annunzio, who championed the exaltation of the aesthetic features of the bellezza italica and of a intimate link between aesthetic and politics in its most elite manifestations. Indeed, in this entry, the aesthetic is strongly emphasized over the practical. And at the end of its treatment, as complementary links, the author suggests reading the entry toletta – a process of dressing, preparing – the Italianized version of the corresponding French term toilette – meaning abbigliamento – commonly used.5 However, what is at a stake in the abbigliamento entry is a fascist cultural politics that defines the right appearance of the body according to accepted codes of elegance and style that have their ground in national mythologies such as the cult of the bella figura (looking good) and the nationalistic ideology of D’Annunzio’s aesthetics. And nowhere could young Italian men and women show off the care they dedicated to their appearance and to their bodies in the projection of their bella figura better than in sports, to which we now turn. –78–

Dress, Style and the National Brand

Sport, Gender and Models of Femininity Sport and its related activities occupy a large number of entries in Meano’s dictionary. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the entry Abbronzare (suntanning) testifies to the change in the codes that established the idea of the kind of beauty that was promoted in a given society. Indeed a strong connection is overtly made between beauty and outdoor activities for women: There was a time when milk, roses and lilies had no rivals for illustrating the skin color of women [. . .] In Italian poetry, the famous rose took its proper place [. . .] Then, even a light shadow of sun-tan or the slightest trace of peeling would have offended beauty and poetry, women and their admirers.6

After this, Meano goes on to quote a poem by Giosué Carducci in support of this new model of beauty and femininity. Then, the text continues: And today? From the passion for sport and the outdoor life, on which we have commented many times, was born the myth of strong beauty, just as from the passion for pathetic meditation came the myth of an evanescent, languid, sighing beauty. The bronze color of athletes, of soldiers in the field, of reapers and explorers brought an ideal of beauty that was not only masculine, but also feminine, if not more so. So, good-bye to roses and lilies, to the sweetness of dawn, to ivory shoulders and snow-like cheeks. The sun of the mountains, of the beaches, and of city balconies was called into action (see: entries on Sun, Sport) and, as the rays of the sun did not suffice we had recourse to artificial means, and oils and creams to color the skin were invented (see: entry on Make-up).7

The spread of sport in the Italy of the 1930s represented a major change. Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, sport had played in Western countries, and later in Italy, a major role in the progressive modification of dress and appearance, especially for women. Benjamin is keen to point out that the appearance of posters portraying women riding bicycles was an important sign of the changes taking place in female identities and in a new idea of attractiveness. Moreover, this is acknowledged by Benjamin as the first manifestation in society that sport was destined to affect the future of fashion and dress: “The costume of the cyclist, as an early and unconscious prefiguration of sportswear, corresponds to the dream prototypes that, a little before or a little later, are at work in the factory or the automobile.”8 Meano, in the entry dedicated to sport, recalls Isabella Inghirani, one of the first female aviators, who in 1909 attempted to adapt her voluminous gown so she could manipulate the controls of her plane with greater ease: “She tied a cord around her skirt so that the pleats stuck more closely to her legs.”9 Meano uses this example in order to show the stark changes undergone by women’s roles in the –79–

Fashion under Fascism present. Magazines such as Lidel often contained articles that illustrated and heaped praise on the importance of sport for women, as well as offering chronicles of pioneer female aviators. Although Meano focuses on women as the subject of his analysis, he stresses at the beginning of the above quotation and later in the text that males are not excluded. He explicitly refers to the “many discourses of fashion” and how, in the 1930s, street-fashion was more oriented towards sport: “Many speak of sport, and on the street we see many clothes made for walking.”10 In the articles contained in Lidel, a few common ideological threads can be traced. The pictures portraying women in public events wearing sports uniforms and performing activities are always accompanied by pictures of domesticity and maternal care or, if not visually, in the text these traditional female roles are highlighted and strongly starred as a fundamental achievement. Moreover, praise for sport and women is often justified by the fact that outdoor sports contributed enormously to the “improvement of the race,” as we find in the title of an article published in Lidel in January 1933.11 In the same issue, a world record in female aviation achieved by Carina Negrone is celebrated. In the photographs accompanying the article she is portrayed in several poses and outfits; first, wearing her flying uniform and then on the following page smiling while embracing her baby son, followed by a glamorous picture of Carina, soon after her adventure in the sky. In this photograph, she is wearing a stylish white suit with a short blazer wrapped over her shoulders, her hat in her left hand, wearing a tight striped knitted blouse surrounded, on her left and right, by handsome men, impeccable in their uniforms. These images convey a message that Carina is a strong woman, happy with herself and completely at ease in a male world. Indeed, she has become famous for having engaged in traditionally male activities. Hence, the glamour emphasized in the pictures where her “traditional” or “expected” femininity in dress, appearance, as well as motherhood are both reaffirmed and undiminished by her sport activity.12 Although women appeared as very diversified subjectivities, at times depicted as contradictory female types in the fashion magazines, as well as in women‘s writing, Meano portrays above all a paternalistic and conservative model of femininity. In fact, the maschietta, on which we commented earlier, is moralistically condemned and considered out of fashion. Nevertheless, the changes in culture that had nurtured these new models of femininity did not completely disappear and the iconic message of females engaged in sports and outdoor activities exhibiting strong bodies inevitably suggested a dynamic vision of women. In this regard, it is interesting to see the pictures and read the testimonies of the women who attended the female Orvieto Academy, which had been founded in 1932 as a counterpart to the male Farnesina Academy in Rome.13 The Accademia Nazionale di Educazione Fisica Femminile di Orvieto (The national academy for female physical education of Orvieto) was founded in order to fulfill the regime’s aim to promote sport as well as using it as a means of educating the masses, in this case –80–

Dress, Style and the National Brand women. Sport and social rituals became a key component of the celebration of the nation, the Duce and patriotism, and an opportunity, as in any ritual, to keep the community together in a display of unity and control. Indeed the “fascist nation” was in many ways also the “sporting nation.”14 Under fascism, there was, then, a very real double take on women. The fashion of the 1930s proclaimed a return to the old days: Torniamo all’antico (Let’s go back to the way things were) was, in fact, the title of an editorial by Lina Putelli in the periodical Per voi signora, which became, together with Bellezza, the official mouthpiece of the ENM.15 Here Putelli reports on the latest French fashions that abandon the simplicity and linearity of the garçonne style in favor of a more elaborate one, echoing the second half of the nineteenth century with its long and elaborate gowns and more romantic taste.16 In the Commentario, we find descriptions of women from different social classes, from the high society femme fatale, who wore dresses that covered their necks but revealed their completely exposed backs (See Scollatura [Cleavage], p. 345), to the modest women who work in a Piedmontese workshop and learn how to continue the tradition of local embroidery called bandera (Bandera, p.345). This latter description emphasizes the work of such women in a populistic language that is ideologically in line with the fascist project of promoting regional artisan and craft traditions. One of these was lace, which occupied a prominent role for different kinds of dress decoration. Magazines and newsreels, as well as the publications of the ENM, went out of their way to emphasize Italian tradition in this decorative art. Meano, in fact, has an entry dedicated to Merletto (Lace) in which he gives an historical account on the spread of the art of lace and in which he emphasizes the role Italy once again had played in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He explains how this important skill was passed on by Venetian merchants to Germany and other countries and gives a detailed account of various styles and lace production techniques perfected in Italian cities, all of which had their own distinct traditions.17 The emphasis on traditional roles also spills over into an overtly misogynistic view. This is what informs Meano’s description of the intellettualità della donna (Intellectual ability of women, 205) in which his main aim, perfectly in line with regime policy, is to emphasize women’s qualities as bearers of children instead of their intellectual work. Interestingly enough, Meano, while stressing the feminine side of fashion and the relationship between women and fashion, minimizes the relationship between men and fashion. He puts men in what he calls the “zona neutrale immobile” (Neutral immobile zone), which is to say that men lack audacity in the cut of their clothes and in the use of vibrant colors. Meano, in fact, praises this neutral zone, the “calm little stream,” stating that this sober style is indeed in line with the notion of virility, heroism and strength that the regime wishes to reinforce and maintain. In support of his argument, he makes references to past historical epochs such as the eighteenth century when males, in his view, were no –81–

Fashion under Fascism less fashion victims than their female counterparts. He argues, in fact, that men, then, did not project and convey in dress their best “virile” qualities.18 At stake, however, in the text is not a representation of women or of gender relations per se. Rather, the text offers a view on men’s functional role in the building of a national image for Italian fashion through a series of rules and forms of language that ensure the creation of a domestic tradition. It is in this vein, in fact, that Meano returns as a recurrent source of inspiration to the Italian Renaissance, identified as a crucial point for defining an “authentic” Italian identity. The references to Renaissance authors and art are countless in the text and especially in the entries where the process of inspiration and creativity is involved. This historical interest in the art and costume of the Renaissance is also confirmed in a series of articles published in several periodicals that highlight Renaissance Italy’s innovative arts and crafts and showed the connections existing between painting and the decorative arts. In some of the articles, for instance, Leonardo Da Vinci’s interest in textiles is highlighted; in another, attention is paid to Pisanello’s wellknown drawings which, as we have seen in the previous chapter, also inspired Genoni’s search for Italian models.19 In “Arte dell’abbigliamento” (Art of dressing), Meano states that: We will discover in our Renaissance artists lines of beauty that we should never have forgotten, and we will be surprised to learn that fashion has not always been of our age. Leonardo and Botticellli have much to say about this [. . .] It is vital that we know the forms of the human body, a body that, as Leonardo said, is the model of the world. Let us hope, then [. . .] that in our schools [. . .] young intelligent minds are turned to an understanding of the supreme harmony of the lines of our body; and better still if this happens in our State-run schools. We will have, in this way, worthy architects of Italian fashion, creators [. . .] and when we go ahead in our study for other ends we will have men who are more self-aware.20

The notion of the self-awareness of one’s own identity, in this context, must not be considered from the merely individual perspective. Rather, this awareness, according to Meano, acts as a necessary step to the achievement of an original creativity. If, once again, we strip the text of its pompous fascist rhetoric and selfcentered nationalism, we see how such concepts were at the core of the initial claims for an Italian fashion made by Genoni, who belonged to a completely different political environment. Following Genoni, the other fervent advocate of an autonomous Italian style and fashion, De Liguoro used nationalist and patriotic language to convey similar messages. What I would like to underline here, however, are two points: first, as we have already stated, a line of continuity links prefascist and fascist Italy in the search for a national fashion; and second, the strong political dimension with which fashion is charged both in its making and in its varied uses. And this is so still today in our contemporary society.21 –82–

Dress, Style and the National Brand We cannot dismiss from this discourse the personal side of fashion, since it is central to the articulation of a complex and dual structure that aims at commodifying, standardizing and proliferating a plurality of sometimes imagined selves and identities. Indeed, one of the most elaborate entries in Meano’s text is Personalità (Personality). Here the author discusses at length the impact and function of creating a personal style and of adorning oneself in terms of the construction of an individual appearance, which inevitably creates a micro-narrative of our being in the world.22 He writes: Women often speak of personality, women and men. Today it is very common and not always reproachable to note the pride with which one of us keeps alive and clear his or her specific qualities, all of which make up the personality. In the field of fashion, then, this is the strength that presides over one of the most delicate and most representative functions, that of the choice of clothes, it being always the desire of women to find clothes that reveal their personality to the world. But how do clothes go about this? They carry out this function through what they themselves say, because each article of clothing and fabric, like each hat and scarf, always says something, and in most cases they say it very clearly seeing that they draw on a language of images.23

But what was the efficacy of a text such as Meano’s? Did it effectively discipline the language of fashion and the way Italians dressed? Strangely enough, given its premises and its length, the Dizionario is something of a disappointing text. Similarly to the absence of entries describing the Vestire alla fascista (Dressing like a fascist), one is also surprised to note relatively few references to foreign terms. Indeed, far fewer than one would have expected, given the scope of the text. The aim of purging the Italian language and the fashion jargon of foreign words especially French is somehow half-hearted. For the most part, in fact, the French words in use are simply Italianized, as in the case of paltò, or given a translation like palline (polka dots), instead of pois; or the pathetic example of Cignon translated with cignone.24 In addition, the important entry Taielleur (Suit), such a classic item of ladies’ wardrobes appears under the male counterpart Completo, which is a translation once again of the French complet, from which expressions such as Completo a giacca for men and abito a giacca are derived, the latter replacing taielleur.25 Even today in the Italian language, the French term is commonly used. For the rest, the result is a mixture of fascist propaganda as in entries such as Moda in Italia (Fashion in Italy) or those reserved for the synthetic fibers. Moda in Italia is, in fact, one of the most propagandistic entries and reiterates the fact that Italy held an hegemonic position in Europe for fashion and style during the Renaissance and traces how in the following centuries the sway had passed to France. However, Meano affirms that Italy, thanks to the fascist steps taken following to the creation of the ENM, is gradually regaining its leading position in terms of style. –83–

Fashion under Fascism More than on the actual act of disciplining styles and body exposure, the importance of this text lies in its emphasis on the complexities of language and discourse and their bearing on fashion. The book calls attention to the production of a discourse on fashion and the attempts made by the fascist regime to nationalize it as well as to control the customs of the Italian people. An immediate effect of the publication of the book was, especially in the periodicals, the observation of the order to Italianize the names of the models shown in the magazines, as well as their captions. In addition, as we have seen, articles were also published in support of the Italianization of the language of fashion. However, on the whole, this nationalizing process was not literally observed and automatically applied. A review of Meano’s Commentario by the linguist Alfredo Panzini that appeared in the daily newspaper Corriere della sera focuses on the difficulties inherent in Meano’s project, likening it to the sumptuary laws of the Renaissance, and even pokes fun at, without ever actually criticizing, the regime’s attempt to discipline fashion, language and women: To discipline women’s fashion will be less easy than you think. At least up until today, the strictest sumptuary law was shown to be impotent [. . .] Similarly, it will be a difficult thing to discipline the language of fashion. And here we are already in the middle of the great wood of French locutions.

In this context the relationship with the verbal structure of fashion as exemplified in the names of fashion items assumes a political valence that also bears on the “aura” associated with the name given to a particular dress. Indeed, it was against this aura, which had been codified in strictly French terms, that projects like Meano’s struggled and lost. In “Verso l’autarchia della moda” (Towards an autarchic fashion) Mario Peter, writing in L’informatore confidenziale della moda, takes up once again the issue of French terminology, as well as the fascination experienced by the wearer of clothes that “speak” French: By now there are very few Italian women who are stubbornly faithful to the Parisian model. These are women who consider superior products everything that comes from abroad or carries a foreign label. But there are still those who continue to delude themselves that if they call it a taielleur the work will be carried out better than if it was called an abito a giacca.26

Returning to Panzini’s review, we see that as well as poking fun at Meano’s project of disciplining fashion, it also contains other interesting strands. For one thing, despite his opinion that there is little point in trying to rid the language of fashion of French terminology, his review is overtly nationalistic, recalling a declaration by Arnaldo Mussolini made in 1931 on the importance of the campaign

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Dress, Style and the National Brand to promote national products. The praise Panzini reserves for Meano’s project is occasioned by the fact that it exalts the Italian present and connects it with the glory of the Renaissance past, to the time of Isabella D’Este when Italy had an hegemonic role in terms of art, style, and the manufacture of sumptuous and beautiful clothes. In conclusion, what Panzini emphasizes is the effect that the formation of an institution such as the ENM would have in breathing new life into the national fashion industry, as well as promoting the Italian tradition of clothing and textile. But Panzini also seems aware that the real future enemy of Italian fashion would not be France, hence perhaps his relative lack of concern about French influence, but the USA. The gradual changes in the economy, new models of consumption, the transformation of cultural models to which sport and cinema had contributed led to a different perception of the social body and gender relations. It is not by chance, then, that Panzini’s review, in underplaying French hegemony, points the finger at the USA, the new emerging world power that would gradually impose its political, cultural and economic weight on Europe.27 This, in the field of fashion, is translated into the fact that the US ready-to-wear industry was developing at a great speed and introducing its products onto the European market. Yet, if Panzini saw the threat on the horizon coming from the USA, Italian fashion still had to deal with the present threat, still represented by France, still the nation that held a hegemonic position, still the enemy, but an enemy that was paradoxically also the source for inspiration, the model to imitate. In this regard, Elvio Fenoglio in his article “La creazione della moda” (The creation of fashion), published in the 1933 Christmas issue of Per voi signora, uses as an epigraph an excerpt from a Parisian daily newspaper that reports how several parties and balls given by the French aristocracy had the effect of boosting the sales of the French luxury goods industry. These socialite gatherings ensured a domestic market for the production and consumption of luxury goods and haute couture, their public display underlining the flair of Parisian chic. Drawing on this excerpt, Fenoglio illustrates the importance of fashion on the national economy, not without paying homage to the Duce in his final words: A flip through a Parisian daily newspaper of two years ago is enough to confirm the importance and the repercussions that fashion can have on the economic life of a nation. This is why it is important to have in our hands the leadership of this movement so we can direct it according to our own needs. In a word, to achieve what the Duce wants and, that is, create fashion.28 (emphasis mine)

Whether as enemy to be defeated or as model to be imitated, or both at the same time, France, and above all Paris, remained firmly in the sights of the Italian fashion industry in the 1930s. To get a closer idea of this troubled relationship let us now turn to the film Contessa di Parma (Countess of Parma) directed by

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Fashion under Fascism Alessandro Blasetti in 1937, a film that dramatizes how Italian fashion at least dreamt of exorcising that threat.

Fashion, Film and the Politics of the Regime Although specialized periodicals and fashion magazines had a considerable weight in the campaign for supporting Italian fashion, it is undeniable that cinema established itself as a much more popular medium able to reach out and guarantee a larger audience, which in Italy was composed of a population where the majority of people were hardly able to read and write.29 The popularity of cinema was not, however, a solely Italian phenomenon. Other European countries and the USA had, in fact, undergone a similar development and trend. In Italy, however, cinema was even more crucial as a form of entertainment and “education” in fascist terms, since there were still, in addition to a very high degree of illiteracy, stark contrasts between North and South and between urban centers and rural areas.30 The fertile terrain out of which Italian cinema in the 1930s grew was the product of a group of creative film directors and intellectuals. This was a potential that the fascist regime was quick to recognize and harness to its own purposes. Indeed, especially in the 1930s, cinema was given particular prominence, first with the formation of Cines in 1930–1, and later of Cinecittà in 1937 as well as the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia.31 In addition to the massive production of Italian films, foreign films, especially American ones, were also widely distributed and available. Despite, or perhaps on account of, the popularity of US cinema, the regime began to regulate it only in the late 1930s, and increasingly in the early 1940s as Italy entered the war against the USA. Irene Brin, a sharp observer of her contemporary culture and styles, published an article in 1943 entitled “La moda e il cinema” (Fashion and the cinema) in the journal Cinema.32 Here, she stressed the popularity, especially among the female audience, of myths such as those created by the screen personae of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford. In her opinion, and not surprisingly, their imported ideals of beauty and elegance exercised a stronger appeal and power of imitation on the Italian female audience than their homegrown domestic actresses who were then forced to imitate the glamour of their foreign colleagues. Similarly to the advertising pages in fashion magazines, Hollywood divas represented a magic carpet on which bored housewives or women conducting ordinary lives could fly and, for a moment at least, live out their dreams: “These women need romance,” writes Roland Marchand, “they crave glamour and color.”33 Hollywood films “cast such magical spells that housewives and women workers could daily see themselves as femme fatales, as Cleopatra or Helen of Troy,”34 and so glamorize the monotony of everyday life.35

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Dress, Style and the National Brand Hollywood actresses were also one of the sources for fashion and trends. Brin sarcastically states that, thanks to Garbo and her medium length page-boy hair style, women could at last abandon their short Eton haircut inspired by the model of the 1920s, that of the maschietta. Writing a few years after the initial impact of the Garbo phenomenon, she notes: Our childhood, surrounded by mothers with shaved necks, bigger sisters sporting Eton haircuts, was full of heartfelt questions and fearful sentences: “Hair looks good very long or very short. What will we do when it grows out. Garçonne style or braids, nothing is worse than medium length hair.” Yet, the triumph was entirely that of medium-length hair and the pageboy style of Greta is still with us, after 12 years. And the basque beret, the dark overcoat, the sporty well-worn trousers, which she alternated with fabulously scintillating evening gowns [. . .] Greta was always splendid and delicate.36

The face of Garbo was so ever present in fashion magazines’ advertising either for make-up, perfume or fashion. So strong was the power exercised by her image that other models sought to look like. As Barthes has written in his Mythologies: “Garbo [. . .] belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy, when one literally lost oneself in a human image as one would in a philter, when the face represented a kind of absolute state of the flesh, which could be neither reached nor renounced.”37 Hollywood Star look-alike competitions thrived during fascism, even more so in the post-war years. Gundle reports that in 1932, the MGM company held a Greta Garbo look-alike competition that was won by Romilda Villani, Sophia Loren’s future mother.38 As the case of Garbo shows, fashion and cinema have an intimate link in the creation of mythologies and identities either to be imitated for those who could afford it or simply fantasized about. For Italian women, the cinema has always represented an important source of inspiration for the reproduction of dresses, especially when and where magazines were not available. Hollywood films played a key role, both in the USA and in Europe, as merchandisers of goods, especially fashion and beauty products.39 As we shall see, films of the white telephone genre, such as Blasetti’s Contessa di Parma – which is mentioned in Brin’s article – and Grandi magazzini (Department stores), directed in 1939 by Mario Camerini, show a number of similarities both in film and commercial techniques. Both films contain, in fact, explicit tie-ins for clothes and accessory items, a marketing ploy, akin to the more recent “And now a word from our sponsor.” Such a ploy had already been tried out in 1930s Hollywood films such as Stolen Holidays, made in 1937, Roberta, made in 1935 or Mannequin, made in 1938.40 The dresses worn by the actresses in the movies were, in fact, reproduced on a mass scale and sold in American department stores.41 In Italy, cinema began to rival the specialized

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Fashion under Fascism periodicals as a source of inspiration for the skills of those sarte and sartine (dressmakers), of whom there were many, who catered to mainly lower-class customers.42 Indeed, for women who were not living in big cities and who for economic reasons could not pursue a higher education, it was very common to work as a seamstress or as a ricamatrice (embroiderer). For less privileged women, this was an opportunity to gain a relative independence. In fact these women could work outside the paternal home before marriage while acquiring a skill to be used to earn money after their apprenticeship was served. Moreover, the majority of women could put their sewing skills to the service of the needs of their families. This was also an opportunity for them to sew their own trousseau before getting married. If Garbo “The Divine,” represented the elitist and aristocratic myth, a more democratic myth, closer to the actual lifestyles of the average woman film viewer, but a myth nonetheless, of the young self-made woman was incarnated by Joan Crawford. Here is how Brin speaks of this latter: Joan Crawford’s story seemed to complete the elegy of the disdainful face of inexpensive clothes, of the self-made girl. Summing up a thousand other stories that seemed dramatic and close to us, female clerks swarmed out of their offices after work firmly convinced that they looked like she did and deserved, as she did, a villa with a swimming pool in California.43

Brin’s article illustrates the important changes and social transformations that were taking place both in Europe and the USA and their repercussions on the formation and spread of new models of consumption and styles. Indeed, she points out that Hollywood cinema became a powerful vehicle for the spread of images of goods to be acquired and models to be imitated, reproducing them on a mass scale. Brin, in fact, goes out of her way to state that American films such as the already mentioned Roberta or Mannequins did little to hide at all their propagandistic and advertising aims. As a result, affordable reproductions of the dresses launched in the films were sold nationwide at the big US department stores. In a similar vein, she notes that, although in a less organized manner, in Europe as well, imitation of the fashion present in the movies was gradually picking up. Icons of glamour, sport and a mysterious life, such as the black sunglasses worn by Garbo, became very fashionable accessories to be sold even at “UPIM [an Italian department store] for two lire.”44 As the Italian couturier based in Paris, Elsa Schiaparelli noted: “what Hollywood designs today, you will be wearing tomorrow.” 45 For reasons such as these, some of the Italian commercial films produced in the second half of 1930s are interesting texts when considered in the light of the politics of fashion and its commercial and narratological potential. In this way, white telephone films, borrowing ideas from Hollywood, readapted and Italianized the glamour of the characters, their representation and stories. As with Hollywood –88–

Dress, Style and the National Brand films, however, commercial films amused and entertained, their political intent, although present, well embedded in the drama of the plot. 46 The ENM had a role to play in the Italian film industry. In fact, it extended its regulations regarding the Italianization of fashion and required that Italian films made in the 1930s featured only domestically made clothes for their costumes. This was no bad deal for the fashion houses as, naturally, commercial films could become a powerful, and cheap, means of advertising. Costume designers Gino Sensani and Nino Novarese were among those who ensured that the costumes worn in historical films were of a high standard. It goes without saying that Cinecittà lacked the structure and the organization of Hollywood studios in terms of fashion consultants, make-up artists, photographers and designers such as Adrian (MGM) or Edith Head (Paramount), but there was, indeed, a concern and an awareness to create a more attuned relationship between the fashion houses and film production. Indeed Blasetti’s Contessa di Parma will help to see this issue in a clearer light. Morever, the history of Hollywood costume designs is complex and a distinction must be made between costume and couture design, as Stella Bruzzi points out in her study on the relationship between clothing, identity and the movies.47 When Coco Chanel received an offer to design for MGM in Hollywood in 1931, her stardom and personality created her well known conflict with Gloria Swanson and led Chanel to leave the USA. Couture resisted the demand to adjust to the character and the narrative needs of the film. Rather, it sought to create a show of its own. But it was through Hollywood and cinema that the USA supplanted and ultimately undermined the Parisian influence on domestically produced fashion, as we have noted earlier in the spread of its icons of style via stars such as Garbo, and Crawford in the puff-sleeved dress she wore in Letty Lyton. Lucio Ridenti, a regular contributor of Bellezza does not miss the opportunity to underline in his articles on “Moda e Cinema” (Fashion and Cinema) the importance of this almost magical binomial, a project on which the ENM embarked. Ridenti, however, stresses the need to develop and reinforce this link in the relationship between the fashion houses and the ENM in such a way that clothing in the film must be ahead of fashion instead of following it, as was still the case in Italy. This was a lesson, Ridenti believes, that Hollywood had learnt very well when, in order to free the American market of French fashion, it started to produce films dealing explicitly with fashion and thus spread an imposed “American” fashion to Europe. Going back to Italy, the fascist regime understood via Hollywood that an important link existed between fashion and cinema and that these were both powerful weapons to spread national models, to mold identity and consciousness and also to advertise images of modernity and glamour. And this could also serve the purpose of reaching out culturally and commercially to domestic and foreign markets. In both fashion and cinema, however, there was still space for fantasy and desire. Along these lines we may note that even in the midst –89–

Fashion under Fascism of WWII, the ENM commissioned a lavishly illustrated volume entitled Moda e Cinema (Fashion and Cinema).48 Here, in the opening pages of the book, we read that: the volume aims at illustrating the intimate relationship between the arts and fashion, which is here to be understood not only in its aesthetic function but also in its ramifications with the national industry [. . .] through the relationship between fashion and cinema it is possible to gauge to what extent the big screen, via an enormous diffusion of easy to assimilate images, is able to influence the majority of its audience. Italian cinema, deliberately Italian, is also an international cinema and thus a vehicle for the spread of art, attitudes and tastes, which are the key element of Italianness.

It is clear from this paragraph that not only did the project of building a national cinema and a national fashion go hand in hand, but also that the project was launched with the intent to export abroad domestic products. Indeed, a nationalistic intent always entails the projection of such models abroad that can be recognized as such. This assumption finds confirmation in a series of articles that appeared in Bellezza on “Moda italiana per gli stranieri” (Italian fashion for the foreigners): The aims set by the ENM, which began its activity in Turin and was founded by the Duce’s will, are well known. The first aim was to conquer the domestic market of the garment industry: this necessitated two tasks, one harder than the other – the organization and greatest valorization of all the artistic, crafts, industrial and commercial forces operating in the national field of fashion, while at the same time engaging in the struggle against the Francophile preference of the customers and their groundless diffidence towards Italian production. The second aim is a natural consequence and development of the first went in the direction of expansion abroad and conquest of foreign clothes markets to the benefit of our own production the foreign market.49

In the volume Moda Documento, we find a series of photographs illustrating the spaces and the activities of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC), the school for acting and directing, the gymnasium where various sports were practiced, followed by another illustration of Cinecittà. In an article following the illustration of the CSC and Cinecittà the important function that Hollywood cinema had for the diffusion of fashion and models incarnated by the female and male stars to be imitated emerges forcefully. The article, however, stresses the importance for both Italian cinema and fashion of keeping their distance from Hollywood models of femininity and masculinity. The question posed here is whether Italian cinema could spread “ideas of a previously unknown elegance, so true and real that they create a process of imitation in the audience and educate it to taste.” As we can imagine, the answer to this question is yes, Italian cinema can convey and achieve these ends with the support and collaboration of “great –90–

Dress, Style and the National Brand constructor tailors and fabrics.” Meano, the author of the Commentario Dizionario della moda, also writes here on the relationship between fashion and cinema. While emphasizing the function of propaganda in film, he refers to the production of several costume dramas set in the nineteenth century like Malombra. He links this return to the nineteenth century to the time of the Italian Risorgimento, which can be compared, in his view, to the wars in which Italy was then involved. Several steps taken by the fascist regime confirmed its attempt to institutionalize the relationship between the construction of both a national cinema and a national fashion that went hand in hand with the projection of an attractive and modern image of Italy and Italians. It is with these premises in mind that we now turn to a close analysis of Blasetti’s Contessa di Parma.

From Hollywood to France. From France to Italy: Alessandro Blasetti’s Contessa di Parma Set in a fashion house in Turin – the Italian capital of fashion chosen by the fascist regime and where the official initiatives of the ENM took place – Contessa di Parma represents a rich reference point from which to observe the ideology of the regime in its quest to create a national fashion. Blasetti’s film, in fact, is a useful means to illustrate not only this, but also to document the fascist politics on fashion and how it was interrelated with other activities such as sport and its impact on cultural models. Contessa di Parma is, then, something more than just a remake of an American commercial film. Rather, it is a film whose subtle and hidden complexities can be seen only through the lens of fashion and its interrelations with gender and politics. This is a film that reveals the manipulative power of the media in a totalitarian regime, but just as importantly, in giving hints of the entrepreneurial quality and role of women who worked in the fashion apparel industry, it also presents interesting twists in gender relations and representation. Of interest, then, is the representation of gender relations offered by the film in which rather than a unified model of female identity, we see several models. Present in the film are several identities – differing in age and economic power – that portray a mixture of traditional female roles that are not pulled apart by the quest for independence and self-determination. Indeed, Blasetti’s cinematic eye surveys a sophisticated terrain on which one can explore both the politics and aesthetics of the representation of gender and its interrelations with fashion. The film’s establishing shots are images of art deco buildings onto which credits are projected as if they were advertising signs. These are illuminated against the dark background so that the images have a pictorial quality and transmit an aura of both tradition and modernity. The establishing shots also introduce a commercial message, as we are informed, first, that the clothes in the film, “all with a certificate –91–

Fashion under Fascism of guarantee,” have been supplied by Matté, a well-known fashion house in Turin; and, second, that the fur coats worn in the film are from Viscardi, which had successful branches in Rome and Turin. Further confirmation that this is designed to be a film with domestic concerns is found in the rational architecture of the buildings in the opening shots, which resembles that of the buildings in the Luce newsreels that chronicled and publicized the national exhibitions of fashion and textile held in Turin at the Palazzo della moda.50 The film, a love story between Gino Vanni, a stylish and handsome football player in the Italian national team who looks more like a male model, and a mannequin in the guise of an aristocrat. This guise is supplied by the very elegant dress she wears that bears the name the Contessa di Parma. She wears this dress at the very beginning of the film when she first exchanges glances with Gino. Despite the predictability of this love story and its happy ending, the plot reveals interesting aspects of gender relations. From the start the viewer enters a fashion house and sees its patronizing director who is depicted as a faithful supporter of French fashion, seduced by its allure and chic. The viewer, who for these kinds of films was mainly female, also becomes immediately aware that the director treats the mannequins as commodities, there to serve his advertising purposes. Throughout the film, the director of the Maison is portrayed as effeminate and pretentious, dropping French words here and there in his conversation. His entire persona and affected mannerisms are depicted as a caricature and as the exact opposite of sprezzatura. Even the name of the firm he directs has a French name Printemps, like the well-known Parisian department store. When at the beginning of the film, one of the employees of the fashion house informs him that a new person from Milan, the widow Marta Rossi, has acquired the business and that she is arriving soon, he promptly answers that he has no time for her (or anybody from Milan) since he is about to leave for Paris and needs to buy his ticket at once: “Macché Milano,” he says, which is best translated as “Forget Milan, I’m leaving for Paris.” He delivers his line with an air of arrogance and mystery that is soon to be ridiculed by his affected and pretentious demeanor. Unlike him, the true aristocrats appearing in the film are depicted as chic solely on account of their family names. These are aristocrats on the downward slide, forced to do what for them is demeaning work. In fact, circumstances dictate that they cannot hide their desperate need for money and are forced to sell their titles and agree to become paid escorts for the fashion models at the high society balls and horse races where the fashion house shows off its goods. We soon learn that the fashion house, whose interior is elegant and refined, has been acquired by a female Milanese entrepreneur, Marta Rossi, who happens to be the wealthy aunt of the male protagonist, the soccer player Vanni. Rossi, as opposed to the previous effeminate director, anxious only to breathe Parisian air, is depicted as a very masculine, independent woman who has at heart the project of the Italianization of fashion and its spread. Most importantly, –92–

Dress, Style and the National Brand she feels no sense of inferiority towards French couture, convinced as she is of the high quality of Italian clothing. Here, already, we see a twist in gender representation. From Milan, the city that, no less than Turin, had a well-established tradition in fashion and textile (which is why the regime’s choice of Turin rather than Milan as the official capital of fashion generated some resentment in the Lombard city), Rossi is shown to have the managerial and advertising skills completely lacking in the male manager, who exhibits an extreme case of love of all things French, and whose obsession consisted in passively imitating Paris fashion. We wonder why a woman was chosen to represent this new entrepreneurial figure in Italian fashion. In the film, the female characters are, indeed, portrayed as innovators who have a better understanding of the facts of commercial life, which they know does not consist solely of the glamorous gatherings of high socialites. Female characters, then, come out of this film much better than their male counterparts. Although the new owner Rossi shows a greater sense of solidarity with the women working as models at the firm she has renamed Magazzini Primavera, Italianizing the name, she also has a hasty manner. But her virile manners are not to be confused with those of the 1920s maschietta, whose slender, young and sexy image was condemned by the regime.51 Rossi’s virility proves to be a positive plus for the success of her business while at the same time never being a source of any attraction or sex appeal. She is an older woman, content not to be forced to appear younger than she is in her choice of clothes, hairstyle and make-up. She has the effect of reassuring both the audience and her employers with her motherly and yet authoritarian figure. By contrast, the former Francophile manager with his effeminate manners had a paternalistic attitude and treated the models overtly as goods. At the beginning of the film, when we first see Marcella the female protagonist, the director of the fashion house introduces her and another model to the two aristocrats who have fallen on hard times and who have been hired to accompany them to the Opera and, the next day, to the horse races held at Mirafiori. Here Marcella is wearing the evening gown whose name, as we previously mentioned, is a French aristocratic title, La countesse de Parme. This mode of advertising – which had been practiced since the turn of the twentieth century by French couturiers – is here, once again, re-proposed. As they dance, the models at the ball slip their firm’s business card into the pockets of the tuxedos worn by their wealthy dance partners. This, and other French inspired modes, were all encouraged by the “bad guy” of the film, the former manager of Printemps. However, they are seen to be commercial failures as the models themselves complained of being treated as commodities to be used by males looking for sexual amusement and with little interest in buying clothes for their wives. Indeed, from the opening shots of the film, Marcella is depicted as a young woman who rejects the logic of commodification simply by virtue of the fact that she is a model and a beautiful woman. In fact, while they are driving towards the horse races at Mirafiori, she states that she –93–

Fashion under Fascism is not interested in engaging herself in any intimate conversation or relationship with her male partner. As a result the Duke says to Marcella: “That dress you’re wearing has given you airs above your station, remember you’re just a poor model.” To this she promptly responds that it is he who rather than she is at the low end of things since he has agreed to accompany her to social gatherings so he can pay off his debts. Marcella adds that hers is a job that she performs with dignity and for which she earns money, whereas the aristocrats like the fallen Duke have lost all dignity. It is at this point that the Duke, angered by her non-servile and feisty behavior, leaves Marcella alone in the car once they arrive at their destination. While left alone in the car, Marcella sees Gino with whom she had already exchanged a few admiring glances the previous night at the opera. Confirmation of Marcella’s determination not to be considered solely as a sexual object comes with her claim that the fact that she needs to work in order to make a living does not mean that she is put in the weaker position of being the target of sexual harassment. This was, in fact, her reaction, in the middle of the film, to the advertising campaign of Printemps that took place at a ball where models promoted the evening wear of the Maison’s collection. The male guests showed more interest in the models’ bodies than in buying the clothes that were destined for their respective wives. It is at this point that Rossi accuses the former manager of incompetence in his job and suggests that rather than using balls to publicize the company’s clothes they organize a fashion show in the trendy ski resort of Sestrières. Fashion shows at this time were becoming popular as a means of advertising and promoting the sale of Italian clothing and accessories. Especially during the autarchic phase, shows like this were organized during the national exhibitions organized by the ENM in Turin, in local branches of the Rinascente department store, at Mirafiori, and at the Villa D’Este in Como, in conjunction with the textile industry. Since her first meeting with the new Milanese owner, Marcella is considered her protégée. One of the reasons for the immediate sympathy established between the two women is the fact that Marcella is wearing a suit borrowed from the collection sent from Milan by the new owner that she wore for a show. Later, she wears it on her first date with the football player, who still believes, on account of her clothes, that she is an aristocrat. But as she enters Gino’s car she accidentally rips the upper sleeve out of the dress, and is now terrified by what has happened. Marcella’s outfit costs, in fact, 2500 Lire, a substantial amount, if we consider that earning 1000 Lire a month, as a popular song of the day says, was considered one of the highest salaries. The outfit itself is of black velvet and features a jacket with a revers in white ermine. This is something that Marcella could never afford. In fact, on the following date she has with Gino, she timidly tries to reveal her true identity when she tells him that on this occasion she is wearing a 200 Lire dress, something that a milliner or a modest seamstress could afford. To this, Gino, fast becoming the –94–

Dress, Style and the National Brand male hero of the film, promptly replies by saying that it is not the price of the dress that reveals the style of the wearer, but the person wearing it who ensures the attractiveness of any outfit, expensive or not. Gino also adds that in any case he would never be interested in going out with somebody like a seamstress or, even worse, someone with a dubious reputation like a mannequin. It is at this point that Marcella feels ashamed of her real identity and decides not to reveal it in order to continue her relationship with Gino. Her fear is that it is the mysterious countess who attracts Gino’s imagination more than the brava ragazza (good girl) who makes polpette (meatballs), as is suggested by the football player’s aunt Marta Rossi. Titles and appearances, then, play a huge role in this film, aristocratic titles and exotic names given to dresses being shown in the film as devices for attracting possible buyers. While never putting the workings of this commercial mechanism in doubt, the film does fulfill the nationalist intent of fascist fashion policy by translating these names into Italian. The film, then, seeks to persuade us that the quality and style of clothes made in Italy are not inferior to or less attractive than French ones. This becomes clear when during a fashion show in the now renamed Primavera fashion house, the Francophile former manager says the clothes from the new collection on display look so chic as to convince him he is breathing Paris’s sophisticated air. At this, one of the assistants remarks that the models being presented did not come from Paris but from Milan. Faced with this revelation, the manager is so disconcerted that he disdainfully says he has changed his mind and that he does not like the new collection any more. By exaggerating the manager’s Francophile attitudes to such a degree that he becomes a caricature, the viewer is led to condemn all of his actions and consider his opinions completely irrational, especially when we see the actual beauty of the chic outfits that appear on the screen. In displaying luxurious and elegant female and male dress – Gino, too, is impeccable in his well-tailored suits, complemented with fine accessories like the snugly fitting leather gloves or hats he wears – the film becomes a powerful advertisement for Italian fashion and style. Through its narrative techniques and the popular love story format it adopts, the film attracted big audiences, especially among women, and sent a message whose efficacy was more powerful than that of other media. Blasetti himself, in an interview, affirmed that, indeed, his film was tangible proof that fascism took very seriously the idea of promoting and building a national fashion. He added that, at that particular point in his career, he needed work and making a film with the attractive ingredients of Contessa di Parma was a recipe for guaranteed success and pecuniary reward. It is interesting to note that Blasetti’s film can be considered the Italian counterpart of the aforementioned Hollywood films that adopted similar techniques designed to give the best possible visibility and publicity to the clothes on display, such as several close-ups of details emphasizing the cut, decoration and accessories –95–

Fashion under Fascism of the outfits. In fact, this is a film in which the way the outfits worn by Marcella are filmed, dwelling on their seductive power, leaves a very strong impression on the viewer. When asked in an interview about the provincialism of Italian fashion in the 1930s, Blasetti replied: “I never believed that Italian fashion had been literally negative. Even then it had its positive side and I remember beautiful toilettes, of good taste too, that were prepared for my characters.”52 Marcella’s black velvet suit, ermine trimmed, fitted jacket, and her black beret with a light and transparent black half-veil delicately touching the white revers of her jacket represent the height of her elegance, her status and her seductive power. Here the sophisticated use of the camera plays its part as angles, and close, medium and long shots all ensure the audience gets a complete picture of the details of her outfit, almost to the point of fixation. Even the tear on the jacket’s sleeve provides an opportunity to emphasize and revisit the seductive power of the dress. The (predominantly female) audience, then, is put in the position of being able to gauge every possible nuance of the dress and “assess the exactness of its fit” so that it could be either acquired by wealthy women, so promoting domestic production, remembering the name of the fashion house given at the beginning of the film, or copied by skilled dressmakers for less wealthy customers. This ploy is emphasized in the grand finale of the film – the fashion show of the entire collection presented at Sestrierès, where the various narrative threads come to a head. Again here, we find a very similar context and similar advertising techniques to those analyzed by Charlotte Herzog in “‘Powder Puff’ Promotion: The Fashion Show-in-the-film” for American films such as Stolen Holidays or others in which fashion shows are part of the film narrative. At the fashion show, organized at the ski resort chosen by the new management, the camera cuts backstage where Marcella and other mannequins are changing their clothes and interacting with other characters.53 Here, the narrative of the fashion house and that of Marcella and Gino intermingle and find their respective moments of denouement. The audience’s enthusiastic reaction to the show is the forerunner of commercial success, and the two lovers Marcella and Gino finally cement their relationship on solid ground. Interestingly, the narrative of the fashion show we see in the film’s closing scenes is tailored along the lines of a traditional story, the protagonist being a woman whose wardrobe features clothing worn from the day of her debut in society. The show then follows all the stages of her personal life, her first kiss, and on to marriage, the show concluding triumphantly with the protagonist – Marcella, of course – dressed as a bride. This is also the moment of revelation for Marcella and Gino who, although they do not realize it, are going to play bride and groom on the catwalk. Here the camera cuts backstage again to Gino who in order to make her jealous announces to Marcella, who is wearing a Russian-style suit with pants and a long Cossack jacket, that he is engaged to be married. As a rejoinder, –96–

Dress, Style and the National Brand Marcella invents the lie that she too is getting married and wishes to show Gino her wedding dress in order to ask his opinion. It is here, still backstage, that the camera lingers once again on very elaborate shots of Marcella’s wedding dress, thanks to which the female audience can grasp the details of length, fit, and the precious lace decorations that form part of the head gear and frame Marcella’s face in a widescreen close-up. Suddenly, as they talk in close proximity, Marcella and Gino are transported onto the center of the stage in front of the fashion show audience, thrust there by a stagehand acting on Marta Rossi’s orders who has activated the circular stage on which the two soon to be lovers were standing. In the meantime, the film cuts backstage again and we see Marta Rossi, who is the director both of the fashion show and of her nephew and her protégée’s wedding. The final scene is a close-up of both bride and groom who are enthusiastically applauded by the audience, marking their appreciation of the show. The camera lingers on the bride’s dress from different angles showing and emphasizing the details of the precious lace out of which it is made, the fabric of national pride and tradition, the most Italian of fabrics, often on display in exhibitions and magazines of the period. Lace also symbolically represented a strong link to tradition, to the fine regional craftsmanship that fascist policy aimed to valorize alongside its interest in experimentation and modernity. Indeed, feature films such as Contessa Di Parma or as we will see later Grandi Magazzini are quintessential manifestations of the fact that fascism used the different and often contradictory features of an Italian culture and identity that is suspended between the poles of experimentalism and tradition. It is with lace in mind, and all the connotations that come with it, that we now turn our attention to what was the backbone of Italian fashion, the domestic textile industry.

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Nationalizing the Fashion Industry?

–5 – Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? The Intelligent Fibres: Between Innovation and Autarchy The textile industry played a major role in the Italian economy during its phase of modernization in the two decades between 1920 and 1940. In this, Italy very much followed the capitalist model common to other European countries and the USA.1 It must be remembered, of course, that thanks for the results achieved in all sectors of the Italian economy went in great part to the massive exploitation of low wage laborers, the majority of whom were women and children from rural areas, as dress historian Grazietta Butazzi has noted. The basis of Italy’s textile industry, then, did not differ much from that of the US garment industry, which expanded considerably in these decades on the back of the huge immigrant workforce, composed to a great extent of Italians, many of them seamstresses, embroiderers and tailors.2 Under fascism, the Italian textile industry took two directions, one traditional, promoting regional handicraft products like lace and embroidery; the other more innovative, giving great attention to the development of the so-called new intelligent fibers like rayon. This latter, in fact, came to embody not only the very stuff of the modern image the regime sought to promote of itself, but also a tangible sign of the nation’s economic self-sufficiency. Indeed, the advance in production techniques that had given birth to rayon was to be presented as propaganda for the regime, a task that was assigned to the fashion and specialized magazines of the period, as emerges clearly from the extant ENM documentation on the intelligent fibers.3 At the same time, however, as it promoted these breakthroughs in technology as signs of modernity, the regime never neglected to emphasize its foundations in traditions and well-established practices. In the field of textiles, for example, a survey of the ENM documentation reveals how at an ideological level the mix of the new and the traditional was to be the battle cry of the regime’s propaganda campaign. I here use the term “propaganda” in the sense of “integration” and not in that of “agitation.” According to the classification developed by Philip Cannistraro these are the two modes of propaganda to which the regime had recourse at different times. If propaganda by means of agitation had characterized the first revolutionary phase of fascism, between 1919 and 1922, and aimed at achieving

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Fashion under Fascism quick short-term results, propaganda by means of integration was typical of the phase in which the regime consolidated its power. This latter type of propaganda sought long-term results and acted in a much more indirect manner. If agitation propaganda can be considered a kind of coercion, integration propaganda is a kind of more subtle non-coercive coercion. It was based, in fact, on commonplaces and myths – those of the virile man, and of woman as Mediterranean mother, a model of round-hipped beauty – that were already firmly in place and well-sedimented in Italian culture and daily practices. These myths and others like them, such as the dynamism of the northern cities and the false use of southern culture, peasants and massaie working with textiles, etc., were presented with a veneer of modernity attached to them and came to represent models on which to base one’s sense of a fascist identity. It is in the context of this construction of a fascist popular culture that fashion, along with the press, cinema and newsreels, took on an important role for the regime.4 One of the strongest propaganda slogans transmitted by the regime as soon as the ENM was founded in 1932, and which exposed the nationalist intent that lay behind this phase of fascist policy on fashion, was that “the Italian woman must follow Italian fashion.” Through some of the Istituto Luce newsreels, one of fascism’s favorite media of persuasion, we can track this strand of policy, especially in the coverage the newsreels gave to the National Fashion Exhibitions. The first of these was held in Turin in 1933 and was inaugurated by Elena of Savoy, Queen of Italy. To the fore, in the coverage of this event, even before we see the actual shots of the inauguration, we read in very large letters that La donna italiana deve seguire la moda italiana. Gusto, eleganza, originalità hanno dimostrato che la iniziativa può e deve avere successo (The Italian woman must follow Italian fashion. Taste, elegance and originality have demonstrated that this initiative can and must be a success). After this, we see a tracking shot of the art deco building where the exhibition is held and where the queen arrives welcomed by the gerarchi, all of them surrounded by a large crowd.5 Following these opening shots we see a series of scenes that focus on single outfits worn by dummies displayed in shop windows. We, then, see real mannequins, surrounded by linear and modern furniture that complements their style of dress, wearing suits, cocktail and evening gowns, and sports outfits. Parallel to this display of modernity, the camera gives special emphasis to local traditions. As well as a great variety of accessories, lace is given special attention. This was to be a recurrent trend at the subsequent semiannual exhibitions. Local craftsmanship would always be presented and exhibited alongside new models and textiles, underlining the fascist desire to combine tradition with modernity and to stress the economic importance of industry and craftsmanship.6 Another Luce newsreel, this time from 1936, shown in the midst of the autarchic phase, covers the National Exhibition of Textile and Clothing in Turin. Here, –100–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? we first see a medium shot of the motto Vestire italianamente (Dress in an Italian manner), written on the building where the exhibition was housed, while in a tracking shot the camera dwells on the word RAYON written, like the slogan, in huge letters.7 Rayon, in fact, was one of the regime’s great successes in the field of textiles and Italians were enjoined to produce and buy clothes made out of this home-produced intelligent fiber. A domestically produced fabric to which could be given a veneer of modernity, rayon came to be identified with national identity and patriotism, as is made clear by the juxtaposition of the shots at the opening of the 1936 newsreel. With the Ethiopian War and the subsequent sanctions imposed upon Italy by the League of Nations, Mussolini proclaimed the nation’s economic autarchy and, in the field of fashion, the quest for home-produced fabrics became keener. For the textile industry and for individual designers and dressmakers this phase can be likened to a smithy of creativity. The nationalistic intent, which had been the prime mover behind the fascist policy to legislate the fashion industry, was now accompanied by the economic necessity to survive the crisis and avoid the danger of political isolation. The move towards autarchy was facilitated by the fact that on account of foreign sanctions Italy had little alternative other than to withdraw into itself in order to survive. But if isolation had a price, it also had unexpected benefits. The imposition of sanctions, in fact, had the immediate effect of increasing the level of research and experimentation in textile and design. We can follow much of what was happening in the fashion industry at this time through the specialist textile periodicals and other fashion magazines. These are testimony, certainly, to fascist propaganda, but at the same time they furnish a great deal of information about the activities and the debate on the promotion of Italian fashion and industry.8 But how exactly did the textile industry enact a process of modernization? This is no simple question for a nation like Italy that was not as industrialized as Great Britain or France, countries that since the nineteenth century could count on resources, especially textiles, from their colonies. Moreover, the British textile industry profited from a more stable and centralized government, whereas in Italy the deep north/south gap, as well as problems inherited from a very complex and relatively recent unification, still had a great bearing on industrial development, the textile industry in particular.9 Issues such as these were addressed in the study conducted in 1937 by Roberto Tremelloni, L‘industria tessile italiana (The Italian textile industry). Here, Tremelloni pointed out that, despite all its structural problems, the Italian textile industry had achieved steady growth and surprising results. Many companies had created experimental chemical and research laboratories in order to further their studies in new areas, above all in the creation of artificial fibers. Indeed, this branch of the industry, he went on, was at the head of a worldwide technological revolution in the production and consumption of –101–

Fashion under Fascism fashion and styles. Artificial fibers were playing an increasingly important role in manufacturing all over the world. It will suffice us to note that the increase in world production of artificial fibers went from 600.000 kilograms in 1896 to 11,000,000 in 1913. By 1920 it had reached 25,000,000, reaching 350,000,000 in 1934, and arriving at 890,200,000 kilograms in 1938. In an article entitled “I tessuti artificiali” (Artificial textiles), published in the monthly review Vita Tessile, the author, a certain Lancellotti, referring to the aforementioned statistics, writes of the progress made by the textile industry and the impact it had had on both Italy and the world.10 He begins, however, with a historical overview. The production of artificial fibers, he states, had begun with a series of unsuccessful experiments in the sixteenth century and continued, still with little success, throughout the following centuries. It was only in the nineteenth century that any real progress was made and Lancellotti goes out of his way to highlight the role played in this by the Italian textile industry, and the results it had subsequently achieved in the relatively short span of time since the end of World War I. In these twenty years, in fact, Italy had become the leading European producer of rayon and second in the world only to the USA. After taking its initial steps from 1904 onwards, the Italian artificial fiber industry took off in 1919 when the SNIA, which had been founded in 1917 as an Italian-American Shipping Company, was reconfigured as an Industrial and Commercial Shipping Company. Gradually the SNIA acquired control of a number of textile companies and by 1929 it had become one of the major groups in the world production of artificial fibers. Indeed, in the years following World War I, Italian production of artificial fibers increased consistently and in 1929 reached its peak accounting for 16 percent of world production. In the early 1930s, silk production, which in Italy was an important tradition going back to the Renaissance, and artificial fibers represented the two main profitmaking entries in the national trade balance, the modern fiber and the traditional fabric each playing equally important roles. In this regard, the old Italian tradition of knitwear and stockings had an important role for the fashion industry and its developments in the 1930s. The economic historian Carlo Marco Belfanti affirms in fact that: At the end of WWI expansion in the hosiery branch of knitting was recommended and took on a definitive role with a prime position in the knitwear sector. According to an estimate from 1930, the Italian market consumed around 21 million dozen pairs of socks a year, of which half were for female consumption. [. . .] In the same period the material chiefly employed was cotton, a fibre from which about 70% of hosiery was made, while wool had seen a reduction in its use, as had natural silk. Instead artificial fibres like viscose, acetate and cuproammonia were gaining ground. [. . .] In the second half of the thirties, the three types of thread that were most widely employed in this branch of hosiery were rayon, bamberg and natural silk.11

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Belfanti also notes that in this phase, as well as in earlier phases of the evolution of the industry, the presence of an organized network of very small businesses completely eluded the view of government statisticians. If the propaganda surrounding artificial fibers stressed its modernity, that surrounding silk underlined its time-honoured qualities. La seta, the official publication of the Federazione Nazionale Fascista degli industriali della seta (National fascist organization of silk producers) published very detailed articles about the history of sericulture in Italian cities, their modes of organization and production. In “I primati degli antichi setaioli bolognesi” (The primacy of the –104–

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ancient Bolognese silk workers), for example, Cesare Marchesini illustrates the steps taken by the industry from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards when a series of decrees facilitated and boosted the production and quality of silk.12 With the autarchic phase, however, a new problem arose that threatened to compromise self-sufficiency in artificial fibers (Figures 12 and 13). Cellulose, an integral component for the production of fibers, was, in fact, largely imported, since conifers, from which the substance was extracted, were in short supply in Italy. To overcome this very real obstacle, imports of the product being all but –105–

Fashion under Fascism impossible, researchers at the SNIA-Viscosa company arrived at a brilliant solution. They discovered that an annual plant called canna gentile that grew naturally in some areas of Italy could replace the kind of cellulose that was produced in the northern European forests. In 1936, the SNIA acquired a field near the small village of Torre di Zuino, later renamed by Mussolini as Torviscosa, and located in the area between Venice and Trieste. Here the SNIA founded the Società agricola industriale per la produzione Italiana di cellulose (Industrial agricultural company for the Italian production of cellulose, SAIC). Chemical experiments, which intensified in Italy in the autarchic phase, had meant that since the late nineteenth century artificial fibers and textiles similar to those produced in nature had been developed in both Europe and the USA.13 It must be said, however, that the success of artificial fibers was above all a result of the drastic cultural changes that had taken and were taking place in Italy and elsewhere in the Western world. On account of the simplification of taste in styles, colors and decoration, the amount of time it took to produce a garment dropped significantly, as did its cost. This conferred an extra attractiveness synthetic fabrics that already had the cachet of being modern. Without doubt, they represented a key element in the democratization of fashion and in its revolutionary charge in terms of large-scale production and consumption. Just as importantly, artificial fibers also meant that countries like Italy and their national industries were no longer dependent on variables like geography, weather or political vicissitudes as they had been for the production of garments using natural textiles such as cotton, linen, silk and wool. Given these advantages, it is clear why the fascist regime acted quickly to control and promote to the full the textile, clothing and fashion industries. The interests and scopes of the regime, however, were not only domestically oriented. As we have already noted, the creation of a “national” style and taste also took on the form of an important political and cultural battle that inevitably intertwined with the sense of identity the nation had of itself both at home and as concerns the perception of Italy from abroad. It should not be forgotten that under fascism Italy still maintained strong economic and commercial ties with the USA and Europe, it being only with the outbreak of World War II that the ties lessened somewhat.14 Fascism had an eagle eye for how the rest of Europe and the USA regarded Italy and what the foreign response was to the steps taken by the regime in its domestic policy. Consequently, the regime was always quick to publicize any positive comments it received from its neighbors. In the world of fashion, for example, the regime seemed especially alert to the fact that components of fascist uniforms like the black shirt and the fez had become fashion items in France. In 1935, for example, France Vogue published an article on the bonnet du fascio, headgear that was very similar to the fez worn by members of the fascist militia. Vogue suggested wearing the fez with a deep green suit trimmed with astrakhan fur, leaving the jacket open in order to show off the black shirt.15 This French readaptation of items –106–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? drawn from fascist uniforms was a sign of the fascination exercised by the aesthetic side of fascism that then gripped, and still today occasionally grips, fashion designers.16 But more than this, the report on the incorporation of a recognizably fascist iconography into the world of French fashion also underlined the fact that the regime had succeeded in producing a strong international image of itself.17 Let us now go back to the most important public steps taken by the regime in the field of textiles. As a result of a national conference held in Forlì from December 11 to 13 1937 on National Textile Fibers, the regime decided to set up the Ente Tessile Nazionale (National textile body), to which it delegated the task of promoting and encouraging self-sufficiency – autarchy – in textile production. The main purpose of the Ente Tessile Nazionale, whose existence was ratified by a decree of April 1937, was to develop close collaborative ties to the several Corporazioni dei prodotti tessili e dell’abbigliamento (Corporations of textile products and clothing) and to coordinate its policy for the production of fibers with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. In addition, but no less importantly, the Ente Tessile, like the ENM, had the function of publicizing the use and care of the new textiles.18 It was during the Forlì conference that the ENM underlined the intimate link between the textile and the garment manufacture industry. The concern here was not only one of a domestic patriotic nature, but was also and above all a concern not to lose contact with the international centers of fashion. Indeed, such contact was overtly stressed and the two industries, according to the regime, were to provide “the creative inventiveness of Italian taste in the style of dress for which truly Italian products were to be used.”19 It goes without saying that state backing of the textile and garment industries was, in the long run and especially in the period after World War II, to become beneficial to both. Legislation regulating fashion under fascism played a key role in the involvement of the State and its ad hoc institutions in the production of clothes. Nevertheless, despite the emphasis on autarchy and things Italian, fashion houses never completely ceased to look for inspiration to Parisian fashion, as the designer Fernanda Gattinoni, who used to work for Casa Ventura with branches in Rome and Milan, has recalled.20 France remained a fixed reference point and Rina Pedrini, for example, one of the best-known pattern makers of the epoch retained an important role in the spread of French fashion in Italy. She, it is said, never missed a Parisian collection and over the years acquired at least 250 models that she reproduced and then sold to dressmakers.21 All the same, the regime was tenacious in its legislation designed to encourage the production and consumption of clothes of domestic provenance. A Decree of June 26, 1936, for example, authorized the institution of a certificate of guarantee for clothing and accessories approved by the Ente. A year later, in 1937, a label called Textorit came into being as the equivalent certificate of guarantee for textiles. In 1938, the Corporazione dell’abbigliamento (Clothing corporation) amended the 1936 law, including sanctions against transgressors, and added –107–

Fashion under Fascism another kind of certificate, this time known as the certificate of creation and given only to couture clothing that was particularly outstanding for its originality and italianità.22 Subsequently, a decree of April 20 1939, regulating the blending of imported fibers like cotton and wool, established that 20 percent be the maximum amount that could be blended with natural or non-autarchic fibers. Rayon, silk, hemp, national linen, ramia or ramì (china grass), produced in Piedmont and in Libya, broom and all other fibers except cotton were considered autarchic fibers and were to be used for blending in cotton manufacture, whereas for wool manufacture lanital, rayon, rayon-fiocco, ramia (china grass), broom as well as the rabbit and angora rabbit hair that gradually became used on a wide scale were designated as autarchic fibers.23 Lanital, described in Meano’s dictionary as the most national of fibers and whose licence was acquired by the SNIA-Viscosa, was a synthetic textile obtained from milk casein and invented by an engineer named Ferretti.24 Lanital, or the “mozzarella” fabric that was so difficult to iron and to sew, as Micol Fontana jokingly recalls, was a domestic rival to imported wool and for this reason was greatly celebrated, alongside the technological achievements of the SNIA-Viscosa, in the Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Poema non umano dei tecnicismi (Non-human poem of technicisms). In the course of 1937, in fact, the production of lanital skyrocketed from the 500 kg per day of the previous year to 7 million.25 The Forlì conference of 1937 was also the occasion for a huge exhibition of the autarchic textiles and included a competition whose first prize went to a fabric made of a black lanital and viscose embroidered relief.26 Along these lines, a great deal of effort went into the creation of alternative wools like cisalfa, which was a wool invented and put on the market by the Cisa-Viscosa company. Nationalist aims were also apparent in other fields of fashion. Parallel to experiments in technology, a plan was elaborated to promote the regional production of more traditional textiles. One of the products encouraged in this way was orbace, the rough and robust Sardinian wool that was widely used for fascist winter uniforms. An article published by La Nazione tells us, in fact: The Party Secretary, choosing orbace for the fascist winter uniform, has insisted that it be orbace made by Sardinian craftsmen [. . .] He has, therefore, gladly brought to our attention that the number of people working in this sector is 3,300, and of these about 1,500 work in the province of Nuoro where production has reached, as of today, 60% of that manufactured on the whole island.27

Still, in a context where tradition and innovation went hand in hand, rayon was considered the fabric par excellence of modernity, the “most modern of Italian textiles and the most Italian of modern textiles.”28 The rayon-fiocco, a short rayon fibre, first introduced in 1935 by the SNIA-Viscosa, was a new and more versatile –108–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? fabric that could be used in a much wider range of fabrics, creating new effects and brilliant colors. Often the judicious balance and mix of natural and artificial fibers offered advantages in the production of the fabric, sometimes even correcting or eliminating the disadvantages of natural fibers. In order to publicize rayon, the regime sponsored a rayon train, with shop windows like a department store, as well as a special truck equipped as a radio-cinema with mounted speakers broadcasting advertising tunes such as “Fili di sole” (Threads of the sun), a reference to the luminosity of the fabric.29 As well as the image of modernity that it transmitted, there were also more banal economic reasons behind the promotion of rayon. It was seen by the regime, first and foremost, replacement for expensive silk on the home market so that more of the latter could be destined for export and thus boost the national coffers. In the regime’s view, the production of artificial fibers was to complement that of natural fibers in the development of new uses and designs for fashion, accessories, furnishings, etc. This is the case with hemp, which was declared a national autarchic fiber whose high levels of production were singled out for praise in several of the regime’s publications. Hemp had never been used to any great extent for clothing, however, on account of its brittleness and unsuitability. Again pressed by the constraints of economic isolation, necessity being the mother of invention, efforts were made, mixing hemp and fiocco with other artificial fibers, to reduce the stiffness of the fabric and render it suitable for clothing. It had been, in fact, its toughness and durability that had made it ideal for luggage and accessories. Now that it had been rendered more versatile, the regime ordered an increase in the production of hemp and promoted an impressive campaign aimed at hemp stockpiling. This, in fact, became law with a November 8, 1936 decree, supervised by the Federcanapa, the organization in charge of organizing and directing the new sanction.30 Indeed, hemp held a prominent position in the Italian pavilion at the World Exhibition of Textiles that was held in New York in 1939, where the Federtessili exhibited all the Italian textiles then in production, from silk to rayon and including the vast range of hemp and its combinations with artificial fibers such as the canapafiocco.31 Interestingly, this Italian fabric became so successful that a canapa balilla appeared in the 1935 Parisian fashion shows.32 In a number of articles, the periodical Fibre Tessili, a publication whose ideological agenda was so close to the regime’s heart that its pages are peppered with reiterations of the fascist slogan of “Impero, razza, autarchia” (Empire, race, autarchy), emphasized the importance of the production of hemp. One of these featured a poster of pictures of several hemp stockpiles accompanied by an English text explaining the advantages for the increase in the quality of the fabric.33 Moreover, what this poster aimed at showing was the interest Italy had in promoting a better trading relationship with the USA. In fact, the articles spell out the need to bolster this relationship on occasion of the future World Exhibition, another –109–

Fashion under Fascism projected feather in the cap of fascist achievements, that was supposed to be held in Rome in 1942, but which was cancelled due to the outbreak of World War II. As a further sign of official sanction, the activities and work of the Federcanapa, as documented in a photographic report that was sent to fascist party headquarters, are highly praised by Secretary Starace in a telegram he sent to the “Presidente Federazioni Consorzi Difesa Canapicoltura” (President of the federation and consortia for the defence of hemp cultivation).34 Interestingly, it is not only the economic advantages to the production of hemp that are emphasized in specialist publications such as Fibre Tessili. One may be surprised, perhaps, at the seemingly inordinate amount of space that they give over to accounts of the workers’ leisure time activities that were organized by the local Dopolavoro associations, especially those of the workers in the key consortia in Bologna and Rovigo.35 In several Italian cities and regions in which textiles were produced, the Dopolavoro often organized exhibitions in conjunction with the silk and hemp associations. An important part of these exhibitions was the awarding of prizes to those massaie rurali and dopolavoristi who had distinguished themselves in the workplace. This was little more than a trick, of course, used by the regime to induce workers to think of themselves as protagonists in a great project rather than as exploited members of a subaltern class. In the field of textiles, attempts were also made to Italianize fashion. As well as the linguistic project of Italianizing the French terms commonly used, the process of disciplining the social body bore on the economic as well as the personal, extending its reach to all branches of culture, sport, leisure and fashion. It is for these reasons that Riccardo Del Giudice, President of the Confederazione fascista dei lavoratori e del commercio (Fascist confederation of workers and commerce), writing in the article “Autarchia tessile. Contributo dei lavoratori del commercio” (Textile self-sufficiency. Contribution of trade workers), expressed the belief that all the steps taken by the regime in the field of fashion led to, in his view, the “work of national reeducation and propaganda of italianità.”36 The author gives a list of the most important steps undertaken by the institutions set up by the regime following the Forli’ “Convegno delle fibre tessili nazionali e dell’impero” that, as mentioned already, spawned a massive plan to achieve Italy’s economic selfsufficiency. He states, in fact, that “we cannot explain to others, still less persuade them, if we do not have a culture suitable to our aim.”37 Similarly, several local and national exhibitions, like the one held at the Circo Massimo in Rome, the Mostra del tessile nazionale (Exhibition of national textiles), one of the biggest, promoted the production of domestic textiles. Inaugurated on November 18, 1937 and kept open until January 31, 1938, the exhibition was organized by Starace and saw the participation of all the associations and institutions connected to the textile industries. In the numerous stands regional handicrafts and autarchic textiles like rayon and lanital were exhibited. On its own stand, –110–

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the SNIA-Viscosa, as well as showing the stages of production of lanital, also organized a fashion show on December 21. Along with “The week of artificial fibers” in January 1938, this was one of the major events of the exhibition. In a populist and folkloric manner, the exhibition also emphasized the work of the massaie rurali. Given great prominence by the Giornale Luce newsreel, one stand mixed the modern and the traditional by showing a group of women weaving the new artificial yarns on their old-fashioned looms. One newsreel, in particular, produced in the spring of the same year as the Rome exhibition, covers the –111–

Fashion under Fascism National Exhibition of Clothing and Textile held in Turin, where the new fibers played a major role. Here, the viewer is immediately introduced to the SNIA pavilion where a group of young women dressed in floral print dresses weave autarchic yarns at their loom. To this, a shot of technicians wearing their white work uniform (such as that worn by medical doctors and scientists) is juxtaposed. The women are framed in the act of offering the visitors a sample of the yarns for them to feel the fiber, while at the same time answering any questions they might have.38 Even without considering the obvious juxtaposition of the “old” looms of the women and the SNIA technology, this particular newsreel is interesting on account of the iconography of one of its advertisements. In fact, if we focus only on the representation of women, we find a confirmation of the fascist ploy of combining once again tradition – represented by the women who weave, which is a sort of archetypical image of woman-like Penelope – women who are not wearing the folkloric dress typical of the massaie rurali, but light and modern dresses made out of the new fabric they are advertising, thus emphasizing their young and slender bodies. Nothing better than these images offers a more vivid illustration of the fascist ideology of incorporating tradition while at the same time striving for modernity. As we mentioned, as part of the events at the Circo Massimo exhibition, a fashion show was organized, and among its guests of honor were Dino Alfieri, the Minister for Popular Culture and the poet Marinetti who at the conclusion of the event read his “Poesia simultanea della moda italiana” (Simultaneous poem of Italian fashion), an aestheticized celebration of the “arbitrary whimsical and fantastic” character of fashion. As Cinzia Sartini Blum has noted, for Marinetti: “Anything goes, provided it is ‘made in Italy’ and is ‘favorable to woman’s feline softness’.”39 We might recall that Futurist writers and artists had been, since the beginning, involved in conceptualizing and redesigning male and female wardrobes. In 1920, Volt, the pseudonym of Vincenzo Fani, wrote the “Futurist Manifesto of Women’s Fashion.”40 Here, the author establishes an equivalent relationship between fashion, women and Futurism identified in: “Speed, novelty, courage of creation.” Volt stresses the need to reconsider the greyness and conservatism of some current styles. Instead of considering them to be of “good taste,” he labels them with “lack of originality, a withering of fantasy.” In the final paragraph of the manifesto, Volt underscores that the three-year war period had inevitably led to the lack of materials such as silk and leather. It is for these reasons that, looking forward to the use of new and innovative materials, he proclaims: The reign of silk in the history of female fashion must come to an end just as the reign of marble is now finished in architectural constructions. One hundred new revolutionary materials are rioting in the square, demanding to be admitted into the making of womanly clothes. We fling open wide the doors of the fashion ateliers to paper, cardboard, glass,

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Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? tinfoil, aluminum, ceramic, rubber, fish skin, burlap, oakum, hemp, gas, growing plants, and living animals. Every woman will be a walking synthesis of the universe.41

Apart from the overt exaggeration of this long list provided by Volt, some of the materials mentioned, such as cardboard, hemp and growing plants, would be used in the production of accessories and clothes in the period of autarchy. But if the Futurist concern with dress, here illustrated by Volt and Marinetti, was nothing new in the Italy of the 1930s, what was new was the nation’s foray into colonial practices. These too were to have repercussions in the field of fashion. In this respect an exhibition worth mentioning is the IX Mostra-Mercato di Firenze (Florence Trade Exhibition) held in the spring of 1939. Of interest here is the attention given to experiments in design and textiles that aimed at the creation of a new fashion for those Italians about to live in the newly acquired colonies of Ethiopia and Libya. To this end, a competition for “abbigliamento e arredamento coloniale” (colonial clothing and furnishings) was organized by the ENM in conjunction with the Federazione Nazionale Fascista degli Artigiani e le Piccole Industrie (National fascist federation of craftsmen and small companies). Acting as an indication of the cultural climate surrounding Italy’s colonial experience, the coverage given to the exhibition by fashion magazines of the period, like the popular literature of the time, bore witness to the presence of a new imaginary landscape that mingled with existing visions of both fantastic geographical lands and true and proper models of male and female identity.42 A specific analysis of this very important topic goes beyond the scope of the present study, but it certainly deserves much critical attention. However, what I would like to underline very briefly is the bearing this had on the creation of the fashion discourse and on style.43 Prior to the fascist invasion of Ethiopia, liberal Italy under the government of Francesco Crispi had already started colonial expansion. Indeed, Africa, since the second half of the nineteenth century had already entered, as historian Angelo Del Boca has pointed out, Italian homes in the forms of popular newspapers and magazines such as L’illustrazione italiana, L’esploratore, Il giornale popolare di viaggi and others.44 Fashion magazines such as Lidel and Bellezza contained a variety of articles and references to the colonies and their products. For instance, Mario Scaparro, author of L’artigianato tripolino, wrote an article for Lidel entitled “Tripolitania” in which he described the exotic landscapes epitomizing the “ fascist work” of the colonizers who administered the foreign cities and territories, civilizing them under the western hand.45 He goes on to describe two faces of Tripoli: the one, the “barbarian city,” the other the “Italian city,” where he explains that fascist officials sought to preserve its integrity especially as far as local and crafts products were concerned. Pictures of local Libyan craftsmanship illustrate the article – handbags, leather mules or “tarlik,” with embroidery in parchment. These were all –113–

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products that were becoming known then in Italy by way of exhibitions of “colonial art,” thereby finding their way onto the European market (Figure 15). In the article we also find detailed descriptions of ethnic female clothing, with a picture of a beautiful young woman encapsulating the mythic vision of exotic Arab beauty. Often, however, in this colonial context, the images of feminine models are accompanied by an age-old paternalistic stereotype that sees civilized men offering uncivilized women the gift of culture, good manners and progress. Parallel to this we can also note a subtle Western fascination with an unknown culture – that of the colonies – and the resulting fertile terrain that this offered for literary and ideological representations. The magazine, Lidel, for instance, is punctuated with a series of articles on “L’eterno femminino nero” (The eternal black feminine nature) and “La donna abbissina,” (The Abyssinian woman), accompanied by pictures of very attractive black women (Figure 16); or reports on Mudundu, a documentary shot in Somalia by newsreel journalists who worked for the La Stampa newspaper; or of another documentary called Abissinia that was edited by the Istituto coloniale fascista (Fascist colonial institute). In addition to this, articles on the Italian soldiers’ civilizing mission, advertisements for perfumes with mysterious names –114–

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such as Egizia, which was produced by the Ducale company in Parma – a city famous for fragrances – aimed to reinforce the power of exotic fascination. For example, in one advertisement for this perfume, we read: “Egizia . . . Charm of distant lands, fragrance of exquisite essences . . .” 46 Confirming this new trend towards the exotic, the journalist Coronedi, commenting on the aforementioned exhibition of female colonial clothing in the pages of Fibre Tessili, wrote: –115–

Fashion under Fascism In the hall of the shiny glass central pavilion one can observe the exhibition of female colonial clothing. Bright white colors predominate, but are filtered by an intense range of tonalities of various nuances, from the warm earth of Siena to pale and fresh yellow straw. Practicality and elegance, marked by harmonious Italian taste. A true colonial wardrobe: a theory of particularly elegantly designed trousers made more attractive by the softness of their Meharist appearance [. . .] Tight sport jackets, hemp safari jackets, and here and there an ample shawl (sciamma) with a hood as a reminder of the local costumes.47 (emphasis mine)

It is fascinating to see how the description of the design of these garments and accessories projects the style linking “elegance and ease” that has become the landmark of the so-called “Italian taste.”48 In the central pavilion of the same exhibition dedicated to Novità, Moda, Tessili, space was given to interesting experiments in shoes, for which Florence held an old tradition – as well as to textiles made out of straw, which was again a typical Florentine product. In addition, fabrics with sumptuous colors, geometrical prints or, in other cases, prints that take on the form of subtle arabesques recalling the interlace of Sienese fifteenth-century wrought iron were featured. New materials, then, were used creatively to develop new designs in clothing and accessories that mixed traditional Italian historical references with ethnic elements. Besides Ferragamo, Gucci also experimented with the use of new materials such as jute, linen and bamboo for his accessories.49 By way of concluding this panoramic view of textiles, I would like to draw attention to the Rassegna del tessile e dell’abbigliamento autarchico (Review of textiles and autarchic clothing), organized in Venice in 1941 by the ENM in conjunction with the Textile and Clothing Industries and inaugurated on August 20th in the midst of World War II.50 In his article on the exhibition published in Bellezza, Lucio Ridenti noted that Venice, a city that had hosted important art exhibitions on painting, sculpture, theatre and cinema, had never before welcomed “into its Olympus a goddess who has not yet been officially included among the Muses.” However, Venice’s debut as host city was made possible by the talent and inspiration of the architect, graphic artist and illustrator Erberto Carboni, whose surrealistic installations gave an artistic twist to the event.51 Indeed, the exhibition, held at the Palazzo Giustinian, one of the most beautiful buildings overlooking the Grand Canal, was very innovative both in design and installation, as well as for the use of new materials. Carboni designed surrealistic dummies – made by the Rosa company in Milan – made of cellophane, straw and crushed paper and newspaper pages (Figures 17 and 18). They were used to exhibit fabrics that were draped over the arms, hips or shoulders of the dummies, or to show off the clothes and accessories produced by various fashion houses and Italian artisans. The subtext of the whole exhibition, which focused on new textiles and their versatility in clothing,

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–117–

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accessories and manikins, was to press the case for an official increase in the number of products. In fact, in the space of a year the number of products approved by the Ente tessile italiano rose from 300 to 1000. –118–

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A high point of the Venice exhibition was how the fabrics were spectacularly displayed in the long arms of a surrealistic sculpture on whose wrists drapes of fabric fell as if they were curtains from the ceiling (Figure 19). Here, Carboni enacts a clever reinterpretation and reuse of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalì, –119–

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Max Ernst and Magritte, fashioning his fashion spectacle in the suggestive Venetian buildings and landscape. To complement the exhibition in the Palace galleries, more dummies were installed in the Loggia of Palazzo Giustinian overlooking the Chiesa della salute (Figure 20). They were arranged in such a way that they formed a group of three – evoking perhaps the three mythological Fates – that symbolized the entire exhibition and thus reworking on the classical mythology and sculpture. They are indeed unusual and the reaction they produce is one of both a keen sense of both modern design and of estrangement. Their faces, upper bodies and arms are covered with straw, their arms or hips draped with animal-like print fabric. From this one can also glimpse a hint of ethnicity, while at the same time perceiving a feeling of emptiness and silence. Their faces, especially, are emblematic of the absence of life their bodies exhibit. No attempt is made here to humanize their faces with the presence of recognizable features. The straw, in the illusory effect of the image, effaces their eyes and mouths, giving us the impression that they are almost shuttering off any possibility of speaking or seeing. In looking now at these pictures, one is struck by the juxtaposition of the metaphysics evoked by the dummies and the architecture of the city, while the emptiness of their gaze – miming that of statues – evokes an ambiguity and mystery similar to that of a De Chirico painting. Theirs is an unsettling presence, their covered faces hinting –120–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? perhaps at their refusal to countenance the tragedy of the war then advancing towards them.

Grandi Magazzini and Standardization Taking as her departure point a publicity hoarding of a Rome-based department store named Zingone, whose slogan read “Zingone veste tutta Roma” (Zingone dresses all of Rome), Irene Brin sarcastically comments on the proliferation of department stores and the sense of “modernity” associated with them: Rinascente, Upim, and Lafayette, and, all over the world, the department stores where at least in appearance you can find everything you need to live (and even to die, as the bigger stores also sold coffins, wreaths and any other funeral accessory) satisfied the noisy sudden and infantile tastes of a generation that believed in mass-produced products, in neurasthenia and in the idea of the fixed price.

Rather than praising the glittering “phantasmagoria” and the promise of happiness through the dream of goods the department stores offered to people from the rising consumer society, Brin looks sarcastically, and perhaps with a pinch of snobbery, at this jaunty “gift” of modernity. With an elitist eye, she seems to say goodbye to an individualism now undermined by a growing shift in the market towards mass-production. In this light, she goes on to describe how big American department stores were the cause of alienation, loneliness and a sense of anonymity in their female consumers. Of some of these, for example, who shopped in the clothing department of a New York department store, she writes: They often served themselves, alone without the presence of the assistants, following signposts, numbers, illuminated signs, and almost automatically chose the clothes they wanted to try, once more alone, in front of a mirror, brushing up against each other just like lonely women, lost in their own image, caught in the uncertainty between the emerald green and the cypress green jacket. Housewives flocked to the houseware section, intellectuals to the stationery section, where you could always find wonderful paper. Everyone felt anonymous, very modern and unhappy.52

Brin’s description gives a less glamorous image to what is seen as the dehumanizing experience of shopping in a big department store. As she notes, Italy, like other Western capitalist countries, recorded a gradual increase in the number of such stores like La Rinascente, which was founded in 1917, and a little later, UPIM, which was according to its publicity slogan, the “Store that sold at a single price.” In 1937, UPIM merged with La Rinascente to form the Rinascente-UPIM. Besides these, smaller scale department stores such as Zingone, which specialized –121–

Fashion under Fascism in ready-made male suits, were also on the increase. Their existence, despite the stringent economic situation, had a great impact on the organization and production of garment manufacture and consequently their role in the complex process of modernization and standardization of models of consumption was vital. In particular, the emergence of the department store signaled a move towards the production and consumption of ready to wear clothing, rather than the more traditional custom made clothes. Although other Western capitalist countries experienced similar changes in the production and marketing of ready-to-wear clothing, the situation in interwar Italy was considerably different due to the state of the garment industry itself and the contradictory politics of the ENM, one of whose tasks was that of taking a census of the number of dressmakers’ shops and fashion houses then in business in Italy. However, the figure the ENM came up with was, by all accounts, much too low.53 Skills like sewing and embroidery were, in those days, very common in all social classes, but especially for working class and lower middle class women. The longstanding and variegated traditions that had characterized the Italian peninsula also gave to the nation an incredible patrimony in craftsmanship that many women continued. As we have seen, the richness and immense variety of this patrimony was emphasized by Genoni and considered a plus in the search for a distinct Italian style, which Genoni for one did not see as inferior to French chic. Given this variety, it goes without saying that the quality of the made-to-measure dresses and suits varied a great deal, those garments made by the sartorie for the upper classes being of a higher standard than those made by more ordinary dressmakers’ and tailors’ shops for the middle and lower-middle classes. In addition, there was a high number and different levels of seamstresses. In many families, in fact, it was not uncommon to retain the services of an expensive dressmaker, sometimes called the “good one,” who made clothes for special occasions and a less skilled and cheaper one, often the housekeeper for those who could afford one, or alternatively a family member, who made more everyday clothing. In her autobiographical novel, Lessico famigliare (Family sayings), Natalia Ginzburg mentions that her family’s housekeeper, named Tersilla, was their sarta di casa (home dressmaker), but that when her sister Paola married the wealthy industrialist Olivetti she could afford now to have many more dresses, “wisely made by the sartorie,” the more expensive dressmakers’ shops.54 The way in which this kind of local economy was organized worked against the spread of mass-produced clothing. There were other reasons too that slowed down the popularity of the department store, not all of which can be explained by Italy’s industrial backwardness and lack of organization. The ready-to-wear industry, still in its infancy, came up against the obstacle represented by the common opinion, shared by males and females from across the class spectrum, that, rightly as it turned out, the quality of a made-to-measure garment was higher and conferred on the wearer a greater sense of individuality –122–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? and distinction. These concerns, which bear on the question of how best to keep up one’s bella figura in an age of mass-produced clothing, were increased by the fact that mass-produced garments did not fit their wearers in the same way as custommade ones. This was one of the most serious obstacles that the mass-produced clothing industry had to face. Indeed, for the new products to capture a market much more sophisticated techniques needed to be elaborated. However, very real as these concerns were, they did not, over time, prevent the development and spread of either the ready-to-wear industry or the phenomenon of the department store. A brief overview of the history of the Italian department store and its impact on fashion is now in order, and will give us a better understanding of how the process of standardization went ahead and offer further explanations as to why fascism wished to channel this process and use it to bolster its aim of nationalizing the masses and the social body. The first large-scale department store in Italy was established in Milan by the Bocconi Brothers, Ferdinando and Luigi, in 1865. The store went through several phases of development and expansion and in 1879 it took the name Aux Ville d’Italie, but a year later was renamed Alle città d’Italia.55 However, France could boast the first department store, called Bon Marché: it was founded by Boucicaut in Paris in 1852. This was followed later by a series of more up-market stores such as Louvre, Printemps and Samaritaine. Similarly in the USA, several department stores opened in the major urban centers of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit between 1860 and 1880.56 Although Italy was certainly behind in terms of industry and economy when compared to France and the USA, it is surprising to see that the nation’s first department store was established not much later than in the aforementioned countries, on the site of the former Grand Hotel in the heart of Milan. The enterprising Bocconi brothers produced ready-to-wear clothing, but also set up a mailorder catalogue business for the sale throughout Italy of their wide range of articles, from textile to house furnishings to babies’ layettes etc. An article about the history of Bocconi’s store was published in the in-house magazine La Famiglia Rinascente-UPIM in 1939 celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the store. Here, we find information about the number of people – more than 2000, including those working from home – who were employed both on the production and retail sides.57 We learn, for instance, that garments were made in Milan and Turin and then sent to the several Bocconi branches in Rome, Genoa and Trieste, as well as to those customers purchasing them from the mail catalogue. The innovation brought by the Bocconi brothers, which had been their trademark from the outset, even before they opened their grand emporium in 1879, was to retail ready-to-wear clothing, especially for males. This was quite unusual in the Italy of this time, the suits being made by low paid seamstresses with little eye for very high quality. Yet, despite the many changes in the economy and in society, and due to the inability –123–

Fashion under Fascism of the sons who inherited their fathers’ store, the Bocconi concern met hard times. In the years before 1917, the date in which La Rinascente acquired the Bocconi store, a department store along the lines of the American Woolworth’s, appealing to a middle- and lower-middle-class clientele, would probably have guaranteed much more commercial success. Those members of the middle classes with spending power were still far more interested in imitating the model offered by the aristocracy than in embracing the culture of mass-produced goods. The article about the Bocconi department store that appeared in the Famiglia Rinascente-UPIM focuses particularly on two of its achievements: first, how it played its part in the battle for Italian independence from French hegemony in terms of quality and elegance; and second, how it made available for the first time in Italy a wide range of items. The article brings together, on the one hand, the importance of the department store in a modern society and economy and, on the other, the continuity of a national tradition that was recovered and reinforced by stores like the Rinascente in the late 1930s. The patriotic intent of this latter, in fact, is evident in the choice of name for the store. It was not by chance that Senator Borletti, the president of the new society, requested that the diva poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, of whom he was a great admirer, come up with ideas for a new name for the former Alle città d’Italia. It was D’Annunzio, in fact, who chose the name Rinascente, and who was also the author of the motto “Italia nova impressa in ogni foggia” (New Italy impressed in every style) that publicized the newly renamed store. After several phases of ups and downs in the wake of the economic and political turmoil in the aftermath of World War I and with the advent of fascism, the Rinascente was affiliated to the UPIM department store. From the mid 1930s onwards, the new conglomerate opened several branches in all the most important Italian cities. UPIM, catering to people with lower spending power, soon became a popular shopping venue and when in 1934 the two companies finally merged UPIM numbered 25 branches throughout the nation while the Rinascente numbered only 5. It is evident that following the economic crisis of the early 1930s the new trend favoured a kind of store like UPIM that reached out to a wider market. This was a trend that was destined to last, as in 1940 the number of Rinascente branches was still 5, whereas UPIM was now present in 36 Italian cities and employed 6,000 people.58 Moreover, another department store, called Standard, that had been modeled on UPIM, was founded in 1931. Later in 1937, in the middle of the autarchic and xenophobic campaign, as the store was about to open a branch in the heart of Rome, Mussolini himself gave the order to Italianize the name of the store to Standa. Other smaller-scale department stores were opened in this period as well, such as the Zingone store in Rome, mentioned earlier, which published a biannual sales catalogue featuring various garment sketches for male, female and children’s clothing; Fratelli Romano which sold high quality fabrics, –124–

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but who also produced custom-made male suits, had branches in Rome and Naples. The Rinascente also published a biannual sales catalogue from which a vast variety of merchandise could be purchased, including women’s and men’s clothing, to outdoor clothes, sportswear, children’s clothing, accessories and stockings (Figures 21 and 22). At the same time, it advertised other articles that were not shown, such as sports items, and also explained payment processes and the rewards regular customers were entitled to: The savings book we offer our clients allows you to follow your expenditures in our stores and entitles you to a prize in the form of store products that can be obtained at the end of each year.”

Despite the proliferation of the department stores such as Standa and UPIM, which also opened branches in Libya and Ethiopia, and reached out to a clientele composed of the middle, lower and working classes, like the successful experience –125–

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Fashion under Fascism of Woolworth’s in the USA or Tietz in Germany, the Italian ready-to-wear industry was still significantly slow to take off. This fact was clearly stated in some of the papers published by the ENM in 1940, as we shall see later in the chapter. Although the habit of buying made-to-measure male and female clothing was widespread among Italian consumers, (and even today it has not completely disappeared), department stores such as UPIM and La Rinascente created a new demand for ready-made clothing. Further demand was added by the fascist emphasis on military and civil uniforms. In the colonial period following Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, “colonial” clothing for uniforms was produced in order to respond to the differences in climate and lifestyle in the African countries. For instance, a safari jacket for women was included among colonial dress and was to become an item that would be fashionable in both male and female wardrobes. It is enough to recall, however, that despite this growing demand, the production of ready-to-wear clothes was already one of the major industries in the USA by the mid 1920s.60

Cinegiornali on Fashion. Standardization, Stereotypes and Models of Femininity As has already been noted, the Cinegiornali represent a great illustration of the emphasis the fascist regime gave both to tradition and to modernity in all its manifestations of ideology, high and popular culture and formation of stereotypes. The Cinegiornali that documented the Biannual Exhibition of Fashion and Textile held in Turin always blended local craftsmanship and modern technology especially in the presentation of the autarchic fibers. Turin, however, was not the only city to host fashion exhibitions. Others took place at the evocative Villa D’Este on Lake Como, as well as on more mundane occasions or sports gatherings, such as the Mirafiori horse races we have seen in the film Contessa di Parma, in which fashion houses such as Fumach, Ventura, Villa, Biki, Mattè, Montorsi and Mingolini Guggenheim took part. The Luce newsreels were shown during film intermissions and were used to entertain as well as being a means of propaganda, especially in the autarchic phase. In fact, with the advent of sound films the newsreels’ voice-over constantly highlighted the italianità of the clothes on display. It is interesting to see in these documentaries the mix of different female types, from the femme fatale dressed in an evening gown, to the woman with the reassuring beauty of a mother and housewife, one of the images most strongly valorized by the regime. Along these lines, one newsreel documenting a fashion show held in Rome in the Confindustria Building – we see that it was built in Anno XVIII of the fascist era, which means 1940 (1922 + 18) – is particularly emblematic.60 On the catwalk we see two –128–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? mannequins who respond to opposite models of femininity: one, the slim idealization of women’s form, the other a far more reassuring, housewifelike image. It is fascinating to see how these two images of femininity become cultural stereotypes that resurface in a fashion show. Nevertheless, these kinds of stereotype nurtured – as we have seen – the cultural politics of fascism. The same can also be seen in another newsreel, this time about hairstyles. We first see a close up of women in a beauty salon, nervously smoking a cigarette while flipping through fashion magazines.61 The voice-over entreats the women to find inspiration for their new hairstyles at home, rather than searching for Parisian models since “thanks to autarchy we have shown the door to many exoticisms and have demonstrated that we can do better than others.” Once again, the close-ups of the models shown have a very housewifely flavour. However, as we have noted, exoticism was not completely absent in the media of the 1930s. Following the political alliances between Italy and Germany that culminated with the Pact of Steel of 1939, fascist periodicals, such as Interlandi’s Difesa della razza, contained references to increased economic, political and cultural relations with Nazi Germany. In this context, emphasis was also given to distinct types of beauty which despite their differences – the Italian, Mediterranean, dark-haired woman and the northern European blond--became both accepted and praised as the perfect models with which women were to identify. In some of the pictures we see how the Germanic blond type is incorporated into the classical Italian type. Indeed, in the vulgar anti-semitic propaganda that appeared after the inception of the racial laws in the late 1930s, certain physical features were highlighted as manifestations of the master race. If the German influences on Italian culture and sense of self were imposed from above by the regime, the influence exercised by the USA responded to a more genuine demand that came from Italians themselves. Indeed, the USA never ceased to be a strong influence on the Italian imagination by way of films, newsreels and Italian immigrants who kept close contact with their land of origin and supplied their compatriots with information about American styles and fashions. In fact, quite an impressive number of Luce newsreels show fashionable items and styles from the USA, England and France, prior to and even following the period of the sanctions. Some of these are quite entertaining, like the report from New York called “Influenza dell’aereoplano, del dirigibile e dell’automobile nei cappelli delle signore” (The influence of the airplane, the blimp and the automobile in ladies’ hats). Hats here take on the design and shape of machines, from cars to submarines, airplanes as well as skyscrapers. Here we find an illustration of the experiments going on in design and how modern objects inspired producers of hats and accessories. This was a fruitful relationship that resulted in many innovative designs, such as the case of Elsa Schiaparelli’s surrealistic and parodic experiments in cut, details, accessories and textile.62 –129–

Fashion under Fascism In another Luce newsreel entitled “Istantanee d’America” (Snapshots from America), we first see three models wearing different styles of hats, then a closeup of each model, the first wearing what is called a cuffia agreste (a rustic cap) decorated with embroidered flowers. The model wearing the headgear shows an incredible resemblance to the actress Rita Hayworth (then Rita Casino, before she underwent the cosmetic surgery that attenuated the visible signs of her Hispanic origins so that she would meet Hollywood standards of beauty). In this latter presentation about hats, we can also see female aviators, reinforcing the image of the dynamic woman who is also active in traditionally male spheres.63 The cinegiornali then, were used to entertain while sending messages about models of femininity in dress and in sport activities and leisure time. The newsreels from abroad, especially from the USA also reinforced the idea that the regime wished to emphasize that Italy was in step with one of the most modern capitalist countries. This was also one of the images emphasized in commercial films such as I Grandi magazzini.

I Grandi Magazzini by Mario Camerini as Popular Novel The film Grandi Magazzini, directed by Mario Camerini in 1939, offers an interesting illustration of the process of modernization translated into domestic terms. Set in a department store, Grandi Magazzini, a popular sentimental comedy, is the story of the love affair between a sales girl Lauretta (Assia Noris) and a delivery truck driver Bruno (Vittorio De Sica). Cinema in Italy had gradually come to represent an important component in the construction of a national popular culture, which, according to Gramsci, had been completely lacking in Italy, especially when compared to the situation in France and England, where popular novels appealing to a wide readership had existed at least since the nineteenth century. Yet, as Gramsci noted, if the Italian culture industry had never really produced goods that the lower classes could consume this was not due to any lack of demand, but to the way that culture in Italy had always been identified with high rather than popular culture. There certainly was, however, an appetite for popular culture among the Italian masses that had been met by recourse to translations of the popular novels published for the French market. Films like Grandi magazzini, and their obvious attraction for the popular classes, found a ready audience. The 1930s, in fact, were a period that saw a gradual broadening of the audience for films, especially women, many of whom became avid moviegoers and eager consumers of fiction and romance. The culture of consumption and its appeal in a modern city had been, indeed, the subject of The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola, which is set in a department store. As well as a symbol of the triumph of capitalist society in full bloom, the

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Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? novel is a very accurate survey of how mechanisms of power, money, gender relations and competition play themselves out in the context of one of the newly established department stores in the Paris of the Second Empire.64 Zola’s novel also allows us to see some very real differences between how Italian and French literature treated the theme of fashion. Italian literature had certainly never ignored fashion, as we have mentioned in the texts of the early modern period. Yet, the form and the tone of these texts remain elitist and inaccessible to a wider audience. The same can be said of texts of later centuries that deal with questions pertinent to fashion, such as Parini’s Il Giorno, where the protagonist, the giovin Signore, is portrayed as a spineless aristocrat who is also a fashion victim; and Giacomo Leopardi’s moral essay on fashion and death. Zola’s novel, however, is different and acts as a great example of a nationalpopular literary text able to capture in detail the spirit of Paris under the transformations enacted by Baron Haussmann and the parallel economic changes brought about by the birth of the big department stores, modelled in the novel on the history of the Bon Marché. By its very title, Camerini’s film calls attention to the proliferation of department stores in urban Italy and the subsequent birth of new models of consumption and lifestyle. In this way, and not only because it was a commercial success, it can be considered an example of a national-popular text and narrative. This characteristic is, indeed, confirmed by the publication of brochures, articles and cineromanzi that accompanied the film release. Indeed, the reference to the pieghevole (brochure) for Grandi Magazzini confirms how the producers of the film themselves saw the film as a kind of Romanzo popolare (Popular novel). In fact, in one of the descriptions of the film stills contained in the brochure we read: [This is] a film that as well as having all the strengths of refined humour also has a new take on human feelings. Grandi Magazzini has the delicacy of a 19th century novel and the agility of a modern story [. . .] It shows the tumbling of feelings and passions against the background of a large modern store. It is a drama within a comedy, a comedy that touches on the dramatic.65 (emphasis mine)

In addition, several contrasting factors render Camerini’s film interesting and worth analyzing for the purposes of the present study. First of all, the film was produced during the most intense phase of development of the department store and during that of the investments made by the regime in mass media, sport, cinema, radio and fashion, means through which it aimed at constructing and spreading a modern image of Italy both domestically and abroad. Although the relationship between Bruno and Lauretta seems to fit the traditional genre of a story with a happy ending, in which good triumphs over evil, and the corruption inside the community where they both work is exposed and punished, they are,

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Fashion under Fascism nonetheless, credible characters, easy for people to identify with, especially women, who were working in similar environments or for those aspiring to do so. In fact, the issues of the monthly magazine La Famiglia Rinascente-UPIM, whose readership was composed of the personnel working in the department stores, detail an impressive number of announcements about the number of marriages between the employees of the store. The message here is clear, of course: namely, that of creating the idea that working for a large department store was like belonging to a family or at least a close-knit community. It is interesting, in fact, to note how the title of the magazine hints at the double meaning of the word famiglia, referring both to the affiliation with the Rinascente-UPIM and to the paternalistic view according to which employees should consider the company as their family. The magazine goes on to report on the many social activities and gatherings of the store personnel as well as trips made to visit the house of the Duce in Predappio. The photographs we find in the magazine of salesgirls wearing black satin uniforms with white collar and cuffs are faithfully reproduced in Camerini’s film. But among the salesgirls of Grandi Magazzini there is a sharp contrast between two opposite models of young women: on the one hand Lauretta and her roommate Emilia, who maintain until the end their ethical integrity; and, on the other, the ruthless Anna who leads a life well beyond the financial means allowed her by shop girl salary. She leads, in fact, a glamorous life, and in order to do so she has no scruples about collaborating with Bertini, the head of personnel and becomes his accomplice in the fraudulent scheme to steal packages destined for customers from the store. With her extra income, Anna, who adopts diva-like attitudes, can afford a servant and imitate the upper-class lifestyle of the Hollywood actresses she has no doubt seen at the cinema. Another interesting detail in the configuration of the female characters Lauretta and Emilia establishes the vulnerability of both in moral and economic matters. Emilia, who has left her husband Maurizio, a window dresser, on account of his infidelity, does little to offer a reassuring picture of traditional family values. In fact, at the beginning of the film, when Bertini gives Emilia and Lauretta a ride back home, he is quick to let the young women know what he thinks about Emilia’s non-respectable or socially unacceptable marital situation. Since he is attracted to Lauretta, he uses this remark as an expedient in order to underline the vulnerability of the two young women living on their own. At the same time, he offers himself as a form of sneaky protection to Lauretta. Although confined to some of the interstices of the film, Grandi magazzini, nevertheless, hints at new models, and the connected problems, of daily life and the relative sexual freedom enjoyed by women living on their own and building their economic and personal independence. It was for the moral issues and class implications such as these that Grandi Magazzini did not meet the approval of either the Catholic Church or fascist officials.66 In fact, Camerini’s film, despite its commercial success, occasioned one –132–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? fascist Minister to say: “If you continue to want to make films like this about young people who eat very little, we’ll stop you making them.” In contrast to Lauretta and Emilia, Anna appears to be portrayed as the victim of US-influenced consumerist values. The opposition played out in female types in Camerini’s film is similar to that of Roberto Rossellini’s masterpiece Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City) by Pina, whose heroism is opposed to the cowardice of Marina, the Nazi collaborator. But differently from Open City, where Pina pays with her life, Lauretta’s integrity and honesty, in Camerini’s sentimental comedy, are finally rewarded with marriage and with the prize of furnishings for the apartment where she and Bruno are going to settle. In addition, the film brings to the viewers’ attention issues that are inherent to the social and personal sphere of women’s lives. On the one hand, Lauretta, the victim of the sexual harassment of Bertini, who is always eager to take advantage of any moments of emotional and economic weakness, does manage to fend off his advances; on the other, however, her vulnerability, which is contingent on her modest salary that does not ensure her complete independence, is often laid bare. Lauretta is very much an in-between character, independent enough to share an apartment with Emilia instead of living with her parents, but not independent enough to afford the luxury of the ski outfit she sees on display in the department store where she works. Indeed, there are hints in the film that Emilia needs a second job to make ends meet, as we sometimes see her at a sewing machine working on dresses she is copying from drawings hanging on the wall. Skiing is an important element in this film and the ski outfit Lauretta craves plays a key role in the narrative. Similarly to Contessa di Parma, sport plays a significant role in the development of the plot and its links to fashion and modernity in 1930s Italy are stressed. Skiing was encouraged by the regime and represented an important occasion for socialites, as Blasetti illustrates in setting the final scene of the fashion show at the resort of Sestrières. What Camerini exposes, however, is that skiing is a class-based activity that could be afforded only by a minority. A ski outfit cost, in fact, almost two-thirds of a salesgirl’s salary, which was about 300 Lire. Often in magazines, skiing is shown as the chic and trendy sport activity of the moment, offering the chance to imagine romantic escapes and to wear fashionable outfits. In La Famiglia Rinascente-UPIM, skiing is even praised as the sport of the intelligent since, unlike other sports practiced in warm weather, skiing can only be practiced in the cold when the prevailing human instinct is to stay indoors. The chance for a romantic escapade on the ski slopes is certainly in Anna’s mind when, within earshot of Lauretta, she invites Bruno to join her for a midnight run at a nearby resort. Jealous at Anna’s attempts to steal the man who has been attempting unsuccessfully to court her, Lauretta goes herself to the appointment, borrowing a ski outfit from the store with the intention of returning it the following –133–

Fashion under Fascism Monday. Lauretta’s romance with Bruno begins, in fact, when she meets him in the mountains where he is expecting Anna. Too tired, however, after an exhausting evening spent on the dance floor, she does not make it to the appointment, and turns out not to be really interested in Bruno at all. In the meantime, Lauretta has had the misfortune to tear the ski outfit she had borrowed and needs extra time to repair it before returning it. At the same time, a scandal erupts in the store around the theft of packages that were not delivered to their destination. Bertini, who will turn out to be the culprit and who has found out about Lauretta’s borrowing of the ski outfit, accuses her of being behind these thefts. Bruno is so shocked when he learns of Bertini’s suspicions that he breaks off his brief engagement with Lauretta. At the end, however, as can be imagined, Bruno uncovers the truth and exposes Bertini and Anna as the masterminds of the scheme. Justice is done, the guilty are punished and Bruno and Lauretta, naturally, can get married. Let me conclude with a few remarks about Camerini’s representation of class in this film. The contrast that gives structure to the entirety of the film is between the humility of working-class lives and the glamor of the goods on display in the department store and, incidentally, in the store executives’ spacious and art deco furnished offices. Any suggestion of fracture within the world of the store is warded off, however, by the good relationship that exists between Lauretta and Bruno and the top executives, something the film dwells on. Bertini, instead, who occupies a middle rank on the social ladder, is shown as a distasteful and corrupt individual out of line with the ethos of the store. We are led, then, toward a sympathetic and benevolent picture of the top executives, who at the end praise Bruno’s actions and promise, as a reward, to furnish his and Lauretta’s apartment. Middle figures like Bertini and his ally Anna are punished for their dishonesty, the final result being that the hierarchy within the firm is reinforced and unchallenged. In the end, the gesture the film makes towards a concern with class conflicts is diluted and the power relationship that governs interactions between managerial and working classes is untouched. Ultimately, the film seems to suggest, the working classes should be happy with what they have (even if it is only a borrowed ski outfit); or better, happy with what is given to them by the upper classes, rather than desiring to be or assimilate with that class, seduced perhaps by the attractive display and allure exercised by the commodities in the department store. Confirming this, one can note how the couples featured in the film are formed by social equals who share concerns common to people of the same class and who experience the same economic hardship.67 The story, for instance, would have had a completely different twist had Lauretta married a social superior, like the head of the company, as happens in Zola’s novel. Here, the humble Denise – the main character – conquers the heart of her employer and they marry. If Zola’s novel, on account of the integrity, ability, strength and good fortune of Denise, can be taken as a kind of female Bildungsroman, where the female protagonist embarks on an –134–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? upward trajectory that enables her to construct her personal and social identity and independence, the narrative of Grandi Magazzini traces instead a circular scheme. Denise’s independence does little to challenge to the social order and is functional to a capitalist system she makes no attempt to change, only to humanize. At the end of Camerini’s film we are left with two sets of couples: one formed by Bruno and Lauretta; the other by Emilia, who has discovered she is pregnant, and Maurizio, with whom she has reunited. We see them standing outside one of the shop windows that Maurizio has created for the coming Christmas holiday, staring at a doll who dances in a circular fashion like a ballerina in a music box, surrounded by other toys and babies’ layettes, a further reference to Emilia’s pregnancy. They all admire Maurizio’s presentation in the shop window as if they were curious passers-by or potential customers. In these final images, the working classes seem to take part, if only figuratively with their gaze, in the enjoyment of the luxurious commodities that lie well beyond the range of their pockets. What characterizes Camerini’s film is its sharp narrative sensibility and its delicate eye that takes in the new role played by advertising and window dressing in the developing social and cultural space that was the Italy of the 1930s. Shop windows and the art of decoration became important advertising techniques. In fact, Maurizio, a window dresser who also makes dummies, is adamant that his work must be considered art. In the Ladies’ Paradise, special emphasis is given to the goods on display in the various departments of the grand emporium as a sign of modernity and the changes taking place in retail that were transforming the appearances of cities. Zola, in fact, seems mesmerized by this new world and lingers over long and detailed descriptions of the various techniques used to arrange the goods and display them so that they have maximum attraction for the customers. He dwells on how vibrant silk colors are put on display and on the more mundane but commercially smart practice, known today as “loss leaders,” of placing bargains near the entrance to the store in the hope of inducing customers to enter and buy other goods they may not have planned to buy, this time at regular price. Zola’s descriptions of the goods, especially those related to fabrics, are highly erotic and stress the power of attraction these commodities have on potential customers (not to mention French novelists). But, under fascism, shop windows did not only put commodities on display, they also put the regime and the Duce on display, thus reinforcing the cult of Mussolini as well as capitalism (Figures 24, 25 and 26).69

The National Conference on “Clothing and Autarchy,” Turin, June 1940 How effective was the fascist legislation on fashion? How did the components forming the world of Italian fashion, the manufacturers of fabrics, accessories and –135–

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male and female ready-to-wear, designers, etc. respond to the policies and steps taken by the ENM? By way of a conclusion let me turn to some of the material, published by the official ENM organ in April, 1940, that emanated from a planned series of national conferences organized by the Congresso Nazionale Abbigliamento e Autarchia (National congress of clothing and autarchy) that were scheduled to be held in Turin in June of 1940. The series of conferences, which included the apparel, fur and accessories, hats, stockings, shoes, gloves and textiles used for furnishing and interior decoration sectors, never took place on account of the outbreak of World War II. However, almost 500 pages of material containing the papers and reports that had already been prepared, but never delivered, by a vast number of people working in the fashion and handicraft industries were sent in advance and have been presented as proofs. This is material of great help in forming an idea of the effects the ENM policies had on the fashion industry.69 A constant theme of the papers is the creativity and industriousness of individual clothing and accessory designers, many of whose products, such as shoes, bags, gloves and buttons made out of a new material derived from bark, were –136–

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exported.70 In his paper, Salvatore Ferragamo affirmed that even in the midst of the economic sanctions against Italy he had managed, nevertheless, to sell his shoes to all the most important department stores in the USA, Great Britain and France.71 Ferragamo, in fact, had already been able to establish his landmark designs in the Hollywood market by the 1930s and significantly expanded his business in the following years, but not, it transpires, thanks necessarily to the existence of the ENM. Further testimony along these lines is offered by the aristocrat Gabriella De Bosdari Di Robilant from “GabriellaSport” in Milan.72 She points out that when she took part in the 1939 New York World Exhibition of Textile, she was approached by the Fox company to make a film of her creations that was shown in 500 American movie theaters. Not surprisingly, following this publicity, her creations were well received and she was contracted to sell her models so that they could be copied abroad with the use of Italian fabric, this being a common practice at that time. However, she complains of the ENM’s lack of effectiveness in coordinating campaigns to promote Italian fashion abroad, which was the major brief of the –137–

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institution. In fact, a recurrent problem was one of timing. Collections were presented in the season for which they were intended – winter clothes in winter, for example – not allowing enough time for the production and launch of the models outside Italy. In other words, De Bosdari di Robillant, on the one hand, stresses the success and quality of Italian creations while, on the other, she points out that the policies of the ENM lacked sufficient knowledge and understanding of foreign markets, were poorly organized and did little to sustain new ideas and creativity. 73 Out of other papers came the request, made by several industrialists, for better organization within the garment industry, as well as more specific complaints. Some of those that came to the fore were linked, on the one hand, to the need for better equipment and machines, and on the other, for more skilled workers in order to ensure improvements in the quality and fit of the ready-to-wear garments, both for domestic consumption and export. In this sector, for instance, Austrian and German competition had been keen since they had – Austria especially – acquired great expertise in the field since the beginning of the twentieth century with the creative activities of the Wiener Werkstaette.74 –138–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? In April 1940, prior to the Turin conferences, the ENM official bulletin Rassegna dell’Ente Nazionale della moda underlined the interests of the Corporazione dell’abbigliamento, in developing strategies to promote and develop the mass-produced goods, especially the technology necessary for measuring garments.75 The article notes how the new model of life in fascist Italy and the demand for clothing that came with it would stimulate solutions to the technical problem with which the industry was beset: But the modern life of the Italian people, with its dynamism, its sports activity, with the inclusion of huge masses of people into the regime’s bodies, with the growing adoption of uniforms (young people’s organizations, civil servants etc.), will provide for the mass produced industry a great future [. . .] One of the most important problems on which depends improvement in mass produced goods is the study of measurements.76

Again in response to what was evidently a deeply felt problem, other papers call for the setting up of a team of specialists – hygienists, industrialists, clothing retailers, dummy manufacturers – whose task it was to come up with the measurements of the “typical conformation of the individual of the Italic race.”77 During the 1930s, despite problems in organization and backwardness in machines, technology and well-trained technicians, the basis was nonetheless set for the later developments in the Italian ready-to-wear industry of the post-war years.78 Indeed, some of the companies present at the congress expanded greatly in the post-fascist period and became very successful, most notably the Facis company, a male readyto-wear factory that by the outbreak of World War II was the largest manufacturer of men’s and boys’ suits.79 Facis, an acronym for Fabbrica abiti confezionati in serie (Factory for mass-produced clothes), was owned by the Rivetti family who in the 1930s in conjunction with the Levi company formed the powerful GFT group.80 Both families had traded for some time in textiles, Levi in Turin since 1860, while Rivetti had set up a textile mill near Biella. Alessandro Rivetti, in his paper presented at the Turin conference reported on how industrialists’ attempts to export to international markets. He mentions that Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, the Middle East as well as Central and South America and Australia, were rendered impossible by the sanctions imposed upon Italy. In this respect, if the problems posed by technical lacunae regarding the production of massproduced garments held industrialists back, so too did the international political situation that resulted from fascist politics. A further voice in the debate on the production of, this time, male clothing was offered by Francesco Rosso, director of the Tescosa company from Turin. His paper, “Lo sviluppo della confezione maschile in serie in Italia,” (The development of male mass-produced clothes in Italy) called attention to the term mass-produced, pointing out that in order to evoke a better quality product, it could usefully be changed to Confezione pronta –139–

Fashion under Fascism (ready clothes, the Italian translation of ready-to-wear). What concerned him was the fear that Italians would respond badly to uniformity. He states, in fact, that in order to appeal to the Italian consumer a successful ready-to-wear garment must not display as high a degree of uniformity as the term mass-produced suggested.81 Rosso went on to stress the fact that, as a way of resisting overly standardized clothes, Italians have always preferred to add a touch of personal style. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the variety of styles, quality and color of the fabrics out of which Italian ready-to-wear garments were made set the industry apart from its competitors. Rosso concluded by hoping that the technical problems concerning measurement and execution would soon be overcome as he was convinced the Italian ready-to-wear industry’s future would be guaranteed by increasing the quality and fit of the garments it produced. Umberto Turba from Milan dealt, instead, with the development of women’s mass-produced garments. He stated that an interest on the part of industrialists in the production of women’s clothing had survived all the stages that the industry had gone through, beginning with its economic development in the 1920s, through the depression of 1928–30, and on to the economic recovery of the autarchic years.82 Turba noted, in fact, that according to the latest ENM census of 1936, of the 2000 industries producing female and male mass-produced clothes 60 percent were for women’s and girls clothes. Furthermore, he adds that, as confirmation of this development, about twenty German ready-to-wear companies were about to come back to the Italian market, facilitated as they were by the Italian and German political alliance. Further problems emerging from the Turin papers concern the unclear status between high fashion and ready-to-wear, not to mention issues regarding the creation of a national fashion. In this context, the paper by Montano, the head of Casa Ventura, one of the most important fashion houses and, as we have seen in chapter 4, active in the campaign for the creation of an Italian fashion, is of interest. Montano draws attention to several issues that are relevant for the purposes of this study. He points out, for example, important problems regarding promotional campaigns for Italian fashion. These, of course, were very costly and required thorough knowledge of the foreign market in question. Indeed, Montano notes how Ferragamo stood out among designers as an individual who had been able to market his genial creativity abroad, capitalizing on his prior working experience in the USA. Montano, however, also raised more specific questions. First, he notes that the institution of the certificate of guarantee that had been established by the ENM for the valorization and acknowledgement of Italian garments was ineffective as almost all the fashion houses had received the acknowledgement, thus creating confusion about what exactly was being guaranteed. Following on from this, Montano adds that the new certificate, the marca d’oro (Golden seal), which in theory was supposed to overcome the confusion, had only just been imple–140–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? mented, but given out just as widely, making it difficult to evaluate the results. Although Montano praised the fact that fashion had become a national concern and a chapter in State legislation, he complained about the authorities’ lack of clear intent and ideas as regards the actual launch of Italian fashion. Indeed, he maintains that the existence of national fashion is contingent not so much on the existence of a domestic market as on the existence of an international one. A national fashion, he says, that is worth its salt cannot be confined for its influences and markets to the closed-in confines of national borders, as it stood in the 1940s. The domestic fashion industry, continued Montano, could not be called a truly national fashion industry because it lacked the necessary strength to project itself abroad. Going back to a point that had been made before him, he stressed the fact that Italy, unlike France, did not have a center that fostered the success of its couture by concentrating all its energies. In other words, Montano’s complaint is that in the fashion field Italy was still lacking a cohesive sense of cultural and economic identity that would mark its exports as unique. He says: The reasons why up until today no nation has succeeded in pulling away from that world, artistic, political and industrial center that made Paris the mantle of fashion are well known. In Italy, we do not have a single center where all these qualities could be united under one roof. The characteristics of Rome, Florence, Milan and Turin, all brought together, sum up the essential qualities for the formation and launch of fashion. But perhaps it is to be feared, given the speed and facility of communications, the artistic, political and worldly qualities of Rome, the artistic qualities of Florence, the industrial ones of Milan and the traditional ones of Turin, that even separated they cannot form the center that is necessary for the solution of the problem.

According to Montano, then, the marked differences among the Italian cities and their individuality constitute yet another obstacle to the launch of Italian fashion abroad that needed to be overcome in order to achieve what Paris had done for France. Underlying Montano’s remarks is his awareness of the difference in the traditions of clothing manufacturing from one Italian region to another and the different consumption habits and tastes that could never be assimilated to a single national model, even in fascist Italy.83 Nevertheless, if on the one hand Montano was right to highlight the different cultural identities of Italian cities and the entrapment represented by fascist bureaucracy, on the other, he was wrong about his prediction for the future and post-fascist development of Italian fashion. Indeed, the diversity and lack of a centralized Paris-like fashion industry was the enabling condition for the originality and breath of fresh air that Italian fashion brought with it, especially to the American market. Diversity was, in fact, Italy’s strength and not its weakness. However, Montano’s speech confirms the important point that fascism, despite its state-controlled initiatives and institutions, never –141–

Fashion under Fascism homogenized and standardized the cultural and artistic differences that had characterized the history and identity of the Italian peninsula. Another important strand emerging from the papers presented at the Turin conference is the link between fashion, culture and art, raised in speeches by artists who had expertise in dress design and who had had experience in France, such as Marcello Dudovich. In his paper, he first praises the textile industry for the quality and innovative design it had achieved with the autarchic fabrics, underlining that the original prints for these had been the result of collaboration with artists. Then, however, in more critical key, he goes on to lambaste the overall lack of innovative models, which is the result, he suggests, of the Italian fashion houses’ reluctance to follow the lead of the textile companies and collaborate with artists. Moreover, he denounced the lack of effective cooperation between tailors and artists in the creation of new styles, pointing out the paradoxical situation according to which fashion designers in Italy imitated French models that had often been drawn by Italian artists. Dudovich also points out the importance of tailoring the creation of garments to the needs and tastes of Italian women, of their cultures, bodies and lifestyles. Similar problems and issues emerge in the papers prepared by the artists Ester Sormani and Brunetta Mateldi. Both of them, however, stress that the production of a truly original style is possible on account of the tremendous initiative and creativity of the people working at all levels in the fashion industry. Indeed, it seems at times that the subtext of many of the papers is that of suggesting that ENM policies had had the undesired and undesirable effect of dispersing creative energies rather than focusing them into a united effort. What emerges is the paradoxical situation of the bureaucracy and ineptitude of the ENM, together with the empty nationalistic rhetoric that marked its founding, actually hindering the fashion industry and preventing it from developing and increasing production. In conclusion, what emerges from a careful analysis of these papers enables us, above all, to pinpoint and appreciate the creativity of those working in the field of Italian fashion under fascism. As a community, they were well aware of the importance of their role in the Italian economy and in the creation and projection of an image and culture associated with the nation. However, apart from the nationalistic rhetoric contained in some of the speeches, the Conference gives good reason to believe that the work of the ENM was neither effective nor timely, nor did it present a clear idea of what Italian fashion was or could be. Indeed, one of the structural and insoluble problems was that fascism tried – through fashion – to package and mold an imposed unified image of the Italian social body, as it had done in other instances. Despite the political stress put on dress, on the many kinds of military and civil uniforms, on the black shirt (the constant trademark of fascism) and on fashion in general, the regime did little to achieve a stronger sense of national identity. There were areas, especially those more isolated and rural –142–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? ones, where the strong divisions and hierarchy in social class could never be overcome by the populism of Mussolini, where his and the injunctions of the regime in general, delivered in the squares of Italy, fell on deaf ears. The project of nationalizing fashion failed, I suggest, for two reasons: neither, both workers in the industry nor consumers responded to the regime’s diktats and continued to organize themselves independently and according to the time-honored codes of the local economy and of craftsmanship traditions; second, the stasis resulting from rigid model that the regime sought to impose in dress was at loggerheads with the notion of change that is the basic condition in which fashion exists. This is very clearly expressed in the artists’ papers – Dudovich’s and Sormani’s above all – when they say that in order to create new models they constantly need the nourishment of new ideas and inspiration. This implies a movement of openness towards other cultures and artistic experiments and their readaptation to an original design. It goes without saying that here the artists mean that neither the officially sanctioned uniforms nor Italian regional costumes, nor even the Renaissance, could be the only sources of inspiration for fashion and that a culture shuttered in by its nationalistic, totalitarian and autarchic modes was anathema to the creativity and change inherent in fashion. In the 1930s, fascism saw the great potential fashion had in terms of image, art and what it could contribute to the economy. Opportunistically, the regime used the industry to further its ideological picture of what Italy and Italians should be. However, fascism did little that was really original, since its strategies for fashion grew out of the ferment and creativity, as well as some of the concrete proposals, that had already emerged in pre-fascist Italy. The success of Italian fashion in the fascist years, especially in the design and production of its beautiful fabrics, decorations and accessories, had little to do with the originality of fascist proposals, and everything to do with the creativity of the people working in the fashion industry and with the social, cultural and economic changes that had taken and were taking place all over the world. Italy’s relative isolation, its autarchic phase and the tragic war years had the effect of stimulating the imagination of designers to use and combine cheap, previously unused material such as cork, paper, cellophane, straw, etc. for their creations. Even the emergency conditions imposed by Italy’s entry into World War II did little to dull the creativity that Italian designers displayed. In the summer of 1943, for example, the ENM published a special issue of its “Documenti,” dedicated to the relationship between fashion and cinema. The issue is a highly sophisticated volume that contains articles on Cinecittà, the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia, and on the importance of the creation of costumes and fashion for film.84 Rich in illustrations, the book treats readers to gorgeous black and white and color pictures, as well as swatches of fabrics. One photograph of a black-and-white fabric, inspired by the alphabet and manufactured by the Milan-based Lucchini –143–

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company, is worth particular mention. The caption accompanying the photograph suggests that the beautiful effect of the fabric and the tight play of the design “can replace those polka dot design textiles, whose uniformity is beginning to be tiresome” (Figure 27). Even in the midst of war, although with great difficulty, the fashion industry still managed to manufacture new designs that counteracted what had come to be seen as the boring uniformity of the polka dots fabric. Similarly, in wartime fashion magazines continued to publicize new collections and offer tips on style. In La famiglia Rinascente-UPIM, Rina Simonetta urged women not to give up on their concern for the bella figura and seek out ways to give their old outfits a fresh look. During the war, due to difficulties in finding and buying fabric, dressmakers and fashion advertisements in magazines such as this encouraged a fashion of transformation, according to which dresses and coats could be worn –144–

Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? normally or inside out, several tops could be combined with the same suit, and details such as pockets and accessories could be added.85 The lack of material during the war did not seem to stymie the creativity of either designers or consumers. In fact, new styles were produced, using any material that was available, even the fabric of a parachute that had been abandoned in a field, as Giorgio Armani recalls his mother doing in order to sew raincoats. “La vita continua” (Life must go on), this simple motto, which also happens to be the title of the opening article of the ENM volume “Moda e Cinema,” symbolizes the resilience of people working in the field of fashion. Even in a country occupied by two foreign armies and in which US forces fought alongside Italian partisans against the Nazis and their Italian allies from Mussolini’s puppet regime, the fashion industry and individual designers were never so completely paralyzed by the tragic events as to give up on their profession, their art and their creativity. For example, some couture houses near Milan organized fashion shows in the countryside in places that could be reached only by boats; one of Italy’s leading post-war fashion houses, that of the Fontana Sisters, established itself in Rome in 1944, as soon as the Germans had vacated the aristocratic building they had been occupying. Micol Fontana remembers that she acquired the fabric she needed from Jewish retailers who had hidden their goods in their basements in exchange for the potatoes and other vegetables she received from her parents’ farm outside Rome. Here, she recalls, they also helped to hide a Jewish refugee. These are only some of the many examples that show the industriousness, creativity and resilience of the people working in the different branches of fashion and how, despite adverse circumstances, they and their forerunners in the 1920s and 1930s were able to prepare the terrain and premises for the future success of Italian fashion. Although Italian fashion enjoyed international prestige in the period after World War II, it did so because the terrain for its growth had been thoroughly prepared in the previous decades, starting at least with Rosa Genoni who, in the pre-fascist liberal period, laid many of the foundations for the post-war boom. It was this creativity and the nation’s long tradition in fine craftsmanship that would bring the success of the “Italian Look.” This book has been an attempt to describe and analyze the creativity inherent in the entirety of Italian fashion from the perspective of a key period in Italy’s history. This, however, is but one chapter in the long and intricate history of Italian fashion, many of which are yet to be written.

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Conclusion

–6– Conclusion Beyond the Black Shirt: Resisting the Code By way of conclusion, I would like to recall a scene from Federico Fellini’s Amarcord. Here the character of Titta’s father is cautiously kept at home by his wife while a massive gathering of town citizens celebrates a visit by the Duce. The wife fears that had her husband, an anti-fascist, gone to the gathering, as he desired, he would not have resisted the temptation of publicly manifesting his political allegiance and would have got into trouble with the authorities, something which happens anyway. There is a small detail in this scene that is worthy of attention: as a last precaution, the wife undoes the black neckerchief her husband is wearing, a distinctive bohemian tract and a vestimentary sign adopted by anarchists. This small detail not only tells us something of the communicative charge inherent in clothing, it also shows us that during fascism ways existed to express opposition to the appearances and images codified by the fascist regime. Titta’s father’s anti-fascism and his almost unnoticeable gestures that belong to the realm of the everyday is the kind of antifascism that the historian Giovanni De Luna has called “existential anti-fascism,” which he distinguishes from organized or “political” anti-fascism.1 An appreciation of this kind of resistance to the uniformity of the regime, of opposition to the regime’s attempts to manipulate the daily gestures and modes of behavior of Italian citizens has now become a vital part of the more complex picture that has emerged from recent scholarship on fascist dictatorship. In this respect, the pioneering work of social and oral historian Luisa Passerini on the Turin working class’s experience of fascism has been emblematic in shedding new light on the question of the degree to which the fascist regime enjoyed consensus among working-class communities. Passerini is but one of many scholars whose work has, to quote from Forgacs, focused on how “horizontal networks of communication operated within [. . .] communities and how these conflicted or intersected and interacted with the vertical communications network controlled by the regime.”2 Indeed, as I hope to have shown in this study, fashion’s dual and at times coexistent twin dimension of structure and agency, of practice and discourse has enabled us to gain further understanding of the complexity as well as the contradictions

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Fashion under Fascism within the fascist cultural politics present in the regime’s attempt, which combined aesthetics and nationalism, to discipline the social body. This was a project pursued via the vertical system of mass media, press, cinema, newsreel, fashion shows, publication of specialized periodicals, sport, etc., all of which were recruited with the aim of manipulating and fascistizing Italian society. Fashion is a particularly illuminating window through which to observe mechanisms both of social control and resistance to that control. As a system projecting images and identities, fashion achieves two aims: first, it provides a visible narration of a given epoch; and second, it illustrates the contradictions of class and gender conflicts. Through fashion we can identify the social and class agendas that go towards the shaping of political environments at both the individual and collective levels. From the perspective of communication and by way of the opportunity it offers individuals to play different roles, fashion offers a forum in which imagination and desire have their say in the creation of one’s self. It is in the interplay of these subtle mechanisms that it is possible to see not only how the regime used fashion to convey its multifaceted ideology, but also how fashion represented a platform for opposition to that ideology. Manners in everyday conversation and in the dress and gestures of the body are associated with the evolution of types and appearances that always reveal social and political relations in the dialectics between being and seeming. In this way, the regime understood the importance of investing in fashion not only for its economic force in a period of crisis such as the autarchic phase, but also for its potential to convey ideology in the most apparently innocent way. Hence it is possible to see how the images, stereotypes and mythologies that define the so-called national character take shape in different media and so influence individuals’ consciousness and expectations, becoming what Antonio Gramsci calls senso comune (common sense). Under fascism, such a process invested various components and institutions of the arts and culture. In the case of fashion, exemplary illustrations of this project to invent a national self are to be found, first, in Cesare Meano’s Commentario-Dizionario della moda, and, second, in the recourse fascism made to the myths of romanità or the Renaissance. Fashion, then, has a twofold function, being at one and the same time both system and process, institution and individual act. It is by studying fashion through such mechanisms that we can separate out what Barthes called the structure from the event, and the fashion system – the vestimentary codes of a given society – from the personal use of clothing and forms of agency. In this way, fashion can also open up a space for new negotiations and create the conditions necessary for the mobility of “hegemonic blocs.” The two components of conformism and differentiation, identified by Simmel as agents at work at one at the same time in the fashion system, become in Barthes’ theory what he calls “dressing,” which corresponds, on the one hand to the individual act and so to “parole” or speech to use –148–

Conclusion the Saussurean taxonomy, and, on the other, to the individual act “langue,” to norms codified by the hegemonic group. Two opposed forces – the one normative and sanctioned by society; the other individual and potentially transgressive – always work side by side within the fashion system and discourse. To approach fashion from such a perspective, as I have sought to do here, allows us greater purchase on the many nuances and manifestations that may not immediately be recognized as political in which subjectivities define their resistance to the code, as in the case of our example of Titta’s father. But there have been other positive results stemming from such an approach. One has been a nonpaternalistic attention towards youth subcultures and new forms of politics where subjectivities reclaim and re-invent their identities and bodies, using fashion as a form of self-expression and inscription of a narrative that does not necessarily coincide with the system. Another field in which fashion has taken on more nuanced connotations is Women’s Studies. Here, the 1980s represented a turning point in feminism, which had at first looked suspiciously at fashion, seeing it solely as a system of oppression of women, before shifting both the direction of its field of enquiry and its political agenda. Oral history too, as well as offering innovative ways of retracing women’s voices in past epochs, has led to the elaboration of new feminisms and has also helped shed light on different modes of female agency and women’s roles in the family, workplace and society. Analysis of the representation and the construction of femininity and its interrelations with class and race has become gradually more sophisticated and issues concerning the construction of a gendered identity that is precarious and not fixed once and for all have been broached. As a result, women have gained a “third eye” in the way that they looked at themselves as subjects as well as objects of representation of male/female desire. By “third eye” I mean a supplementary and sophisticated ability, shorn of moralism and paternalism, to gain awareness of one’s own subjectivity, agency and sexuality and to look at oneself with a gaze that lies halfway between the internal and the external. In all these processes of social and sexual identity formation, fashion has played a key role. It has exhibited the folds, stitches and nuances of the subject in formation, or in process as Julia Kristeva would call it. It is for reasons such as these that fashion needs to be seen in its double function of structure and agency. Failing to do this, we would overlook a considerable part of the multifaceted history of women and their role as producers, consumers, workers and artists. Indeed, feminist scholars of fashion have provided a richer picture of female culture and culture in general, and have helped to define agency, acts of resistance, sexual pleasure and political aesthetics in women’s gestures that would otherwise have passed unrecorded.3 Their studies illustrate that, throughout history, women belonging to different classes and ethnic groups have not been the passive recipients of a rigid structure of codes imposed from above, as they have often been depicted. Rather, they have been able to use fashion in many different ways in –149–

Fashion under Fascism order to forge and recount their own space and language, albeit within the constraints of a given structure. As fashion is not only an elite phenomenon, space potentially exists for emerging subjectivities to attempt not only to imitate and emulate upper-class styles (as Simmel illustrates in his trickle-down theory), but also to assert their own culture and sense of self through style and dress. Women during fascism, were able to carve out and even invent a space in the world of fashion, in its production by becoming prominent fashion designers such as Fernanda Gattinoni, Biki and Micol Fontana; and also in their writing for fashion magazines, in which they articulated their opposition and resistance to the fascist codes of female representation, as in the cases of Anna Banti, Alba de Cespedes and Gianna Manzini. Moreover, as we have noted for Rosa Genoni and Manzini, through their journalistic activity, they were able to convey important ideas and methodological suggestions towards a feminist approach to fashion and its interrelations with social history, culture, politics and economics. As we noted at the beginning of the present study, Manzini stressed that in studying fashion we need to be aware, on the one hand, of the personal experience it establishes with the inner and outer self, and on the other, how fashion is intimately linked to history. But this link to history is complex and takes the form of a tapestry of colors and intricate patterns. To repeat the statement made by Manzini, “fashion is a serious business” and so is the study of it. Indeed, so serious is it that the traditional sources on which costume historians, social historian or sociologists draw reveal themselves not to be completely satisfactory. It is, in fact, to the world of literature that we may turn to find supplementary reflections on fashion. We have seen this with the women writers discussed in chapter 3. Further confirmation comes in the writings of major figures of European literature and thought like Giacomo Leopardi and Walter Benjamin, to name but two voices who have meditated on fashion and its links to modernity. Literature has been one of the privileged terrains for both the historical and philosophical investigation of fashion as structure and event, as we have seen in the case of Castiglione and other texts written in the same period. But it was Leopardi’s “Dialogue between Fashion and Death,” with its witticism, that went furthest in problematizing the relationship between fashion and modernity and its apparent celebration of life and light. By recognizing its incredible power and the hold it had on people’s lives, Leopardi illustrated fashion’s inherent irrationality. At the same time, he extended the notion of fashion beyond clothes to body decoration, tattooing and piercing. Literature too has its fashions, and here Leopardi quotes the case of Petrarch, considered to be the most in vogue by his contemporaries. In fact one of the participants in the dialogue Fashion says: “Oh, our Madam spews Petrarch too, just like a sixteenth or nineteenth century Italian poet.”4 Or a little later, as Fashion says to Death:

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Conclusion I’m saying that it is our nature and our custom to keep renovating the world. But right from the start you threw yourself on people and on blood, whereas I’m generally satisfied with beards, hair, clothes, furnishing, buildings, and the like. It is quite true, however, that I haven’t refrained – nor am I refraining now – from playing many games comparable with yours, such as, for instance, piercing ears, lips or noses.5

Leopardi warns of the crisis and expresses a new sense of time in capitalist society that is epitomized by the close relationship between fashion and death and by the race in which both compete. Fashion says, for example: “If we were to run the Palio together, I don’t know which one of us would win the race, for whereas you can run, I can go faster than a gallop; and whereas you faint by standing still in one place, I waste away. So let’s start running again, and as we run, we’ll talk about our affairs.”6 This is how Leopardi draws attention to his sense of the nonlinear time and narrative of both fashion and history that questions the celebration of progress. This is one of the reasons why Benjamin, in the sections dedicated to fashion in his Arcades Project, uses Leopardi’s text as a reference point in his own project to debunk the quasi-religious theories of progress and to elaborate analytical tools with which to see through the “glittering phantasmagoria” of our consumer society. Indeed, in the contemporary age the sacred “aura” that once belonged to art has found an objective correlative in the glamor, that is, as Gundle puts it, “the manufactured aura of capitalist society, the dazzling illusion that compensates for inauthenticity and which reinforces consumerism as way of life.”7 Death becomes then a function of the proliferation of styles and their consumption. To the reference to Leopardi Benjamin juxtaposes a quotation by Balzac that says: “Nothing dies; all is transformed.” Within these two opposite yet still complementary propositions Benjamin inserts and connects the cyclical time of fashion – that of dying and living again – a time, however, that does not describe a linear narrative of history. In this way fashion reveals the two-pronged dimension that Benjamin synthesizes in the quotations chosen to open his reflections on fashion. On the one hand, Leopardi or the negative thought; on the other, the openness towards a transformation and reformulation of nineteenth century historicism. Fashion, in fact, can incorporate both the transience of the present and the memory of the past. In this, Benjamin offers an interpretive framework that is flexible enough to incorporate the infinite folds of a theoretical investigation that avoids being closed in on itself. Indeed, in this formulation, Benjamin’s theory might square with Deleuze’s “Perception in the folds.”8 Life, like history, is perpetually moving, its events and manifestations constituting an infinite surface that is never static and can be best approximated by recourse to the image of the twist and weave of the fabric of the folds, as Benjamin suggested. The combination of the process of folding and unfolding is multiple, never completely interrupted by death. Yet, death engenders a new transformation, a new metamorphosis and a

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Fashion under Fascism reorganization of space, time and matter. In this way, the “finite self” counteracts the “infinite present.”9 In similar vein, and by way of another example, Benjamin identifies in the material object the transition from event to history that gives rise to a process of transformation that is by definition uninterrupted. Perhaps along a similar trajectory, we can guess why Benjamin once again inserts fashion as the key word with which to give form to the following dialectical image: “The eternal is in any case far more the ruffle on a dress than an idea.”10 Benjamin and with him Leopardi, both eminent critics of modernity, share here their lack of faith in an optimistic unfolding of the narrative of progress and the teleological search for the new. Since fashion is never completely new and never completely old but rather a combination of different elements bearing details of the past intermingled with the needs, tastes, technology, experiments in fabric and design of the present – or whatever is current – we can understand why Benjamin associates fashion with the dialectical image. Without a revelation and re-elaboration of a past that manifests itself in the semi-discarded elements and commodities that inhabit our present we would gain neither vision, nor awareness of our historical place in the world, no recognition of our own historicity. The transient quality of fashion and the inevitable need for change that nourishes it links fashion to death, as Leopardi had indicated. Death, however, assumes in Benjamin’s contextual framework a series of implications that lead eventually to transformations and new beginnings, as is suggested by Balzac’s epigraph. If, on the one hand, the transient time of fashion is connected to death, on the other, its cyclical time informs us of an inevitable transformation and, as a result, a re-use of the past. This movement leads me back to the question of a history that does not assume the form of a linear narrative, but one of new phases which follow the transformation and the “catastrophe.” At the same time, this does not imply starting completely anew. Rather, it is the case that the ruins, the monuments, the old-fashioned and prior styles are still out there for us to take into the present by way of a leap into the future. Fashion and clothes move at different speeds. If fashion lives in the folds of the present, the clothes we wear are remnants that weave the fabric of memory. In the events that clothes embody, the details of the moment’s elusiveness are concealed. And this opens up the spaces to the physical presence of a material object, color and touch and thus to the personal experience of fashion and clothes that can transform the transience of the object in a durable entity: memory. This is a dimension of fashion that is present in Benjamin. In fact, in Proustian mode, Benjamin recovers the importance of involuntary memory through recurring glimpses of his childhood, when, for instance, he recalls his own gesture of clutching at his mother’s skirt. This is for Benjamin not just a literary image, but one that is charged to such an extent that it becomes a memory device able to transform our perception of both past and present. Benjamin says: “That which the child (and the grown man in his faint memory) finds in the fold of the dress into which he pressed himself when held fast –152–

Conclusion to the skirted lap of his mother – that must be contained by these pages.” The ephemeral quality of the mother’s skirt and its folds connects the grown-up man and the child in the memory of the physical experience.11 It is that gesture and its recollection, mediated by a historically transitory material – the mother’s skirt – that leaves a trace, a mark in memory. Fashion, then, as image, narration and discourse participates in the creation of worlds and atmospheres, or to put it more simply, stories. If fashion, on the one hand, is a race against time that designates its own transience, on the other hand, a dress – like that of Benjamin’s mother – has the power to leave a particular trace in memory. The dress seems to transform itself into a repository of memory where transience becomes the trace remembered and to be remembered. Literature, as Benjamin knows, is full of similar details and traces that the philosopher wishes to contain in his pages. Benjamin synthesizes here the core of his theory of both fashion and history. It is in the recollection of minimal gestures, tactile memory, discarded details – such as Titta’s father’s neckerchief – that might easily go unnoticed in the frenetic race of commodity production and consumption that the task of the analyst lies. As in the dialectical image, it is up to us to make sense of the ruins and remnants that can easily escape our distracted gaze or completely erase our knowledge and memory of the past. As we have seen, fashion under fascism played a vital role not only in the project of creating the image the regime wanted Italians to have of themselves but also in the creation of the image that Italy projected of itself abroad. But it bears repeating that the premises for this use of fashion to bolster a national agenda are found in the cultural tradition that has its roots in the Renaissance and out of which twentieth-century Italian fashion grew. It was this cultural tradition, in fact, that paved the way for the success Italian fashion has enjoyed since its eruption on the world scene in the late 1970s, a success that had been prepared by a long tradition of art, craftsmanship, style and design, the history of which cannot be confined to the postwar years. The impact of fashion, both as practice and discourse, on the formation of the icons and myths that make up “national” identity and the national character is a fertile field of analysis. It might be useful to see how these mechanisms function and the form they take in other countries and cultures, both in the West and elsewhere. My focus, however, has aimed at undermining nationalism while at the same time analyzing its politics. That is to say, I have sought to ask how and why ideas concerning national identity formation, in the case of Mussolini’s totalitarian regime, came to the fore. Indeed by illustrating the various forms and mechanisms of construction of these ideas in the case of fashion I have suggested why certain images and discourses express the identity of a given people or nation. Still these are notions that are not fixed once and for all since new transformations engender new revisions of the terms as well as new visions. We have pointed out that the –153–

Fashion under Fascism “Italian look” does not mean the same thing for American or foreigners or for Italians, including in this latter category the Italians living outside Italy. In a similar vein the new migration into Italy from China, North Africa and South America that has offered the Italian fashion industry a cheap source of labor will undoubtedly have an impact on the further development of the Italian economy and fashion industry and will help shape the images, styles and cultures of Italy. In which way, and what kind of narrative it will be, nobody can tell. To some, the question of identity might seem obsolete or too limiting to comprehend the imaginary and geographical individual who travels the world, who nonchalantly changes habits, customs and clothes, preferring to mix and match different pieces of culture and identity. Yet it is also important not to dismiss the process by which a nation is formed within the fabric of a society that draws on its history and memory, neither of which is to be conceived as closed in on themselves. It is in this way that we can see how otherness and identity can be coexistent faces that do not exclude one another. Rather, they define the very stuff of cultural identity. As we have seen, the fascist project to nationalize the masses and instill a onesided image of national identity failed. It failed for a series of concomitant reasons. Indeed, fascist nationalism and its empty rhetoric could neither construct an “Italian national identity” closed in itself nor be a permanent and universal inspiration for an Italian fashion and style. As we have seen in the previous chapter, these points were made crystal clear by these artists who designed clothes. They stressed, in fact, that their inspiration did not come solely from regional dress or the Italian Renaissance or the romanticized ideas that for patriotic reasons were put into circulation. The history of fascist fashion policy is one of continuities rather than ruptures. Indeed, that continuity and fashion’s deep roots have been to the benefit of the fashion industry. In fact, it was on the basis of the debate on nationalism that took place in the pre-fascist liberal period, as well as on the proposals put forward by Genoni, that many of the foundations for the postwar boom were laid. Mussolini was the first beneficiary of this. Fascism, as we have gathered, was able to use and combine, seeking to render them its own, different cultures, local and national traditions, modernity and tradition, literary figures of the past, folklore, opposite models of femininity, the athlete and the prolific mother, the urban consumer and the massaia rurale. In order to accomplish its purposes the regime used artists and intellectuals who spread these non-composite and even contradictory ideological messages. My attempt here has been to add a small chapter to the many more yet to be written on the history of Italian fashion and culture that will put in its best light the creativity that has always served the Italian people in any number of ways, and in the worst of circumstances.

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Conclusion

Appendix Interview with Micol Fontana EUGENIA Would you talk about how you started your business? PAULICELLI MICOL First of all, we are the oldest among those who do fashion and, as you can see, we are still here. I think everyone knows our story and FONTANA sometimes I get bored to hear the same thing all the time. But we can’t change history, can we? EP: Yes, but perhaps the way we look at history can change over time. MF: I don’t know. The style of our dresses certainly changes, but this does not imply that we can change what we are inside. A woman must always appear at her best, but the best of what she is inside. EP: What do you mean by that? MF: I am convinced that in order to dress somebody you need to know her well, because through dress you emphasize her qualities, not only her physical beauty. You must almost scrutinize the person. EP: And how were you able to scrutinize people in your work? MF: Well, we used to talk a lot nei salotti da prova. That’s why I call them confessionals. Women open up themselves because they love to make themselves understood. I don’t think it’s true that they like to keep themselves secret. At the right moment they love to be understood and show themselves. And you have to take advantage of that moment. So dressing somebody means dressing her personality, not just her body. Because we love to see these people the way they are inside and not just the way they want to appear. Sometimes they want to show themselves in a way that does not allow them to gain anything from the clothes they choose. EP: Do you think that sometimes women also want also to play a little with their identities? MF: Yes, absolutely. However, sometimes in order to do this they end up as fashion victims. There are cases in which in order to follow a fashionable style they don’t really do what is good for themselves. Women must use fashion and not be used by it. EP: This is a good point for us to dwell on.

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Fashion has two opposite faces, it can create but it can also destroy somebody. For example, don’t you think that it is kind of sad to see people who dress all in the same way? Uniformity is really sad, isn’t? And yet, one of the laws of fashion is to establish uniformity. Yes, that’s true, but I still say that one needs to personalize. A couturier knows how to do his/her job always personalizes even when they work from within what can be considered fashion. However, it is not necessary to change fashion in order to personalize. Using the right color, for example, is the key to a good start. Well, let’s start from the beginning of your career as a fashion designer. If we really have to go back to the beginning, I must say that we “Fontana Sisters” all learnt from our mother. She was part of a long line that goes back to our grandmother and our great-grandmother. Always in the family. We learnt our job almost without being aware of it. Indeed, I always say that there are needles and thread in our blood. Now we really have to go back: I was born in 1913, just before World War I, in the smallest village you can imagine in the province of Parma— Traversetolo, There was absolutely nothing there. Except for my mother and my grandmother who used to make dresses. Our passion was to help them. My mother had a workshop of twenty girls. And this in a small town, a tiny town, just think about it. Mamma Amabile was very well known because she was really good, I can say it. In those years, I remember, all the men were at war, and in my small town it was the women who went to work, especially in the fields. Since women were living in that kind of isolation it was difficult for them to have an idea of the real world. We too had no idea of what the world was like. It was my father who gave us an idea of the way things were when he came back from the war and told us about the places he had seen. And we listened to him as if we were listening to a fairy tale. For us the world outside Traversetolo seemed to be a great fairy tale. It was hard for us to understand. There were no airplanes, no television like today, we all felt lost, almost abandoned in our tiny provincial town. And yet you had your little world full of creativity. Since we could not afford to buy them, my mother taught us how to make dolls out of fabric. Once a year, when children received their first communion, they used to sell toys, just outside the church. I remember that I got my first real doll made of fabric when I was ten, the day I went for my first communion. That doll was of a better quality than the ones we made, but I would have loved to keep it and have it today. –156–

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What did you do with the dolls? When we had five minutes, we made dresses for our dolls. But we never had that much time, because our mother made us work very hard in her dressmaker’s shop. Did you ever use the dolls as mannequins? No, the other women my mother employed and we used to work around a big basket. We used to have a table where we would lay down the dress and work on it there. That was the dressmaker’s shop, it was just a room where all of us worked. And then? Our village began to grow, albeit slowly and we stayed. Its main source of income was the production of cheese and ham. In 1935 we were in our twenties and we started to ask ourselves if it was really worthwhile staying in our town for ever, where the most important customers were the local doctor’s or the pharmacist’s wife. They were beautiful women, though, I remember them well. At that time people who lived in Parma, the nearest big town, used to come on holiday during the summer and so would come to us for their dresses. For us, the ladies who came from the city were like cinema divas. After World War II, we used to think the American ladies who came to our atelier were divas. In the 1930s, we said it of any lady who came from Parma. But one day we thought seriously about moving somewhere else. However we thought that the idea of moving from Traversetolo to Parma was too small a step. We were three ambitious sisters and we wanted to do something more. But we were not thinking of creating fashion. At least not yet. We were thinking more of simply expanding our clientele. So when we went to the train station we did not know if we wanted to go towards Milan or Rome, because we did not know anybody either in Rome or in Milan. But the train for Rome was the first to stop at the station and so my older sister, who was a very determined young woman, decided we should go to Rome. Today I think how intelligent our parents were to allow us to go and to have encouraged us to seek out new horizons. In those days that fact that three women went on their own, was not an easy thing to accept, especially in a village like ours that had a population of only two thousand inhabitants. Our mother told us to go and try, in the meantime she would keep the workshop open. The pact we established with my mother was this: that if we succeeded our mother would join us in Rome; if things had gone for the worse we would have gone back to work in her shop. With parents like that, how could we have made a mistake? As parents should help their children to grow, they –157–

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also need to foster their sense of independence. This is a great source of wealth and my parents were marvelous. But you sisters were also marvelous! We did not have to go against our parents and that was an incredible help. But didn’t you have to go against a set of rules that had already been established in society for women of your generation who grew up under fascism? In Rome, our public relations were in the hands of the janitor in the palazzo where we lived. I still remember the light in Rome. When I came to Rome for the first time in the mid 1930s, the city seemed to me full of light, an enormous space filled with light. Rome was like a dream. I will always remember an image of Rome from up high on the hill in the Via Quattro Fontane, from there I could see Santa Maria Maggiore and Trinità dei Monti. I saw this very long street filled with light. Still today, that first image I had of the city is always with me, that first encounter I had with the capital. We sub-let a small apartment. During the day our bedroom was our dressmaker’s shop. Fortunately my sister found a job at the “Battilocchi” fashion house. My other sister and I worked at home. Did you always get along? Pretty much. We managed to stay together despite our difficult characters and temperaments, in life and in business. But it was not easy. I think that the way we were brought up in our family had a strong influence on us. My mother used to say that staying together would be the secret of our success. She was right, because when we started to do our collections working together was a great help when we had to talk about a model. I must say, however, that my mother always had the last word. For a woman born in the nineteenth century she had a very modern mind and concept of life. She was able to capture everything modern and had an incredible mixture of intelligence, sensibility and ability and knew how to seize the moment. What do you remember of Rome in the 1930s? We lived under fascism and later World War I. Our first important customer was the daughter of the scientist Guglielmo Marconi and after that all the aristocracy came to us. The Roman aristocracy, however, used to go to Paris for their special dresses and kept the local dressmaker for the other outfits in their wardrobe. As time passed, though, these aristocratic ladies began to appreciate our work. In the 1930s one of the reasons the fascist regime founded the ENM was to encourage wealthy Italian ladies to buy Italian clothes. What are your recollections of this? –158–

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Yes, ladies were forbidden from going to Paris fashion houses and the Italian fashion houses and dressmakers’ shops could not use more than 10 percent of French inspiration for their collections and creations. At the time of these regulations we were just starting so they did not really touch us. I remember, however, the women who used to parade in all sorts of fascist rallies. If they didn’t wear the official uniform, I remember that they used to wear a suit, which to me looked just like another kind of uniform. It was right in the middle of the war that we were able to make our leap into the fashion business. In this, I have to say, we were also lucky. In 1939 our parents moved to Rome, as it had become clear that we were doing well. They decided to move to a small village called Prima Porta, close to Rome, where they had a small farm and a house. This was a smart thing to do, because in Rome during the war, the populace was starving. It was the day that the German army left Rome that we were able to make our big leap. The Germans had been occupying a beautiful apartment in Via Liguria, which had been an empty apartment that belonged to Prince Orsini. Now the famous “Il Capriccio” restaurant is there. Frankly, I do not really know if in that fortuitous circumstance it was our impudence or our irresponsibility that helped us most. Nevertheless, we saw that three storeys of the palazzo had been occupied by German soldiers and on each floor there was a beautiful apartment. At that point we thought of leaving our small apartment, moving into one of those in the palace and using the other two for our dressmaking and I salotti di prova. This was our idea. But at this point the discussions we had in the family seemed to go on forever. My oldest sister and I were the craziest, but perhaps we were the ones who had the sharpest antennae. So after many discussions, we took the big decision and bought the building. The war was still on and at that time you could not find anything. All the goods in the shops had been moved to the basements. I remember distinctly that in order to work we had to exchange the produce from our parents’ farm such as potatoes, milk etc. for fabric. When I think about this it seems to me incredible that we went through all of this. But this is it, this was our life back then. We used to buy our fabric from Jewish merchants. In the same period, when the fascists started to persecute the Jews, we hid a fellow called Di Castro on our parents’ farm so he could escape from the Germans. Jewish merchants had marvelous and high quality fabrics, not only in their shops but also hidden in their basements. Did you have Italian fabrics and textiles? Yes, Italian textiles have always been the best. French fashion was able to promote them when they used them in their couture dresses. –159–

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Even today, Como’s economic prosperity depends on the textile industry’s exports to French firms. The production, the fine manufacturing and that fine tradition of craftsmanship belong exclusively to Italy. Still today Italy has this reputation. A lot of French houses have their prêt-a-porter made in Italy. What do you remember of the fascist persecution of the Italian Jews? Yes, fascists persecuted them. You know I now live in the “ghetto” but then I used to live in Via Veneto. We were, however, of an incredible ignorance, and so were the Jews. They did not know where the trains were taking them . . . It was only when they were discovered that we learnt about the concentration camps and from the accounts written by some survivors. It was just like that. I do not know why you are interested in such things since these are stories that go beyond sewing or fashion. They are, however, lived stories. And they make up the texture of history, don’t they? As a woman you, together with your sisters, became successful in your work, your name moving from the local to the national and then international level. Do you think that your personal history is important history for a better understanding of women’s history and the history of our country? Well let’s say that in the 1930s, France held absolute sway in the world of fashion. Fashion was still a male business, there were women, but not many. I have to say, however, that women designers are better than men because they know women better and what women want to be. In any case, at the beginning there were enormous obstacles in our way. Just think, we started out with an empty chocolate box, that’s where we used to keep our valuables. And I remember very clearly that when my sister went to a bank to ask for a loan, nobody there wanted to talk to her, simply because she was a woman. I remember that she was furious and even told the clerk at the bank who mistreated her that one day he would come to our atelier on his knees. This was in 1946. Because when the war ended in 1945, that phenomenon called “Hollywood on the Tiber” was born. At Cinecittà in the immediate postwar years Americans came to Rome to make their movies, because it was much cheaper. Now we go to the Far East, but then Americans came to us. For us it was marvelous, because in this way Americans started to appreciate Italy and its extraordinary artistic beauty, as well as its fashion. American directors came to us for the costumes in their films. And it was this that brought us to cross the Atlantic and make a name for ourselves in the USA. In those partic–160–

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ular circumstances Italian fashion exploded. For us, the international success came with Linda Christian’s wedding dress. We made her dress when she got married to Tyrone Power in Rome. This was a dress that was featured in all the international magazines, not just the fashion ones, and so it was that her dress became our business card and made us famous. I remember that I went to Hollywood and visited Tyrone Power’s house where actors came to see the collections that I had brought in my suitcases. It was in this way that Americans started to learn what we were able to do, and that we were not merely improvisers or mandolin players. Would you like to tell me about the history of some of the dresses you have in your archive? –161–

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This evening jacket is from the 1930s. The daughter-in-law of Edda Ciano, who was Mussolini’s daughter, donated it to my archive. It belonged to Edda Ciano and was made by one of the best-known fashion houses in Rome called “Mingolini-Guggenheim,” it still has the label and I am very careful to keep it (Figure 28). Do you remember anything of the fashion shows and exhibitions organized by the regime during the autarchic phase? Yes, I remember them, but we did not really participate because we were not yet a fashion house. But since we were already in the business with our dressmaker’s shop, I remember some of the autarchic fabrics, lanital especially. It was made with the milk casein that my sister called the mozzarella fabric, because when you ironed it threads came up like tiny threads of cheese. But did all the fashion creators follow the regime’s diktats? Yes and no. We all received injunctions to use a given percentage of natural and artificial fibers. But then the Milanese fashion designer Biki, or Battilocchi in Rome, where my sister used to work really copied French fashion and then Italianized it a little. All the people working in the fashion business during fascism, and us immediately after the war, used to go to Paris to attend the collections. Not all the fashion produced under fascism was in line with the regime’s thinking, especially as concerns the role of women. Certainly. Just take Edda Ciano, for example. We have dresses of hers that we keep in the archive that do little to incarnate the figure of the traditional wife and mother, and not only because she was well known as a sports enthusiast. But there is something else that I would like to say about Mussolini’s rallies and parades. They were rituals that touched the spectators emotionally and gave them a sense of pride. They were spectacles, of course. I remember those parades well. I was often among the crowds who watched from the street and sometimes I too was moved. Do you want to know something? My mother, when she died, wanted to be covered by the Italian flag. Think about that, she was only a dressmaker, but she thought that we Italians did not love our country enough. Perhaps this was because our history is one of many divisions and Italy is a relatively young nation. To me, Italy seems very old, but we always have had too many internal wars, among Italians I mean. Do you remember one parade in particular? There were many, but now one comes to mind, the Parade at the Vittoriale when women went to give their wedding rings to the fatherland before the Abyssinian War. –162–

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Do you think that despite the emphasis on civil and military uniforms during fascism, there was also a chance to personalize dress for women? Yes absolutely. Women, even those belonging to the working class, were very keen to have a new dress, or a new accessory or lace. Women have always managed to ruin their finances just to buy new dresses. I remember that many women went to the open air market, but you could tell which class they belonged to because the wealthy ones were accompanied by their maid, while the others went alone. In those days women never went out without gloves or without a hat, you could not even think of doing anything else. Women dedicated a lot of care to details. Details are important to define a person’s style aren’t they? Yes, it is the same for the exquisiteness of a given textile or lace. I personally find lace to be very beautiful, special. Let me recount to you an episode that concerns one of my most famous customers and with whom I became friends—Margaret Truman, the daughter of a former US president. Once she wrote me a letter saying that she needed a dress for a very important occasion, without specifying what the occasion was. In response I sent her some of my ideas. Then, just by mere chance, I happened to read in a magazine about her imminent wedding. When I found that out I said to her not to consider any of the drawings I had already sent to her and went to Venice to find a precious vintage lace to use for her wedding dress. When I came back home, the lace was so beautiful and special that I did not have the courage to cut it. We put all our hearts into making that dress. I never liked to do things lightly, everything had to be executed to the very smallest detail. I went three times to have her try the dress. I also went to her wedding reception in Missouri. Margaret Truman keeps her wedding dress in her father’s library. I would have loved to keep it in my archive but she would never give it to me for all the gold in this world. And of course I understand her perfectly. From our conversation I gather that each dress has its own story and history that do not always bear on the world of fashion as a big system. This is very true. For example, at the time of Margaret Truman’s dress there was an emphasis on the wasp waist, then there were other shapes like trapezoids etc. I have to say that I do not like these lines very much, I am for the idea of fitted dresses that exalt the feminine figure. So you are saying that there is a general line or trend in a fashion cycle and a specific history of a dress, the ideas that brought it about, the stages and phases of its production. As in the case you were –163–

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recalling about Margaret Truman there are additional personal histories concerning the relationship between customer and designer. Yes, this is true, because during all the phases of its production, as happened for Margaret Truman’s dress, we had to go through the first drawings, which we thought did not really fit the particular occasion. On the other hand, we bore in mind that our customer wanted her dress to be simple and understated. It was for this reason that I found in lace the perfect combination of different elements, elegance and distinction without being ostentatious. If you create fashion, you must somehow become one with the personality of the customer. And you know what, among all these things, fashion becomes like a side dish. Even high fashion? Yes, even high fashion. Just listening to all your tales is extraordinary because they blend so many sides of history that it is like seeing a mosaic of intarsia. Perhaps, this is the reason why you like lace, for its ability to be both old and new. For example, another episode just came to my mind concerning our first famous customer, Gioia Marconi, the daughter of the scientist. I remember that when I listened to the first radio that her dad built— in 1930 maybe—I was still in Traveresetolo. I could never have thought that Marconi’s daughter would become one of our customers. In those days, when we were in Rome, she came to us and sat on an old armchair we had bought. Unfortunately, the chair was so shaky that she somehow ended up on the floor. Since she was a very intelligent and witty lady, she was able to laugh about it. Indeed, what I remembered dearly in our career is that we were able to establish a wonderful relationship with our customers. We became friends and wrote to each other. To this day I am still a friend of Margaret Truman. Guglielmo Marconi’s daughter got married in Ireland to an American gentleman, because Marconi’s first wife was Irish. Gioia married in a dress we made for her. She donated her dress to our clothing archive with the understanding that if her daughter married and wished to use her dress we would give it to her. For us this is a commitment we intend to honour. I read that for you the creative process starts from the drawing. Can you talk about this procedure? For example, if you make a film you have to start from the script in order to familiarize yourself with the character. The same actress can personify different characters. We worked a lot with Ava Gardner and dressed her for a variety of roles. For the same person you draw –164–

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different models, and a lot depends on the occasion. Nowadays everything has changed. Yesterday I went to a reception at the Quirinale (the presidential residence) in honor of the eightieth birthday of the actor Alberto Sordi. This event was for me another world, because today there is much more informality in the dress codes for these particular events. On the other hand, look at women’s dress today, if you eliminate any sort of decorations what is left, I asked myself. Do you think that women’s dresses are too simple? I think that they are less feminine and more vulgar. For instance, I do not like the fashion of showing off the belly button. You may laugh, but that’s what I think. That’s it. But going back to the history of dresses, I think I would like to write a book about a dress that starts talking and tells its own story. I think I am going to select four or five of the dresses from my clothing archive, one that belonged to Ava Gardner, Margaret Truman’s and some others and let them talk as if they were characters. Perhaps I’ll do this book in the USA. –165–

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Talking about Ava Gardner. How did you come up with the idea of creating the “pretino” gown? We had to make dresses that were inspired by priests’ garb. The director Joseph Mankiewicz came to talk to us about the costumes. We said that we would do it on condition that we received permission from the Vatican. In fact, the Vatican said yes and even gave us a monsignore. We were received officially by the Pope, the only fashion house to have had this honour. Could we talk about your foundation? How did you start it? What is its purpose? When we sold the “Sorelle Fontane” label—something I regret very very much—our oldest sister had already died. At that time I was eighty years old. I decided to start the Foundation in the apartment we are in now and to collect all my memories. I did not want to collect the memories for myself but for the younger generations and for –166–

Appendix people who wanted to study the material in the archive. We also organize a seminar for young talents in support of artisan schools. Great painters come from the artisan workshops. We need practice and knowledge of artisan work. Many young people who come out of fashion school think that if they know how to draw they are already fashion designers. Of course, many young people find jobs in the fashion world and its various sectors, advertising, marketing, photography, etc. These are all very important sectors. But you cannot learn the craft if you do not practice it. This is something that is very close to my heart. Near Rome, in Tivoli there is a school where they do beautiful embroidery but unfortunately people do not know much about it and so they do not sell. I was thinking of organizing a group of these female embroiderers and trying to sell their work. Today, you know it is very rare to find fine embroiderers. I really want this extraordinary tradition of craftsmanship that is so typically Italian to survive and receive attention and special funding. Because I think that in artisan work is the soul of Italian identity. I think that even in the prêt-a-porter there must be a little touch of craftsmanship. We are creative in what we do with our hands. I strongly defend the artisan because I define myself that way too. My only aspiration has been to be good at my work.

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Notes Chapter 1 Introduction 1. See Tra cultura italiana e “Made in Italy”: Immagine e identità dell’Italia di oggi all’estero, Proceedings of the Conference organized by the Assessorato alla cultura of the Provincia di Bologna, Bologna, March 3–4, 2000; Stephen Gundle, “Il bel paese: Art, beauty and the cult of appearance,” in Gino Bedani and Bruce Haddock (eds), The Politics of Italian National Identity. A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000. 2. Valerie Steele, “The Italian Look,” in Giannino Malossi (ed.), Volare. The Icon of Italy in Global Pop Culture, New York, Monacelli Press, 1999, 92. 3. See Andrew Ross, “Made in Italy: The Trouble with Craft Capitalism,” paper delivered at the Conference “Italian Fashion: Identities, Transformation, Production,” held at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, October 30–31, 2002. In this paper, Ross points out how the Italian fashion industry has benefited economically from the drastic but lucrative changes that have been brought about by recent patterns of immigration in the last decade. Italy, in fact, has seen an influx of cheap immigrant labor, mainly from China, to whom Italian fashion companies now sub-contract much of their work, allowing Italian companies not to outsource overseas or to third-world countries, as many US-based fashion companies do. This is a new and important phenomenon that deserves further study. In addition, it is a phenomenon that casts the “Made in Italy” label in a new economic, social and cultural light. See also Ross (ed.), No Sweat. Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights of Garment Workers, Verso: New York, 1997. 4. See Peppino Ortoleva,”Buying Italian: Fashions, Identities, Stereotypes,” in Malossi, 46–54. 5. Over the last two years, the Italian government agency known as the “Italian Trade Commission” has been organizing a campaign in the USA under the title “Life in I Style.” This campaign aims to promote Italian creativity and the nation’s sense of beauty and aesthetic through fashion, design and cinema. 6. Recently, in an exhibition “Fashion, Italian Style,” held at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, the curator Valerie Steele has, first, emphasized the ability of Italian fashion to combine high quality design with wearability; and, second, underlined how Italian style is based on a rather composite model –179–

Notes

7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

that incorporates a plurality of tastes. Indeed, what seems to be a sort of unifying thread for a foreign visitor is the perception of a glamorized Italian lifestyle in which clothing, accessories and design have an integral part. Steele, in fact, has stated in an interview that with this exhibition she wished to convey to the American or foreign visitor, the impression of taking a virtual trip to Italy, during which one could visually perceive a sense of the rich diversity of the country, always accompanied however, with a sense of beauty and aesthetics. See Eugenia Paulicelli, “Interview with Valerie Steele,” Audrey (March 2002). See also the catalogue of the exhibition, Steele, Fashion, Italian Style, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003. See Ugo Volli, “The Difficult Identity” in Malossi, 36–44. David Forgacs, “The Mass Media and the Question of a National Community in Italy,” in Gino Bedani, Bruce Haddock (eds), The Politics of Italian National Identity, Oxford 142–62. Gianna Manzini, “La moda è una cosa seria,” in La donna (July 1935): 37. See Barbara Burman and Carole Turbin, intro. to the special issue of the journal Gender & History, dedicated to “Material Strategies: Dress and Gender in Historical Perspective” 14: 3 (November 2002). The same volume is also forthcoming and will be published as a book by Blackwell Publisher. See Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema. Clothing and Identity in the Movies, New York, London: Routledge, 1997. Here Bruzzi shows how clothing is part of a complex discourse on subjectivity and identity. The author underlines that clothing in the movies is not a mere complement of the identity of the character represented on the screen. Rather, in Bruzzi’s analysis, clothing is analyzed in its discursive materiality in bringing to the audience its visual, emotional and aesthetic impact. See Robert Lumley and Forgacs (eds), Italian Cultural Studies. An Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; Beverly Allen and Mary Russo (eds), Revisioning Italy. National Identity and Global Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997; Zygmunt G. Baranski and Lumley (eds), Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy, New York: St. Martin Press, 1990; Baranski and Rebecca West (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. To this latter I have contributed a chapter entitled “Fashion: Nation and Narration,” 282–92. See Donald Sassoon’s review of Nicola White’s Reconstructing Italian Fashion, in Modern Italy, Journal of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy 6:2 (November 2001): 251: “Informality is, of course, a rather complex and elaborate affair: the art of pretending to be simple can be traced back to the Renaissance and Baldassare Castiglione’s Il cortegiano.” Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence. Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, p. 1. –180–

Notes

15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

This is the subject of my forthcoming book, provisionally entitled: Dressing and Undressing the Public Self in Early Modern Italy. See Grazietta Butazzi, “La moda a Milano dal regno d’Italia al ‘48’, Il Risorgimento 3, (1992): 493–515. “Scientia habitus” is the expression used by Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale: Vesti e società dal XIII al XVI secolo, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999, 10. On the fashion industry and the creation of a “national style,” with reference to Great Britain, see Louise Crewe and Alison Goodrum, “Fashioning New Forms of Consumption: The Case of Paul Smith,” in Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson, eds., Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, London, New York: Routledge, 2000. See Rudolph M. Bell, How to Do It. Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999; Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The Development of Manners. Change in the Code of Conduct and Feeling in Early Modern Times, New York: 1978. In her Dream World: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982, Rosalind H. Williams makes reference to the French fascination for Italian art, which was especially marked when the nobles joined Francis I in his invasions of Italy: “When the king returned from these wars [in Italy] passionately fond of the Italo-Antique style in consumer goods, the entire court followed suit. They all brought back Italian statues and paintings, as well as Italian decorators and architects— Francis himself lured Leonardo da Vinci, who died shortly after his arrival in France [. . .] The uniformity of taste among this consumer class is evident in the Italian loggias, staircases, and facades of its chateaux; its preference for the fashionable rather than the utilitarian is evident for the colder French climate of many of these Italian features” (21). In my commuting to New York City I have had the chance to see and often talk to people working in the corporate world. It has been very interesting for me to find out how business women use fashion to create a more individual look for themselves, but also, as someone once told me, to “make slow changes in the corporate dress code.” One woman said: “I cannot wear a leather skirt when I see a client so I am well aware that I have to wear a suit instead. Nevertheless, I decided to wear boots with it, which gave me a less formal look, but still proper.” She added that after she did so, many other young women copied the same “liberating” trend. I refer here to the remarks made by Quondam in his presentation of the Libro del sarto and the observations on similar issues in his “La virtù dipinta. Noterelle (e divagazioni) guazziane intorno a Classico e institutio in antico regime,” in G. Patrizi (ed.), Stefano Guazzo e la civil conversazione, Rome –181–

Notes

22. 23.

24.

25.

Bulzoni, 1990, p. 355, note 47, where he states that the role of fashion should be explored in conjunction with the transformations occurring at the birth of modernity. He adds that this is a terrain still neglected by criticism. Patrizi, 240. Further testimony of the developed state of the Renaissance fashion industry, especially in the field of accessories, is supplied by Carlo Belfanti’s essay “Moda e innovazione alle origini dell’industria della maglieria. In this case study, he mentions the production of what in the 16th and 17th centuries was called “l’agucchiera mantovana,” a kind of knitted stocking made with a gucchia, which meant needle. Belfanti, reports that, in 1513, the guild of Berrette (hats and headgears) and Berrettai (milliners) was formed, gaining its independence from the wool guild. Stocking production acquired great importance in the town economy as is testified by a 1494 document that notes that more than three thousand young people were employed in this field. Indeed, Belfanti affirms that the growth of the Mantovan craft can be explained by the fact that the better fitting knitted stockings became a fashionable accessory all over Europe and became one of the first examples of the “ready-to-wear” industry since the items could be purchased without being custom made by tailors. See Belfanti, “Le calze a maglia: moda e innovazione alle origini dell’industria della maglieria (secoli XVI–XVII),” in Società e Storia 69 (1995): 483. See by the same author “Il dono dell’abito: Lusso e consuetudini sociali a Mantova nel Cinquecento,” in Per Mantova una vita. Studi in Memoria di Rita Castagna, Mantua, 1991. Tommaso Garzoni, Piazza universale di tutte le professioni, Paolo Cherchi and Beatrice Collina, eds., Turin: Einaudi, 1996, p. 1309. See also, Collina, “Un ‘cervello universale’” in Cherchi, ed., Tommaso Garzoni. Bestseller europeo: perchè?, in Tommaso Garzoni. Uno Zingaro in convento, Ravenna: Longo, 1990, pp. 109–123. As to the role of tailors, see Butazzi, “‘The Scandalous Licentiousness of Tailors and Seamstresses.’ Considerations on the Profession of the Tailor in the Republic of Venice,” in I Mestieri della Moda a Venezia. The Arts and Crafts of Fashion in Venice from the13th to the 18th century, Doretta Davanzo Poli, ed., Catalogue of the Exhibition, 1997, pp. 46–49. In the catalogue, Davanzo Poli tells of the difficult task she had in reconstructing the history of fashion in the period in question due to the wide array of source material. The amount of available material is further testimony to the central role fashion played in the centuries in question. Her research entailed consulting different types of documents and sources, such as the capitularies, guild regulations and records from trade schools, legislation, painting, literature, as well as private correspondence and travel diaries.

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Notes 26. See Frank Parson, The Psychology of Dress, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1920. 27. See Patricia Allerston, “L’abito come articolo di scambio nella società moderna. Alcune implicazioni,” in Butazzi and Cavagna, eds., Le Trame della moda, 109–124. 28. See the analysis conducted by Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. 29. Davanzo Poli, 10. 30. We may wish to remember how in Machiavelli’s The Prince the construction and projection of the public image of a country’s leader in order to gain and keep popular consensus is key. The appeal and modernity of The Prince is apparent in the publication of books that consider his precepts and reflections in the context of 20th century politics and culture: Alistair McAlpine, The New Machiavelli: the Art of Politics in Business, John Wiley and Sons, 1998; Dick Morris, The New Prince: Machiavelli Updated for the Twenty-First Century, Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999; Michael Ledeen, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago, New York: TrummTalley Books, 1999. On the issue of disciplining the social body see also Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, Allen Lane, 1977 31. Nicola White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion: America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry. The reference to fashion in fascist Italy is at pp. 76–77. See also the reference to the formation of the GFT group in 1932, something that is worthy of further study, pp. 68–69. 32. White, 81. 33. White, 81. 34. See Nancy L. Green, Ready-to-Wear Ready-to-Work. A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York, Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1997. 35. These are complex issues that in the last fifteen years have been the concern of several studies published in Italy and the US. Of these, I would like to mention the pioneering essay by Giulio Bollati, L’italiano: Il carattere nazionale come storia e come invenzione, Turin, Einaudi, 1983, 2nd. edition 1996 in which the author illustrates how the concepts of national identity and character are ideological constructs. This is also the core of the study by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983. For a critical analysis of Bollati’s essay see Silvana Patriarca, “National Identity or National Character? New Vocabularies and Old Paradigms,” in Albert R. Ascoli and K. von Henneberg, eds., Making and Remaking Italy. The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento, Oxford: Berg, 2001; see also Bedani and Haddock, The Politics of Italian National Identity. –183–

Notes

Chapter 2 Fashion, Gender and Power in Interwar Italy 1. The Cinegiornale Luce of the rally is a 25-minute documentary held at the Istituto Luce Archive in Cinecittà, Rome. 2. Victoria De Grazia, “Nationalizing Women. The Competition between Fascist and Commercial Cultural Models in Mussolini’s Italy,” in De Grazia and Ellen Furlough (eds), The Sex of Things. Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, 337–58. 3. See Patrizia Ribuoli, “Le uniformi civili nel Regime Fascista,” in Grazietta Butazzi (ed.), Vent’anni di moda italiana, 1922–1943. Florence: Centro Di, 1980. 4. See Emma Calderini, “Il costume popolare in Italia” in Lidel (March 1934). In the article the author announces her illustrated history of Il Costume popolare in Italia to be published by Sperling & Kupfer in Milan, May 1934. The article in Lidel contains two drawings from the book, a costume from Ferrandina, a small town in Lucania (Southern Italy) and another one showing a wealthy bride wearing her traditional dress from Torre Pellice in Piedmont. 5. See La Donna (September 1933.) 6. Patrizia Dogliani, “Donne e partito,” in L’Italia Fascista. 1922–1940, Milan: Sansoni, 1999. See especially the references she makes to women from different social classes and how their involvement with the fascist party was accordingly diversified, organized and directed by fascist propaganda. This included the publication of bulletins addressed and sent to the organization of the massaie rurali called “L’azione delle massaie rurali” and that of the Sezioni operaie e lavoranti a domicilio” called “Lavoro e famiglia,” pp. 97–104. 7. It is interesting that even in the use of fascist civil uniforms, people found different and personalized ways of self-adaptation to the norms. Patrizia Ribuoli in her essay on “Le uniformi civili nel regime fascista” affirms that: “Shops appeared that only sold the uniforms and the accessory items that went with them: from the decorations to belts, from medals to brooches and badges. However, despite the fact that the ‘commercialization’ of uniforms by way of this regime-run boutique tended to guarantee uniformity and quality of style there were many who did not make use of them. In most cases the refusal of these fascist ready-to-wear uniforms was the result of economic factors. The uniform was obligatory but was not free and so when out of necessity expenditure on uniforms had to be cut back recourse was made to individual fantasy and sewing skills: from an old pair of trousers you could make shorts for the Balilla; from an old shirt you could make the blouse for the Piccola Italiana. On far rarer occasions, but not so few as not worthy to be mentioned, the opposite happened. A member of the Giovane Fascista organization would show off a sahara jacket of such a perfect fit that it was clear to see, more than any business card, which famous tailor had made it” (35–6). –184–

Notes 8. Kathy Peiss, “Making Up, Making Over. Cosmetics, Consumer Culture, and Women’s Identity,” in De Grazia and Furlough, The Sex of Things and Hope in a Jar: The Making of America‘s Beauty Culture, New York: Henry Holt, 1998. 9. See Adam Arvidsson, “Between Fascism and the American Dream,” in Social Science History 25:2 (Summer 2001) 151–86. 10. See Peppino Ortoleva, “Buying Italian: Fashions, Identities, Stereotypes,” in Malossi, Volare, p. 52. 11. Antonietta Maria Bessone Aureli, “Il costume popolare in Italia,” in La donna italiana 11:5 (May 1934): 614–16. 12. For Rosa Genoni see Aurora Fiorentini, ”L’ornamento di “pura arte italiana”: la moda di Rosa Genoni,” in the catalogue of the exhibition at the Galleria del Costume di Palazzo Pitti in Florence, Abiti in Festa: L’ornamento e la sartoria italiana. Florence, March 30–December 31, 1996, Florence: Sillabe. See also the entry on Genoni by A. Fiorentini Capitani, in G. Vergani (ed.), Dizionario della moda, Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1999, and the entry on Genoni in R. Farina (ed.), Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde, Milan: 1968, p. 568. 13. See Genoni’s articles “Vita d’Arte nella moda,” in Vita Femminile Italiana (October 1908): 1102–8 and “Arte e storia del costume. Rivendicazioni femminili nella moda,” in Vita Femminile italiana (November 1908): 202–7. 14. Genoni, 1105. 15. See “Atti del I Congresso Nazionale delle Donne Italiane,” Rome, 24–30 April 1908, Rome: Stabilimento Tipografico della Società Laziale, 1912, p. 507. 16. A comprehensive history of the Italian tradition in the decorative arts that sheds light on the role women from different classes had has not yet appeared. For the US history on the topic see Carole Turbin, Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class, and Community in Troy, 1864–86, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992; Wendy Gamber, The Female Economy. The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860–1930, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997; and for Britain, Barbara Burman (ed.), The Culture of Sewing, Oxford: Berg, 2000. In the arts of embroidery and lace a local tradition linked to the social and economic history of a determined city and region existed. Usually aristocratic women supported workshops of skilled women, most of them from modest origin, who produced wonderful crafts and decorations for clothing and for the house. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries several pattern books for lace and embroidery were published in Italy and Europe. This is the topic of Alessandra Mottola Molfino, “Nobili, Sagge e Virtuose Donne. Libri di Modelli per Merletti e Organizzazione del Lavoro femminile tra Cinquecento e Seicento,” in La Famiglia e la Vita Quotidiana in Europa dal 400 al 600: Fonti e Problemi. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Milan, 1– 4 December 1986, Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Pubblicazioni –185–

Notes

17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

degli Archivi di Stato, Rome, 1986, pp. 276–93. Molfino claims that the pattern books for lace and embroidery, after the popularity they received in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reappeared in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries when women from the upper bourgeoisie and the aristocracy helped to organize female craft workshop classes in order to preserve the industry. See also, Marina Carmignani, Ricami e Merletti nelle chiese e nei monasteri di Prato dal XVI al XIX secolo, Prato: 1985. Genoni, 1106–7. See catalogue of the exhibition held at the Galleria del Costume di Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Abiti in festa. L’ornamento e la sartoria italiana. The Manto di corte Pisanello can now be seen at the Galleria del costume, Florence. The prejudices Genoni is addressing in her article have only been dispelled with new approaches based on gender studies and history in the late 1980s. For further reading on these issues see C. Evans and Minna Thornton, Women & Fashion. A New Look, London: Quartet Books, 1989; Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams. Fashion and Modernity, London: Virago, 1985; Steele, Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. I have also addressed the relationship between women, fashion and agency related to Italian feminism in “Fashion as a Text. Talking about Femininity and Feminism” in Giovanna Miceli Jeffries (ed.), Feminine Feminists. Cultural Practice in Italy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Enrico Crispolti, Il Futurismo e la moda, Balla e gli altri. Venice: Marsilio, 1986. See the introduction “La Moda e il Futurismo” and the references to the articles and interviews of Giacomo Balla that appeared in 1925 following the Paris Exhibition. In fact, visiting the exhibition and noticing the many objects and even the ceiling decoration of the fashion salon Balla remarked: “This is wonderfully ballabile [danceable, but a play on his name)! Could there be a Balla down here?” (12). Balla’s Manifesto is reproduced in Crispolti, 89–93. F.T. Marinetti et al, “The Futurist Manifesto of the Italian Hat” 1933 in Mary Ann Caws (ed.), Manifesto. A Century of Isms, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001, 512–13. Marinetti, 513. Victor Margueritte, The Bachelor Girl, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. Caroline Evans, “Masks, Mirrors and Mannequins: Elsa Schiaparelli and the Decentered Subject,” in Fashion Theory 3:1 (1990): 3–31. See De Grazia, “The Arts of Purchase: How American Publicity Subverted the European Poster, 1920–40,” in Kruger and Mariani, Remaking History Seattle: Bay Press, 1989; De Grazia, “La sfida dello Star System: L’Americanismo –186–

Notes

28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

nella formazione della cultura di massa in Europa 1920–1965,” in Quaderni storici 58 (20): 95–133; Karen Pinkus, Bodily Regimes. Italian Advertising under Fascism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995; Adam Arvidson, “Between Fascism and the American Dream. Advertising in Interwar Italy,” in Social Science History 25: 2 (Summer 2001): 151–86. See the study by Silvia Franchini, Editori, Lettrici e stampa di moda. Giornali di moda e di famiglia a Milano dal “Corriere delle Dame” agli editori dell’Italia Unita, Milan: Franco Angeli, 2002 See Franchini, Editori, Lettrici e stampa di moda, 170–1. See trans., intro. and afterword, Robin Pickering Iazzi, Unspeakable Women: Selected Short Stories Written by Italian Women during Fascism, New York: The Feminist Press of the City University of New York, 1993. This volume examines the short stories published on the culture pages of national daily newspapers. In chapter 3 of the current study I analyze some of the short stories written by women in the fashion magazine Bellezza. See Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life; Ulrich Lehmann, Tigersprung Fashion and Modernity, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. See Nancy L. Greene, Ready-to-Wear Ready-to-work. A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York, Duke University Press: 1997, p. 112. See also the interview I conducted with the couturier Micol Fontana in the Appendix to the present volume. We must also recall that several Italian antifascist exiles found their home and continued their clandestine struggle against fascism in 1930s France. In Lidel (May 1919): 12. On the topic of the representation of female beauty and formation of taste and canons in Renaissance Italian painting, see Paola Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation and Identity, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Fortunato Albanese, Il Perché del Primo Congresso Nazionale per le industrie dell’Abbigliamento, Rome, Tipografia Colombo: 1918, pp. 9–10. Lydia De Liguoro, “La donna nelle nuove opere di rivendicazione nazionale,” in Le battaglie della moda 1919–1933, Rome: Tip. Luzzati, 1934, p. 38. De Liguoro, 40. De Liguoro, 41. Roberta Orsi Landini, “Alle origini della grande moda italiana. Maria Monaci Gallenga,” in Caterina Chiarelli (ed.), Moda Femminile tra le due guerre, Florence: Sillabe, 2000; Roberta Orsi Landini, “L’artista e il sarto. I rapporti tra arte e moda nell’Italia degli anni Venti,” in Anni Venti. La nascita dell’abito moderno, Florence: Centro Di, 1991. De Liguoro, Le battaglie della moda: 1919–1933, Rome: Luzzati, 1934. Butazzi, 1922–1943. Vent’anni di moda italiana, p. 15.

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Notes 42. De Liguoro, “L’adunata dei grandi industriali serici e dell’abbigliamento.” This appeared first in Seterie d’Italia and was then collected in Le battaglie della moda, pp. 60–5. 43. De Liguoro” Impressioni e commenti alla manifestazione italo-francese,” in Le battaglie della moda, pp. 66–70. 44. De Liguoro, 69. 45. De Liguoro, 70. 46. De Liguoro, “Protesta,” from Fantasie d’Italia in Le battaglie della moda, p. 84. 47. Butazzi, 1922–1943, 16. 48. De Liguoro, “Verso una moda italiana,” Le Battaglie della moda, 89–94. 49. See Lucia Motti and Marilena Rossi Caponeri, (eds), Accademiste a Orvieto: Donne ed educazione fisica nell’Italia fascista, 1932–1943, Perugia, Quattroemme: 1996; see also Patrizia Dogliani, “Sport and Fascism,” in Journal of Modern Italian Studies 5:3 (Fall 2000): 326–43. 50. Bellezza (September 1942). 51. Bellezza (September 1942). 52. For the importance of Pucci in the postwar see White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion. America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry. 53. Enrico Mannucci, Il Marchese Rampante. Emilio Pucci: Avventure, Illusioni, Successi di un inventore della moda italiana, Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1998. 54. See Philip Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso: Fascismo e MassMedia, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1975. 55. See Butazzi, 1922–1943. The newly formed department store Rinascente, which still exists today, issued a publication called “Famiglia Rinascente.” 56. Maura Garofoli (ed.), Le fibre intelligenti. Un secolo di storia e cinquant’anni di moda, Milan: Electa, 1991; Bonizza Giordani Aragno, “Le avanguardie della moda dal 1930 a oggi,” in Garofoli. 57. This is confirmed in the interview I have conducted with Micol Fontana. 58. See Cannistraro and Brian Sullivan, Il Duce’s Other Woman, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1993. 59. See Notari Ugo, A che gioco giochiamo? Autarchia contro Xenolatria, Milan, 1938.

Chapter 3 Disciplining the Body, Language and Style 1. Cesare Meano, Commentario-Dizionario italiano della moda, Turin: ENM, 1936; the entry “Personalità,” 295. 2. Meano, 218. 3. Meano, 217.

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Notes 4. Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, New York: Hill and Wang, 1983, p. 10 5. In underlining once again the role of the Renaissance as a kind of fixed point in the turning world of fashion, it is interesting to note the number of entries in the text dedicated to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century garments that were no longer in use. In a given language, words share a similar destiny as that of the objects to which they refer. As they go out of fashion or use, they become traces of past epochs that shed light on the material culture surrounding their production. Along these lines it is inevitable to find new words designating new styles, new objects, and new textiles, as is the case of rayon, or lanital. In this vein, now discarded words like bernia (a long mantle women of the Renaissance used to wear over their dresses) or camora (dress) come back to us to evoke the past to which they belong. Verbal language in fashion is an important sign of tradition, of the use and ideology surrounding the history of dress and illustrates the fascist attempt to uniform manners and behavior. 6. Meano, 237–8. 7. Pasquale De Luca (socio dell’Accademia Pontaniana e dell Acc. Internazionale di Scienze e Lettere), Le Principali voci italiane della moda, Milan: Varietas, 1936, see also the official publications of the department stores Rinascente-UPIM, La famiglia Rinascente-UPIM, published every three months. 8. Barthes, 13. 9. Barthes, 13. 10. Meano, 261. 11. Barthes, especially the parts regarding the method: “Written Clothing,” “The Relation of Meaning,” “Between Things and Words.” 12. Meano, 379. 13. Meano, 105. 14. Meano, 105. 15. Gianna Manzini, “Il bianco nella moda,” Bellezza (May 1941): 6. 16. See Barthes, 244–5. It is interesting to see how Barthes’ assumptions about the different techniques and rhetoric of fashion writing identified in the magazines he took under consideration in 1958–9 are valid to interpret fashion writing during the fascist regime. The following paragraph is especially illuminating for our concern here: “We could say that the higher the standard of living, the more chances the proposed (written) garment has of being obtained, and denotation (the transitive character of which has been discussed) regains its powers; conversely, if the standard of living is lower, the garment cannot be obtained, denoting becomes vain, and it is then necessary to compensate for its uselessness with a system strong in connotation, whose role is to permit the utopian investment” (244). 17. Meano, 376–7. –189–

Notes 18. Meano, 200–1. 19. See Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 79. 20. See also the section “Principal features of Fashion writing” in Barthes, 228. Here Barthes illustrates the denotative and connotative functions of words and how they work in the fashion writing. 21. See on this topic, Eugenia Paulicelli, “Fashion: Nation and Narration,” in Zygmunt Baranski, Rebecca West (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 22. See Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. and Random House: New York, 1960, p. 115. A new Italian edition of Il Gattopardo, is scheduled to appear where new parts, previously censored by the family, are now added. Many of them document the Prince’s secret love for Angelica, Tancredi’s wife. The new edition will be published by Feltrinelli and is edited by Gioacchino Lanza Tommasi, the adoptive son of Lampedusa. 23. See the catalogue of the exhibition, Portava un abito . . . Obiettivo d’Annunziomoda, Associazione culturale “L’Oleandro”, Milan: Electa, 1996. 24. In Portava un abito, “Intermezzo,” 29 December 1884, p. 13. 25. In Portava un abito, “Piccolo Corriere,” p. 25. 26. Diego Calcagno, “Segreti e miracoli della lana di coniglio,” Bellezza (September, February and March, 1940–1). 27. On the theories and construction of gender during fascism, see Lucia Re, “Fascist Theories of ‘Woman’ and the Construction of Gender” in Robin Pickering-Iazzi (ed.), Mothers of Invention: Women, Italian Fascism, and Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. See also PickeringIazzi (ed.), Unspeakable Women: Selected Short Stories Written by Italian Women during Fascism, New York: The Feminist Press, 1993. 28. On the importance of a critical analysis of “escapist cinema” that also applies to my argument, see Marcia Landy, “Theatricality and Impersonation. The Politics of Style in the Cinema of the Italian Fascist Era,” in Jaqueline Reich and Piero Garofalo (eds), Re-Viewing Fascism: Italian Cinema 1922–1943, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. 29. Gianna Manzini, “Una Cena,” in Bellezza 4 (April 1941): 22–3. 30. Manzini, 22. 31. Anna Banti, “Giornata dell’inquieta,” Bellezza (1942). 32. Banti, 76. 33. Banti, “Delitto e castigo,” Bellezza (1941). 34. See Kaja Silverman, “Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse,” in Shari Benstock, Suzanne Ferris (eds), On Fashion, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994.

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Notes

Chapter 4 Dress, Style and the National Brand 1. See Stephen Gundle, “Il bel paese: Art, Beauty and the Cult of Appearance,” in Bedani and Haddock, 125; and Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 2. Maddalena Santoro, “La moda,” in Almanacco fascista del popolo d’Italia, quoted in Oreste Del Buono (ed.), preface Nicola Tranfaglia, Eia, Eia, Ei, Alalà. La stampa italiana sotto il fascismo 1919–1943, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1971. 3. Francesco Salvori, “Europa svegliati!” in Del Buono, 247. 4. Gundle, 131. 5. Meano, 1. 6. Meano, 1–2. 7. Meano, 2. 8. Benjamin, 62. 9. Meano, 364. 10. Meano, 294. 11. Ugo Rocchetti, “La donna, lo sport e il miglioramento della stirpe,” Lidel (January 1934). 12. See Castello, “Il primato mondiale femminile d’altezza,” in Lidel (January 1935). On a more commercial note, the emphasis on sport and outdoor activities also boosted the production of bathing suits made out of the new synthetic fibers. See Paolo Francesco Farinet, “L’industria della maglieria nella produzione dei costumi da bagno,” Vita Tessile 7 (July 1939): 20: “The spread of sport, the appearance of various naturalist theories and the general enthusiasm about an out of doors life style with clothes that allow freedom of movement and exposure of the body to the sun and to the air have brought about a great increase in the production of swim suits and all the accessory items that go with them [. . .] Very popular, due to their elegance and variety, are patterned swim suits made out of elastic rayon, raso, cotton and with a great use of latex.” 13. See Lucia Motti, Marilena Rossi Caponeri (eds), Accademiste a Orvieto. Donne ed educazione fisica nell’Italia fascista, 1932–1943, Perugia: Quattroemme, 1996. 14. See Gaetano Bonetta, “`L’uomo è tanto più forte quanto più sana e robusta è la donna,’ Cultura ed educazione fisica della donna,” in Motti and Caponeri. 15. Starting in 1940–1, Bellezza was the title given to the already existing magazine called Moda. 16. Lina Putelli, “Torniamo all’antico,” Per voi signora (February 1932): “The maschietta fashion, or if you prefer the fashion of the tireless Amazonian –191–

Notes

17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

women has seen its heyday. Has this come about out of an authentic necessity of the spirit, out of a real change in taste or only because the creators of haute couture wanted it that way?” Meano, 242–3. Even today we find traditions of lace and embroidery produced in different cities and Italian regions. As with ceramics the work differs in color and technique from region to region, giving a distinctive character to the local crafts. The local arts and craftsmanship do not have an easy time in our mass produced and global economy. However, there are various attempts to preserve this rich patrimony of memory and art. Micol Fontana, through her foundation, has promoted classes for embroidery so that this ancient art will be preserved for future generations. In a similar vein, a small cooperative of “Arti decorative italiane” founded in 1998 in Passignano Trasimeno aims at supporting the production and commercialization of textile products of artigianato d’Arte. Meano, 408–410. All the fashion magazines, as well as the periodicals specializing in textiles and those linked to the industry, that I have consulted, published articles related to Renaissance culture, art and textile. There are too many to list them all. Important for the argument of the present study is the emphasis given to Italy’s Renaissance past and the related question of self-awareness, identity formation and the role fashion and art played in it. See for instance, Giuseppe Fiocco commenting on the figurini by Pisanello in the article “Figurini di Pisanello,” Bellezza (1941): 39–42, where he underlines the graciously androgynous beauty and sumptuousness of both female and male clothing. See also, for instance, Doda Fabroni, “Del costume femminile dal ‘400 al ‘600 nella ceramica italiana,” Lidel 10 (October 1933): 758–61; Valentino Piccoli, “Elogio dell’eleganza,” Lidel 6 (June 1933): 370–1; Lina Putelli, “La perla,” Lidel 7 (July 1933): 440–1. In all these examples, but of course there are many more, the common thread is the emphasis on both the creativity and style of women of the Renaissance such Isabella and Beatrice D’Este, Caterina Sforza, Tullia D’Aragona, Caterina De’ Medici, etc., as well as the interaction between art and fashion, via the various artists of the day. Meano, 21. See, for instance, how, despite our globalized world economy, the work of an individual designer might be taken as the narration of the specific social and political phenomena of a particular city. I am thinking of the exhibition on the British designer Vivienne Westwood held at the Liverpool Museum in which the clothing collection of Lady Romilly McAlpine was on display. It is interesting to note how Westwood creatively re-uses tartan, a traditional fabric, to reshuffle and parodically play with the concept of British history and tradition. Westwood’s Britishness, however, turned out to be emphasized as well as her –192–

Notes

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

interpretation and narration of the London punk scene. Some of her collections, in fact are identified as a way of representing British history with a twist, mixing tradition and subcultures styles. See Catalogue of the exhibition, Vivienne Westwood, London: Philip Wilson Publishers: 2000. See Barthes, 254–5. Meano, 293. Meano, 276–7. Meano, 106. Mario Peter, ”Verso l’autarchia della moda,” L’informatore confidenziale della moda, 131 (15 November 1937). See Gian Giacomo Migone, Gli Stati Uniti e il Fascismo, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980. Elvio Fenoglio, ”La creazione della moda,” Per voi signora (December 1933). See David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era – 1880–1980, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. See Stephen Gundle, “From Neo-Realism to Luci Rosse: Cinema, Politics, Society, 1945–85,” in Baranski and Lumley, 195–224. Francesco Savio, Ma l’amore no. Realismo, formalismo, propaganda e telefoni bianchi nel cinema italiano di regime (1930–1943), Milan: Sonzogno, 1975; Savio, Cinecittà Anni Trenta. Parlano i protagonisti del secondo cinema italiano 1930–1943, 3 vols. Rome: Bulzoni, 1979; Gian Piero Brunetta, Buio in sala: 100 anni di passione dello spettatore cinematografico, Venice: Marsilio, 1989; James Hay, Popular Film Culture in Fascist Italy: The Passing of the Rex, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1986. Irene Brin, Usi e costumi. 1920–1940, Palermo: Sellerio, 1981. See also Mario Verdone (ed.), La moda e il costume nel film, Rome: Bianco e Nero, 1950. The article by Brin on fashion and cinema is also reproduced in this collection. I am quoting from Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream. Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, p. 67. Marchand, 67. On the theory of glamour, see Stephen Gundle, “Glamour and Fashion,” in Nicola White (ed.), The Business of Fashion, Oxford: Berg, 2001. Brin, 94. Barthes, “The Face of Garbo,” in Mythologies (translation by Annette Lavers), New York: Hill and Wang, 1972, p. 56. Stephen Gundle, “Film Stars and Society in Fascist Italy” in Reich and Garofalo (eds), Re-Viewing Fascism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. See on this topic, Charles Eckert, “The Carol Lombard in Macy’s Window,” in Jane Gaines and Charlotte Herzog (eds), Fabrications. Costume and the Female Body, New York: Routledge, 1990. –193–

Notes 40. See Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. 41. See Charlotte Herzog, “Powder Puff Promotion: The Fashion Show-in-theFilm,” in Fabrications. 42. I interviewed a group of working-class and lower-middle-class women from southern Italy as well as Rome. They all said that for them, cinema was indeed their source of inspiration for dress and ornaments, and was like a springboard from where to find and work for the projection of identity and their sense of good taste and style. For them, although money was a concern, having a new dress for a special holiday during the year was a source of joy and pride when they received the look of admirers during their strolls. One of them told me that one of the best dressmakers of the town used to go to cinema regularly in order to get inspiration for models to present to her customers; one of the women I interviewed also worked in the dressmaker’s shop. 43. Brin, 95. 44. Brin, 95. 45. Quoted in Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema. Clothing and Identity in the Movies, London and New York: Routledge, 1997, p. 4. 46. This intent is in fact confirmed in Blasetti’s plan of creating “entertainment films” in the late 1920s when Italian film was facing a period of stasis. See Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities. Italy, 1922–1945, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001; in particular, the chapter “Style and Identity: Creating the National Film” where she says: “In 1926, after viewing some of the first LUCE documentaries, Blasetti realized that ‘films in which the propaganda is not only not evident, but actually hidden’ would be more effective emissaries of fascist ideals. Non-Italian audiences would be especially alienated by political films, which would be ‘boycotted, rejected by the market and forbidden by foreign censors.’ The solution, Blasetti concluded, lay in creating ‘entertainment films’ that would ‘attract and convince’ audiences at home and abroad by burying their prescriptive messages within compelling dramatic or comedic narratives” (75). See also the catalogue of the exhibition at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Alessandro Blasetti. Il mestiere del cinema, Rome: Gangemi editore, 2002 47. Bruzzi analyzes in depth the role of clothing as a discourse in the movies and not, as traditionally thought, as passively adapting and translating the personality of the character and the needs of the plot and narrative. Indeed, she focuses on the fluid and multifaceted interaction with body and the formation of identity in which desire and fantasy play a key role. 48. Moda Documento, 3 (1943). 49. Bellezza (March 1942): 15.

–194–

Notes 50. The atelier Matté was active between the 1930s and 1950s. Viscardi was founded in Turin in 1904, had a branch in Rome and closed at the beginning of the 1990s. 51. Meano, 237–8. 52. See, interview with Alessandro Blasetti in Francesco Savio, Cinecittà Anni Trenta. Parlano i protagonisti del secondo cinema italiano, 1930–43, 3 vols. Rome: Bulzoni, 1979, pp. 135–6; Luca Verdone, I Film di Alessandro Blasetti, intro. Gian Luigi Rondi, Rome: Gremese, 1989; Francesco Savio, Ma l’amore no. Realismo, formalismo, propaganda e telefoni bianchi nel cinema italiano di regime (1930–1943, Milan: Sonzogno, 1975. 53. Charlotte Herzog, “Powder Puff’ Promotion: The Fashion Show-in-the-Film,” in Fabrications, 150–2.

Chapter 5 Nationalizing the Fashion Industry? 1. On the topic of women and labor in fascist Italy see Perry R. Willson, The Clockwork Factory: Women and Work in Fascist Italy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. The study focuses on a case study of a group of northern workingclass women employed in the engineering firm Magneti Marelii, one of the most modern industries in Italy at that time. 2. A social and cultural history of Italian immigration and contribution to the expansion of the US garment and ready-to-wear industries is yet to be written. See, among existing studies: Susan Hay (ed.), From Paris to Providence. Fashion, Art and the Tirocchi Dressmakers’ Shop, 1915–1947, Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, in February 2000. The exploitation of workers is, unfortunately, a trend that has not been completely eliminated in our present global economy, having shifted from one geographical space and ethnicity to another. See Andrew Ross (ed.), No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights of Garment Workers, New York: Verso, 1997; Edna Bonacich and Richard P. Applebaum, Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 3. In difficult times when material and fabric is less available, fashion magazines send messages to their readers in line with the time and its needs. In her article on Audrey Withers, the wartime British Vogue editor, Amy Spindler writes: “The tastemakers of the day worked with the government to trick women into thinking they were choosing certain styles out of desire, not necessity. Short hair wouldn’t get caught in the machinery women needed to run; so Withers ran photos of ‘the trim heads of the actresses.’ She helped popularize fashion that used as little fabric and labor as possible,” (The New York Times Magazine, December 30, 2001). –195–

Notes 4. Philip Cannistraro makes a distinction between “propaganda of agitazione,” aimed at achieving short-term results and employed by fascism in the 1919– 22 period, and “propaganda of integrazione,” which acted indirectly on the dominant political and cultural climate. The latter is the more effective and characterizes the period under consideration here. 5. Giornale Sonoro, n. 247, 1933, Rome, Luce Archive, Cinecittà. 6. Even today the combination of industry or innovative technologies and craftsmanship seems to convey and characterize, especially abroad, the image, identity and myth of Italian style. See chapter 1 of the present study. 7. Giornale Sonoro, n. 458, 1936, Rome, Luce Archive, Cinecittà. 8. I have consulted the following specialized periodicals on textiles: Fibre Tessili: Rassegna Corporativa dei problemi delle Tessili Nazionali e dell’Impero; La seta; Vita Tessile. 9. Textile manufacturers in Naples were very prominent before Italy’s unification but underwent a major crisis immediately after 1860 with the result that the whole Neapolitan economy weakened. See Christopher Duggan, A Concise History of Italy, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 10. E.R. Lancellotti, “I tessili artificiali,” in Vita Tessile 7 (1939): 11–12. 11. See Carlo Marco Belfanti, unpublished paper, “Knitwear and Stockings: Five Centuries of Knitwear History in Italy.” This is the longer version of a paper Belfanti gave to the International Conference on Italian Fashion: Identities, Transformation, Production,” (New York City, October 30–31, 2002). For further reference see chapter 1 of the present study. 12. Cesare G. Marchesini, “I primati degli antichi setaioli bolognesi,” La seta 1: 2 (January/February): 15–16. 13. See Garofoli Maura (ed.), Le fibre intelligenti. Un secolo di storia e cinquant’anni di moda, Milan: Electa, 1991. 14. See Gian Giacomo Mingone, Gli Stati Uniti e il fascsismo. Alle origini dell’egemonia americana in Italia, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980. 15. Quoted in Aspesi, Il Lusso e L‘Autarchia. Storia dell’eleganza italiana, 1930– 1944, Milan: Rizzoli, 1982, p. 41. 16. See Francesco Bonami, Maria Luisa Frisa, Stefano Tonchi (eds), Uniform: Order and Disorder, Milan: Charta, 2000. 17. See Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism” in Against Interpretation and Other Essays, New York: Octagon Books, 1978. 18. Decree n.1057, April 28, 1937 and Law n. 80, January 27, 1938 in Raccolta ufficiale delle leggi e dei decreti del Regno d’Italia, Rome, 1937–38. 19. ENM, La valorizzazione delle fibre tessili e la moda, ENM, December 1936, p. 5. 20. Personal interview with Fernanda Gattinoni, Rome, June 2000. Fernanda Gattinoni worked for Molyneaux in London and from the mid 1930s for the presti–196–

Notes

21. 22.

23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

28. 29.

gious Ventura fashion house prior to opening her own atelier in Rome. Here she attracted as clients the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Claire Booth Luce, the American Ambassador to Italy, Anna Magnani and others. See G. Vergani , Maria Pezzi. Una vita dentro la moda, Milan: Skira, 1998, pp. 9–10. R.D.L. 26 June 1936, n.1321, “Disciplina della produzione e riproduzione di modelli di vestiario e di accessori per l’abbigliamento.” The decree became Law n. 666 on January 18, 1937; Corporazione dell’Abbigliamento, Le modifiche alla legge sulla “marca di garanzia”, in Rassegna dell’ENM, 15– 30 September, 1939, pp. 4–8 (Gnoli , p. 90 and p. 99). R.D.L. April 20, 1939, “Il nuovo decreto sulle miscele tessili obbligatorie,” published in La Seta 4 (April 1939) 103–4. The periodical Vita Tessile published several articles that singled out fibers and described their qualities, uses and the geographical areas more suitable for their cultivation. See for instance, E.R. Lancellotti, “Le fibre autarchiche. Il Ramì’,” Vita Tessile, 5 (May 1939): 13–16. In his Commentario, Meano exalts the success of the Italian production of “intelligent fibers” in the 1930s. Indeed, his entries on textiles are amongst the most patriotic and nationalistic in tone, but not paradoxically in their language. In this context, only the term internationally known as rayon is italianized as raion. Meano says, in fact, that: “A conventional and international name was chosen for such fibres: and this name was rayon. So we were and are happy to replace the exotic y with our more parochial i. Ironically, almost all the names given to artificial fibers in Italy had exotic names, perhaps a marketing ploy aimed to attract more customers, especially abroad, with their modern flair and sound like ramì, bemberg, rhodia, viscol, albene, etc. Meano, however, domesticated and Italianized only the y of rayon, not lanital, the synthetic wool, a term that is a combination of the words lana (wool) and Italia, as it was invented in Italy in 1935. See Meano, 210–11 and 313–14. See Flavia Travaglini, “L’affascinante favola della moda italiana,” Tesi di Laurea, Accademia di Moda e Costume, Roma 1997–8. I wish to thank Bonizza Giordani Aragno for bringing this work to my attention. Natalia Aspesi, Il Lusso e l’autarchia, Milan: Rizzoli, 1982, p. 77. “Le uniformi in Orbace,” in La Nazione, quoted in Oreste Del Buono (ed.), Eia, Eia, Eia, Alalà. La stampa italiana sotto il fascismo, 1919–1943, Milan: Feltrinelli, p. 248. “Le fibre tessili,” in Dea (November 1937): 43. Gnechi Ruscone, A., “La moda” in Anni Trenta. Arte e Cultura in Italia, Milan: Mazzotta, 1982, p. 343. See also Karen Pinkus, Bodily Regime: Italian Advertising Under Fascism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995, especially the section on rayon, pp. 213–28. –197–

Notes 30. Fibre Tessili 6 (1939): 286. 31. Interestingly, hemp is currently used by high fashion designers in order to project an ecofriendly and all-natural look. See Ruth La Ferla “Fashionistas, Eco-friendly and All-Natural,” The New York Times, Sunday July 15, 2001, Sunday Styles, pp. 1–2. 32. Quoted in Grazietta Butazzi, “Gli anni Trenta. La moda italiana si mette a confronto, tra autarchia e nuove prospettive,” in Moda femminile tra le due guerre, Catalogue of the Exhibition, Florence: Sillabe, 2000, p. 18. 33. “La Federtessili all’esposizione di New York,” in Fibre Tessili 7 (July 1939). 34. The telegram by Starace is reproduced in Fibre Tessili 3 (March 1939): 91. 35. Loris Carreri, “L’apporto economico e sociale dei magazzini d’ammasso,” in Fibre Tessili 1 (January 1939): 4–7. 36. Riccardo Del Giudice, “Autarchia Tessile. Contributo dei lavoratori del commercio” in Fibre Tessili 5 (1939): 14. 37. Del Giudice, 14. 38. Cinegiornale n. C0033, Archivio Luce, Rome, Cinecittà, 1938. 39. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Il poema non umano dei tecnicismi, Milan: Mondadori, 1940. See Cinzia Sartini Blum, The Other Modernism: F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Fiction of Power, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, especially the sections “Fashioning a Fascist Discourse” and “Pathetic Fallacy in the Technological Mythopoeia,” pp. 140–5. 40. Volt, (Vincenzo Fani),” Futurist Manifesto of Women’s Fashion” in Mary Ann Caws (ed.), Manifesto. A Century of Isms, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. 41. Volt, in Caws, 540. 42. For more on this see Pinkus, Bodily Regimes. Advertising Under Fascism. 43. In Bodily Regime Pinkus limits her analysis to the impact of colonial Italy in advertising and representation of blacks. To the best of my knowledge no work has been done on the impact colonial Italy had on fashion, design and the creation of identities both male and female. 44. See Angelo Del Boca and Nicola Labanca, L’impero africano del fascismo nelle fotografie dell’Istituto Luce, Rome: Editori Riuniti-Istituto Luce, 2002; see also Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia. Tripoli bel suol d’amore, 1860–1922, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1986 and Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa orientale, 4 vols, Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1976–84; Nicola Labanca, Storia dell’Italia coloniale, Milano: Fenice, 2000. 45. Mario Scaparro, “Tripolitania,” in Lidel, April, 1934; in the article Scaparro’s book is mentioned : L’artigianato tripolino, Tripoli: Edizione Maggi. No date is furnished, but most probably would be the same date as the article 1934. 46. See for instance, Giulietta Martini, “Eterno Femminino nero nei libri del nostro esploratore,” Lidel (March 1935): 252–3; Ernesto Quadrone, “Mudundu. –198–

Notes

47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54.

55.

56.

Il film italiano realizzato in Africa dalla spedizione cine-giornalistica de “La Stampa”, Lidel (June 1935): 356–8. The author of the article also published a book of the same title, Milan: Marangoni, 1935; Varo Varanini,” La donna abissina,”Lidel (July 1935): 412–13. P. H. Coronedi, “L’artigianato tessile italiano alla IX Mostra-Mercato di Firenze,” Fibre Tessili 6 (June 1939): 287; the two terms “meharista” and “sciamma” that we see in this article have their origin in the Italian colonial experience, the first refers to the Arab soldier who fought with colonial troops and the second refers to an ample shawl in soft white cotton which was used as a robe by Ethiopians. See Tullio De Mauro, Grande dizionario della lingua dell’uso. See Nicola White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion and chapter 4 of the present study. Gucci, the world-known luxury brand, was founded by Guccio Gucci in Florence in 1921 and at first was a handicraft business. Lucio Ridenti, “La rassegna del Tessile e dell’abbigliamento autarchico,” Bellezza (September, 1941): 39–41. See, Gloria Bianchino (ed.), Erberto Carboni: Dal Futurismo al Bauhaus, Milano: Mazzotta, 1998 Irene Brin, “I Grandi Magazzini,” in Usi e Costumi, Palermo: Sellerio, pp. 37– 8. Grazietta Butazzi, “Gli anni Trenta. La moda italiana si mette a confronto, tra autarchia e nuove prospettive,” in Caterina Chiarelli ed., Moda Femminile tra le due guerre, Florence: Sillabe, 2000, p. 15. Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico Famigliare, Turin: Einaudi, 1963, pp. 116–17: “Paola too had come to Turin. She lived on the hills outside the city in a big white house with a circular balcony that gave onto the river Po. [. . .] Now she had a great many clothes. She had them made by the best dressmakers, but she also called on Tersilla. In fact, my mother and she argued about who should have her. Paola said that Tersilla gave her a sense of security. She gave her a sense of continuity in life.” Ginzburg also mentions that her brother Alberto went to a tailor for his suits: “Alberto had his suits made by a tailor whose name was Vittorio Foa. Alberto used to say, as the tailor took his measurements: “I come to you for your name!” (116). Vittorio Foa, in fact, was also the name of a well-known anti-fascist friend of her brother Alberto Levi. See C. Poggiali, Ferdinando Bocconi, Milan: Editoriale Domus, 1945 and Franco Amatori, “In Italia: l’esperienza della ditta Bocconi,” in Proprieta’ e Direzione. La Rinascente 1917–1969, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989, pp. 24–34. M. B. Miller, The Bon Marché. Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981; H. Pasdermadjian, The Department Store. Its Origins, Evolution and Economics, London: Newman Books, –199–

Notes

57.

58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

68.

69.

1954; R.M. Hower, History of Macy’s of New York. 1858–1919, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943. As to Italy, a complete history of the origin of department stores is yet to be written. However, the study by Franco Amatori, Proprieta’ e Direzione. La Rinascente 1917–1969, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989, offers useful background data on the topic as well as a thorough analysis of the years in which the Rinascente was founded and expanded during the 1930s. Other references can be found in the periodical La Famiglia Rinascente-UPIM, published in the late 1930s. Amatori, especially the first chapter “Introduzione. All’origine del grande magazzino. 1. In Europa e negli Stati Uniti: Aspetti socio-economici e organizzativi; 2. In Italia: l’esperienza della ditta Bocconi.; and Rossano Zezzos, “60 anni fa,” La Famiglia Rinascente-UPIM (March 1939): 60–2. See Amatori. See Nancy L. Green, Ready-to Wear Ready-to Work. A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York, Durham-London: Duke University Press, 1997. Giornale Luce, n. B1620, Archivio Luce, Rome, Cinecittà, 1939. Giornale Luce, n. B1669, Archivio Luce, Rome, Cinecittà, 1940. Giornale Luce, n. 370, Luce Archive, Rome Cinecittà,1933. Giornale Luce, n.35, Luce Archive, Rome, Cinecittà, 1934. Emile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, trans. and intro. by Brian Nelson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Quoted in Jaqueline Reich, “Consuming Ideologies: Fascism, Commodification, and Female Subjectivity in Mario Camerini’s Grandi Magazzini,” in R. Dombroski, D. Cervigni (eds), Annali d’Italianistica, 16 (2000): 208. See Reich, 195–212. For the notion of social immobility in Grandi Magazzini see Barbara Spackman, “Shopping for Autarchy. Fascism and Reproductive Fantasy in Mario Camerini’s Grandi Magazzini” in Reich and Garofalo. Again, the magazine La Famiglia Rinascente-UPIM called attention to the display of goods in the shop windows, which were also used to sell and spread the propaganda for the regime. This confirms the proliferation of advertising agencies and other publications which gave instruction in the new marketing techniques. As we discussed in the previous chapter, women made up the majority of an increasing number of consumers. The articles contained in Famiglia Rinascente-UPIM, confirm this trend with the presence of a number of courses in home economics offered to female employees as well as detailed instructions, sometimes in the form of a short story, to teach women to be responsible consumers. See “Rassegna dell’Ente Nazionale della Moda,” 15–30 April, 1940; Congresso Nazionale Abbigliamento e Autarchia: Relazioni e Riassunti di Comunicazioni Presentate, Ente Nazionale della Moda, Turin, June, 1940. –200–

Notes 70. Vittorio Pirera, “La produzione dei bottoni e delle fibbie in Italia,” 201–5. 71. Salvatore Ferragamo, “Problemi Tecnici e Autarchici nell’arte delle calzature italiane femminili,” in Congresso, 390–6. 72. Gabriella De Bosdari Di Robilant, “Possibilità di affermazione dell’alta moda italiana all’estero,” in Congresso, 145–7. 73. See Umberto Turba, “Lo sviluppo delle confezioni in serie femminili in Italia e le possibilità di esportazione,” in Congresso, 33–7. 74. A. Volker, Moda Wiener Werkstaette, Florence: Cantini, 1990. 75. “Lavori della corporazione dell’abbigliamento,” in Rassegna dell’Ente Nazionale della moda (April 1940): 13–18. 76. Rassegna, 13. 77. Rassegna, 14. 78. White, Reconstructing Italian fashion. America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry, Oxford: Berg, 2000. 79. Francesco Rosso, “Lo sviluppo della confezione maschile in serie in Italia,” 120–8 and Alessandro Rivetti, “La possibilità di esportazione nell’industria delle confezioni in serie da uomo,” in Congresso, 163–6;. 80. See White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion, 68. 81. Rassegna, 122. 82. Umberto Turba, “Lo sviluppo delle confezioni in serie femminili in Italia,” 34–5. 83. In Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Le amiche (The girlfriends), an adaptation of Cesare Pavese’s novella Tra donne sole, the protagonist Clelia, a manager of a Roman fashion house that is about to open a branch in Turin, affirms that she needed to redirect the fashion collection towards the different taste of the northern clientele. She says, in fact, that wealthy women in Turin spend more money for their clothes, but want them to appear understated; whereas in Rome exactly the contrary is the case. Indeed, these differences can be noted not only in Italian cities, but in any Western country, despite the globalization of the economy. There is, it seems, still a style that characterizes cities and countries. 84. Moda Documento 3 (Summer 1943). These are rare documents, many of which were misplaced after the war and published later only in very limited copies. I have consulted n. 82, thanks to the private archive of Bonazzi Giordani Aragno in Rome. 85. See Meano, 396–8.

Chapter 6 Conclusion 1. Giovanni De Luna and Marco Revelli, Fascismo e Antifascismo, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1998. –201–

Notes 2. Forgacs, “Mass Media and the National Community” in Bedani and Haddock, 152; Luisa Passerini, Torino operaia e fascismo, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1984; Luisa Passerini, Storia e soggetività: le fonti orali, la memoria, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1988. 3. See for instance among the first feminist approaches to fashion, Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London: Virago, 1985; Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985; Caroline Evans and Minna Thornton (eds), Women and Fashion: A New Look, London: Quartet Books, 1989. 4. Giacomo Leopardi, “Dialogue between Fashion and Death” in Operette Morali. Essays and Dialogues, Translated with introduction and notes by Giovanni Cecchetti, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982, 67. 5. Leopardi, 69. 6. Leopardi, 71. 7. Stephen Gundle and Rèka C.V. Buckley, “Glamour and Fashion,” in Nicola White ( ed.) The Fashion Business. Theory, Practice, Image, Oxford, New York: Berg, 2001, 54; see also by the same authors “Flash Trash. Gianni Versace and the Theory and Practice of Glamour” in Stella Bruzzi, Pamela Church Gibson (eds), Fashion Cultures. Theories, Explorations and Analysis, London,New York: Routledge, 2000. 8. Gilles Deleuze, The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque, foreword and trans. Tom Conley, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. See in particular the chapters, “The Pleats of Matter,” 3–13 and “Perception in the Folds,” 85– 99. 9. Deleuze, 89. 10. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 69. 11. See Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing. Walter Benjamin and The Arcades Project, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989, 276.

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Notes

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Bibliography Pinkus, Karen, Bodily Regimes: Italian Advertising Under Fascism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Pirera, Vittorio, “La produzione dei bottoni e delle fibbie in Italia,” in Congresso Nazionale Abbigliamento e Autarchia: Relazioni e Riassunti di comunicazioni presentate, Turin: ENM, 1940. Poggiali, C., Ferdinando Bocconi, Milan: Editoriale Domus, 1945. Putelli, Lina, “La perla,” Lidel 7 (July 1933): 440–1. ——. “Torniamo all’antico,” Per voi signora (February 1937). Quadrone, Ernesto, “Mudundu. Il film italiano realizzato in Africa dalla spedizione cine-giornalistica de “La Stampa”, Lidel (June 1935): 356–8. ——. Mudundu. Il film italiano realizzato in Africa dalla spedizione cine-giornalistica de “La Stampa”, Milan: Marangoni, 1935. Quondam, Amedeo, “Libro del sarto. La virtù dipinta: noterelle (e divagazioni) guazziane intorno a Classico e institutio in antico regime,” in Stefano Guazzo e la civil conversazione ed. Patrizi, Rome: Bulzoni, 1990. Re, Lucia, “Fascist Theories of ‘Woman’ and the Construction of Gender,” in Pickering-Iazzi 1995. Reich, Jaqueline and Piero Garofalo (eds), Re-Viewing Fascism: Italian Cinema 1922–1943, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Reich, “Consuming Ideologies: Fascism, Commodification, and Female Subjectivity in Mario Camerini’s Grandi Magazzini,” in Robert Dombroski and Dino Cervigni (eds), Annali d’Italianistica 16 (2000). Ribuoli, Patrizia, “Le uniformi civili nel Regime Fascista,” in Butazzi 1980. Ridenti, Lucio, “La rassegna del Tessile e dell’abbigliamento autarchico,” Bellezza (September, 1941): 39–41. Rivetti, Alessandro, “La possibilità di esportazione nell’industria delle confezioni in serie da uomo,” in Congresso Nazionale Abbigliamento e Autarchia: Relazioni e Riassunti di Comunicazioni Presentate, Ente Nazionale della Moda, Turin, June, 1940, 163–6. Rocchetti, Ugo, “La donna, lo sport e il miglioramento della stirpe,” Lidel (January 1934). Ross, Andrew, “Made in Italy: The Trouble with Craft Capitalism,” paper delivered at the Conference “Italian Fashion: Identities, Transformation, Production,” held at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, October 30– 31, 2002. ——. (ed.), No Sweat. Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights of Garment Workers, Verso: New York, 1997. Rosso, Francesco, “Lo sviluppo della confezione maschile in serie in Italia,” in Congresso Nazionale Abbigliamento e Autarchia: Relazioni e Riassunti di Comunicazioni Presentate, Ente Nazionale della Moda, Turin, June, 1940, 120– 8. –211–

Bibliography Ruscone, A. Gnechi, “La moda” in Anni Trenta. Arte e Cultura in Italia, Milan: Mazzotta, 1982. Salvori, Francesco, “Europa svegliati!” in Del Buono 1971, 247. Santoro, Maddalena, “La moda,” in Almanacco fascista del popolo d’Italia, quoted in Del Buono 1971. Sartini Blum, Cinzia, The Other Modernism: F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Fiction of Power, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Sassoon, Donald, “Review of Nicola White’s Reconstructing Italian Fashion,” Modern Italy, Journal of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy 6:2 (November 2001): 251. Savio, Francesco, Ma l’amore no. Realismo, formalismo, propaganda e telefoni bianchi nel cinema italiano di regime (1930–1943), Milan: Sonzogno, 1975. Scaparro, Mario, L’artigianato tripolino, Tripoli: Edizione Maggi, 1934. ——. “Tripolitania,” in Lidel (April, 1934). ——. Cinecittà Anni Trenta. Parlano i protagonisti del secondo cinema italiano, 1930–1943, 3 vols. Rome: Bulzoni, 1979. Silverman, Kaja, “Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse,” in Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferris (eds), On Fashion, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Sontag, Susan, “Fascinating Fascism,” in Against Interpretation and Other Essays, New York: Octagon Books, 1978. Spackman, Barbara, Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996. ——. “Shopping for Autarchy. Fascism and Reproductive Fantasy in Mario Camerini’s Grandi Magazzini,” in Reich and Garofalo 2002. Steele, Valerie, Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. ——. “The Italian Look,” in Malossi 1999. ——. Fashion, Italian Style, New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2003. Tinagli, Paola, Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation and Identity, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Tomasi di Lampedusa, Giuseppe, The Leopard, New York: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. and Random House, 1960. Travaglini, Flavia, “L’affascinante favola della moda italiana,” Tesi di Laurea, Accademia di Moda e Costume, Roma 1997–98. Turba, Umberto, “Lo sviluppo delle confezioni in serie femminili in Italia e le possibilita di esportazione,” in Congresso Nazionale Abbigliamento e Autarchia: Relazioni e Riassunti di Comunicazioni Presentate, Ente Nazionale della Moda, Turin, June, 1940, 33–37. Turbin, Carole, Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class, and Community in Troy, 1864–86, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. –212–

Bibliography Valesio, Paolo, Gabriele D’Annunzio. The Dark Flame, New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1992. Varanini, Varo,” La donna abissina,” Lidel (July 1935): 412–13. Verdone, Luca, I Film di Alessandro Blasetti, introduction by Gian Luigi Rondi, Rome: Gremese, 1989. Verdone, Mario (ed.), La moda e il costume nel film, Rome: Bianco e Nero, 1950. Vergani, G. Dizionario della moda, Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1999. —— and Maria Pezzi, Una vita dentro la moda, Milan: Skira, 1998. Volker, A., Moda Wiener Werkstaette, Florence: Cantini, 1990. Volli, Ugo, “The Difficult Identity,” in Malossi 1999, 36–44. Volt (pseud. Vincenzo Fani), “Futurist Manifesto of Women’s Fashion” in Caws 2001. White, Nicola, Reconstructing Italian Fashion: America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry, Oxford: Berg, 2000. —— (ed.), The Business of Fashion, Oxford: Berg, 2001. Williams, Rosalind, Dream World: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Wilson, Elizabeth, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London: Virago, 1985. Willson, Perry R., The Clockwork Factory: Women and Work in Fascist Italy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Zezzos, Rossano, “60 anni fa,” La Famiglia Rinascente-UPIM (March 1939): 60– 2. Zola, Emile, The Ladies’ Paradise, trans. and intro. Brian Nelson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

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Index

Index accessories, 54, 116, 136–7, 143 Adrian, 89 advertising cosmetic and perfumes, 39, 87, 114–15 costumes in films, 89 during wartime, 144–5 in Grandi magazzini, 135 aesthetics Calcagno’s writing on fabrics, 67 D’Annunzio, 66, 78 early 16th century Italy, 12 and fascist ideology, 78, 107 Genoni’s ideas, 30, 32 and Italian identity, 1–3 and nationalism, 148 Africa see Ethiopia; Libya Albanese, Fortunato, 28, 42–3, 44, 46 Alberti, Leon Battista, I Libri della famiglia, 8 Alermo, Sibilla, 39 Alfieri, Dino, 112 Alle città d’Italia see Bocconi Brothers Amarcord (film), 147 Le Amiche (film), 201n angora rabbit hair, 67, 108 anti-fascism, in Amarcord, 147 anti-semitism, 129 Armani, Giorgio, 3, 145 art and artists De Liguoro’s promotion of, 45 fashion drawings, 39 Genoni’s views, 29–30 and Monaci Gallenga’s designs, 45–6 papers for National congress of clothing and autarchy, 142 artisans, 31, 45, 81, 167 Austria, 138 autarchy fabrics and fashion, 54, 55, 63, 101, 105–6, 107, 108, 110–12, 128, 142, 143 Mussolini’s declaration of, 101

Aux Ville d’Italie see Bocconi Brothers L’Avanti, 35 aviation, women, 80 Balla, Giacomo, 33–4 Balzac, Honoré de, 10, 151, 152 Banti, Anna, 38, 67, 68, 150 short story “Delitto e castigo” (Crime and Punishment), 71–2 short story “Giornata dell’inquieta” (A day of the restless woman), 69–71 Barthes, Roland, 58, 61, 63, 87, 148–9 Battilocchi (fashion house), 55, 162 Baudelaire, Charles, 10, 40 beauty centrality to fascist project, 75 in colonial context, 114 in Commentario dizionario, 58, 60, 78, 79 Genoni’s ideas, 30 ideals in cinema screen idols, 86 industries, 39 Renaissance texts on, 8, 11–12 Belfanti, Carlo Marco, 102–4, 182n bella figura, rhetoric, 6, 10, 13–14, 76, 123, 144 Bellezza, 4, 14, 62–3, 66–7, 81, 89, 90, 113, 116 during World War II, 54 photos, 51–3, 53, 103, 117–20, 171–3, 175–8 short stories, 67, 68–73 Bellonci, Goffredo, 39 Benjamin, Walter, 4, 30, 40, 79, 150 Arcades Project, 65, 151–3 bicycles, 79 Biella, 139 Biki (fashion house), 128, 150, 162 Binello Sisters (fashion house), 169, 172 black shirt, 77, 106–7, 142 Blasetti, Alessandro, 96, 194n

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Index see also Contessa di Parma Blum, Cinzia Sartini, 112 Bocconi Brothers (department store), 123–4 Bologna, 110 Bon Marché (department store), 123 Borletti, Senator, 124 Botticelli, Sandro, 31, 82 Bounous, 176 Brin, Irene, 86, 87, 88, 121 Bronzino, Agnolo, 5 Brunelleschi, 47–8 Bruzzi, Stella, 89, 180n business ties with Europe and USA, 106 today’s corporate concerns, 10 Butazzi, Grazietta, 99 Calcagno, Diego, 66–7 Calderini, Emma, 21 Calogero, Don, 65 Camerini, Mario see Grandi magazzini Campanella, Tommaso, 62 Cannistraro, Philip, 99–100 Il Duce’s Other Woman (with Sullivan), 55 capitalism, 99, 130–1 Carboni, Erberto, surrealistic installations, 116, 117, 118, 119–21, 119, 120 Carducci, Giosué, 59, 79 Casa, Giovanni Della, Il Galateo ovvero dei costumi (Book on Etiquette and Manners), 8 Castiglione, Baldassare, 76, 150 Il libro del cortegiano (The book of the courtier), 6, 8, 9–10, 12, 13, 14 Centro sperimentale di cinematografia (CSC), 86, 90, 143 Chanel, Coco, 89 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 9 children’s clothes, Rinascente catalogue, 126 China, migrant labor from, 154, 179n La chiosa, 45 Chirico, Giorgio de, 120 Christian, Linda, 161 Ciano, Edda (Mussolini’s daughter), 54, 161, 162 Cinecittà, 86, 89, 90, 143, 160 Cinegiornali, 128 see also Giornale Luce newsreels cinema

Hollywood, 26, 37–8, 39, 86, 87, 88–9, 95–6, 137, 160 importance to fashion and politics, 86–91, 148 relationship with fashion and sport, 50 see also films Cinema (journal), 86 Cines, 86 Cinquecento, court, 10 cisalfa, 108 class, and fashion, 148 clothing and culture, 2 ENM’s concerns with, 107 fascist propagandistic writings, 66–7 Futurist project, 33–5, 46 Renaissance concerns, 9–10, 12 standardization, 45 clothing industry colonial wear, 115–16, 128 De Liguoro’s views on women workers, 49 exhibitions, 115–16, 116–21 fascist policies to regulate, 20–1, 107–8 Genoni’s concern with, 33 importance of Turin, 43–4 papers for National congress of clothing and autarchy, 138–40 workers’ demands, 43 see also made-to-measure clothing; ready-towear industry coats, 54, 92, 169, 174, 175, 178 colonialism articles in magazines and newspapers, 113–15 clothing for uniforms, 128 trade exhibition, 113, 115–16 colors Futurist fashion, 34, 35 Manzini’s article on white, 62 in Meano’s Commentario, 61, 64 Comitato Italiano Abbigliamento (Italian clothing committee), Milan, 44 Commentario Dizionario della Moda (Meano), 15, 24, 36–7, 57–67 passim descriptions of women, 81–4 and nationalism, 75–8, 82, 148 and sport, 79–81 Como, 45, 47

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Index Confederazione fascista dei lavoratori e del commercio (Fascist confederation of workers and commerce), 110 consumption, 85, 107 of US-produced goods, 37–8, 85, 88 in Zola’s The Ladies’ Paradise, 130–1 Conte, Gian Giacomo del, 9 Contessa di Parma (film), 85–6, 87, 89, 91–7, 128, 133 Contex (fashion house), 174 Corporazioni dei prodotti tessili e dell’abbigliamento (Corporations of textile products and clothing), 107, 107–8, 139 Corriere della sera, 84 Corriere Padano, 47 Il cortegiano (Castiglione) see Il libro del cortegiano cosmetics advertising, 39, 87 Renaissance texts on, 11–12 craftsmanship Libyan, 113–14 promotion of, 32, 43, 45, 167 regime’s emphasis on, 128 women’s skills, 122 see also embroidery; handicrafts; lace Crawford, Joan, 86, 88, 89 Crispi, Francesco, 113 Cubism, 40 cultural politics, fascism, 47, 60, 78, 129 cultural transformations, 26–7, 85 culture American influence, 26, 85, 88 dolce vita, 1 and identity, 153–4 importance of fashion and dress, 2 Renaissance tradition, 153 standardization, 11, 21 see also popular culture Dada, 37 Dali, Salvador, 40, 119 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 60, 66, 67, 78, 124 D’Avalos, Alfonso, 9 De Bosdari Di Robilant, Gabriella, 137–8 De Cespedes, Alba, 38, 67, 68, 150 short story “Eva e le piume” (Eva and the feathers), 71, 72–3

De Grazia, Victoria, 17–19, 20 De Liguoro, Lydia Dosio, 39, 41–2, 43–4, 46–50, 55, 82 De Luna, Giovanni, 147 decorative arts Genoni’s promotion of, 31 Renaissance, 82 see also embroidery; lace Del Boca, Angelo, 113 Del Giudice, Riccardo, 110 Delaunay, Sonia, 40 Deledda, Grazia, 39 Deleuze, Gilles, 151–2 De Medici Paolo (Antiflex Fur), 175 department stores American, 88 catalogues, 125, 126, 127 France, 40 history of, 123–8 modernity, 121–2 setting of Grandi magazzini, 130, 131–4, 135 in Zola’s The Ladies’ Paradise, 130–1 Depero, Fortunato, 33 D’Este, Beatrice, 28 D’Este, Isabella, 28, 42, 85 Diesel, 3 Dietrich, Marlene, 86 Difesa della razza, 129 Dolce & Gabbana, 3 dolce vita, 1–2 La donna, 4, 21–3, 22, 23 La donna italiana, 27 Dopolavoro associations, 110 dress see clothing dresses, 4, 54, 170 see also gowns dressmakers, 42, 88, 122, 144–5 Ducale company, Parma, 115 Dudovich, Marcello, 39, 142, 143 EAMPNM (Ente autonomo per la mostra permanente nazionale della moda (National fashion body), 21 economy aim for self-sufficiency, 54–5, 89, 110 autarchy declared by Mussolini, 101 De Liguoro’s concerns, 47, 55

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Index “do not buy” response to crisis, 44–5 and Genoni’s promotion of fashion industry, 42 imposition of sanctions on Italy, 54–5, 101, 137, 139 role of fashion, 5, 33, 42, 47, 51, 75–6 ties with USA and Europe, 106 transformations, 85 and women after World War I, 37 elegance, 11, 54, 58, 86 Elena of Savoy, Queen of Italy, 100 emancipation, link with goal of national identity, 75 embroidery bandera, 81 promotion of, 30–1, 45, 167 regional costume, 19 skills, 122 England, 9, 12, 129 see also Great Britain English language, D’Annunzio, 66 ENM (Ente Nazionale della Moda, National fashion body), 42, 44, 47, 49–50, 81, 91, 94, 122 aims, 54, 90, 137 complaints against, 137–8, 142–3 and development of textile industry, 99, 107, 113 institution of certificate of guarantee, 140–1 papers for National congress of clothing and autarchy, 128, 136–42 propaganda aimed at Italian women, 100–1 publishing of Commentario dizionario, 15, 24, 57–8, 75, 83 regulation of fashion for self-sufficiency, 54–5, 89, 136 role in film industry, 89–90 trade mark, 24 Ente nazionale artigianato e piccole industrie (National body for crafts and small industries), 21 Ente Tessile Nazionale (National textile body), 107, 118 Ernst, Max, 120 eroticism, writings on clothes and fabrics, 65, 66, 67 Ethiopia, 54, 101, 113, 125, 128 Europe

cinema, 86, 87 economic ties with, 106 social transformations and effect on consumption, 88 Evans, Caroline, 37 evening wear, 31, 161, 162 exhibitions colonial art, 114 documented by Cinegiornali, 128 organized by ENM, 94, 100–1 recent, 179–80n regulation of, 21 textiles, 47, 108, 109–10, 110–13, 116–21 exoticism articles on colonies, 114–16 images of women, 129 Exposition internationale des arts decoratifs et industriels modernes, Paris (1925), 33, 45 fabrics De Liguoro’s promotion of, 45 discourse of Commentario dizionario, 57, 64, 65 in Moda Documento, 143–4, 144 Renaissance insights into, 11 success of Italian design and production, 143 in Venice exhibition of textiles and autarchic clothing, 119–20 writings on eroticism of, 66, 67 see also textiles; under different fabrics Facis (ready-to-wear company), 139 Fairchild Publications, 48 La Famiglia Rinascente-UPIM , 111, 114, 115, 123, 124, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138, 144, 200n Fani, Vincenzo see Volt Fantasie d’Italia, 47 Fasci femminili milanesi, 44–5 Fasci giovanili di combattimento, 17 fascism ambivalent policy towards women, 17–20, 25, 27, 81, 129 concern with link between fashion and cinema, 89–91 contradictions in ideology, 27, 54, 154 De Liguoro’s sympathies, 44–5, 46–50 disapproval of concept of “new woman”, 36–7, 46, 93 economic ties before World War II, 106

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Index emphasis on regional costume, 20–3 failure of nationalizing project, 142–3, 154 and Futurism, 35 and Germany, 129 importance of Meano’s Commentario, 60, 75 and the textile industry, 99, 107–8 Turin’s importance to, 43 uniforms, 77, 106–7, 108, 128, 139, 142 fascist period continuity with, pre-fascist period, 27, 82 and the Renaissance, 14, 32, 76 role of fashion in creation of national identity, 2, 14–15, 20, 21, 26, 46, 75–8, 84, 95, 100, 143, 153 role of fashion designers in fascist project, 15 fashion aim of study, 13 dual function and theory of, 147–9, 149 in early 16th century Italy, 11, 12 and feminism, 32,149 and Italian identity, 1–3, 59 materiality, 4 and national identity in fascist policy, 2, 14–15, 20, 21, 26, 46, 59, 75–8, 84, 95, 100, 143, 148, 153 relationship with cinema, 50 relationship with sport, 50, 54, 79–80 study of and recent publications, 3–6 fashion catalogues, 9 department stores, 125, 126, 127 fashion houses, 44, 92, 137, 145 and certificate of guarantee, 140 and Contessa di Parma, 92 copying of French models, 55 costumes for film, 89, 91–2, 137, 164, 165–6 creations illustrated in Bellezza, 63 see also under names of fashion houses fashion industry Albanese’s ideas, 42–3 creativity during World War II, 143–4, 145 De Liguoro’s vision, 44–5, 46–7 exploitation of domestic resources and inventiveness, 75–6, 101 Genoni’s promotion of, 28–9, 33, 41–2 lack of independence in Italy, 40 Mussolini’s policies, 20–1, 51, 54, 85, 124 tradition of knitwear and stockings, 102–4 see also ENM

fashion magazines and periodicals, 15, 32, 38–9, 64, 86, 101, 192n articles on sport and new image of woman, 39, 51–3, 80 coverage of national trade exhibition, 113 fostering of consumption of Italian goods, 75–6 image of Garbo, 87 short stories, 38, 67 wartime advice on outfits, 144–5 women’s major role in, 150 fashion schools campaigns for, 28, 43 Genoni’s campaigning for, 28 fashion shows in Contessa di Parma, 94, 96 during World War II, 145 documented by Luce newsreel, 128–9 influence of Renaissance on, 14 Lido of Venice, 47 Parisian, 109 promoting silk industry, 47–8 regulation of, 21 SNIA-Viscosa, 111 Federazione nazionale fascista degli artigiani e le piccole industrie (National fascist organization of silk producers), 113 Federazione nationale fascista degli industriali della seta (National fascist organization of silk producers), 104–5 Federazione nazionale fascista dell’abbilgliamento (National fascist federation of clothing), 47, 49 Federcanapa, 109, 110 Fellini, Federico, 147 femininity in Commentario, 80, 81 fascist models of, 48, 129 and sport, 79–81 feminism, scholars of fashion, 149–50 femme fatale, 4, 67, 86, 128 Fenoglio, Elvio, 85 Fercioni (fashion house), 170 Ferragamo, Salvatore, 15, 26, 54, 116, 137, 140, 170 fez, 77, 106–7 Fibre Tessili, 115–16 film industry, and ENM, 89–90

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Index films commercial, 88–9 documentary, 17–19, 114 propaganda, 91 see also cinema; Giornale Luce newsreels fiocco, 54, 108–9, 109 see also SniaFiocco Firenzuola, Agnolo, Trattato sulla bellezza delle donne (Treatise on the beauty of women), 8, 60 Flanders, 12 Florence, 45, 141 Renaissance, 7, 14 Trade Exhibition (1939), 113, 115–16 Flüegel, J. Carl, 4, 33 Foa, Vittorio, 199n Foemina, 47, 48 folk costume see regional costume Fontana, Micol, 15, 108, 145, 150 interview with, 155–67 Fontana Sisters (fashion house), 145, 156 Forgacs, David, 3, 147 Forlì, national textiles conference, 107, 110 France, 44, 55, 101 competition with in textile industries, 47–8 department stores, 123 development of distinct culture of fashion, 10, 12, 32, 40 haute couture and couturiers, 29, 33, 36, 40, 41, 85, 89, 93, 141 influence of Futurists on, 33, 36 influence of Il cortegiano on, 9 influence on Italian fashion, 129 luxury goods industry, 85 prestige in fashion from mid-1930s, 14, 40, 41, 85–6, 107, 141, 160 search for style independent from, 15, 24, 27, 41 France Vogue, 106–7 Franchini, Silvia, 38 Fratelli Romano (department store), 124–5 French designs copying of by Italian houses, 55 Genoni’s view, 31 Putelli’s editorial on, 81 French language in D’Annunzio’s writings, 66 Italianizing of in fashion world, 57, 58, 83, 84, 110

Frick, Carole Collier, 7 Fumach (fashion house), 44, 128 furs, 92 see also angora rabbit hair Futurists, 31, 33–5, 36, 37, 46 Genoni’s criticism of, 35–6 Manifesto of Women’s Fashion, 112–23 GabriellaSport, (fashion house) Milan, 137 Gallenga, Maria Monaci see Monaci Gallenga, Maria Gambino (fashion house), 172 Garbo, Greta, 86, 87, 88, 89 Gardner, Ava, 164, 165–6 Garibaldians, 7 Garzoni, Tommaso, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni, 11 Gattinoni, Fernanda, 15, 107, 150 gender challenging of set ideas, 37 relations in Contessa di Parma, 91 Genoa, 123 Genoni, Rosa, 5, 14, 27–33, 35–6, 41–2, 44, 46, 82, 122, 145, 150, 154 Germany, 81, 128, 129, 138 Ginzburg, Natalia, Lessico famigliare, 122 Giorgini, Giovanbattista, 14 Giornale Luce newsreels, 21–2, 92, 100–1, 111–12, 128–30 Una giornata particolare (A Special Day) (film), 69 gowns, Genoni’s designs, 31 La Grande adunata delle forze femminili (Great parade of female forces) (film), 17 Grandi magazzini (Department stores) (film), 87, 130–5 Grams, Antonio, 65, 130, 148 Grau, Rene, 39, 41 Great Britain, 44, 101, 137 see also England Guazzo, Stefano, La civile conversazione (Civil conversation), 8 Gucci, 116 Guglielminetti, Amalia, 39 Gundle, Stephen, 75, 78, 151 Gutteridge (English department store), 127 hairstyles Garbo, 87

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Index Luce newsreel, 129 maschietta, 36, 87 handbags, 171, 172 handicrafts, 21, 81, 97, 99 see also craftsmanship; embroidery; lace hats, 41, 177, 178 film reports from USA, 129–30 Futurist ideas, 34, 35 see also fez Hayworth, Rita (formerly Rita Casino), 130 Head, Edith, 89 hemp, 108, 109, 110 Hertzog, Charlotte, 96 history of costume, 32 Hollywood cinema, 26, 37–8, 39, 86, 87, 88–9, 90, 95–6, 137, 160 homosexuality, 37 identity in Renaissance texts on appearance and conduct, 12 roles of fashion and cinema, 87 see also national identity industrialists, papers for National congress of clothing and autarchy, 138–42 industry, Genoni’s views, 30 L’informatore confidenziale della moda, 84 Inghirani, Isabella, 79 Istituto coloniale fascista, 114 Istituto Luce, documentary images of women, 17–19, 18 Italian identity see national identity Italian language aim of Commentario dizionario, 57–8, 83, 94 fascist policy of standardization, 23–4 “The Italian Look”, 1, 2–3, 8, 145, 154 The Italian Metamorphosis 1943–1968, 5 Italian style, 1–3, 6, 13–14, 39, 41–2, 82 Italian Trade Commission, 179n Italy as de-centered and diverse, 40–1, 141 entry into World War II, 33, 143 glamorized image in 1980s, 1–2 golden age of Renaissance, 85 need for new image of, 51 unification, 44, 65 Jews persecution of, 159, 160

see also anti-semitism knitwear ensembles, 51, 52, 53 evolution of industry, 102–4 Kristeva, Julia, 149 laborers textile industry, 99, 103 see also Dopolavoro associations lace in Contessa di Parma, 97 promotion of, 30–1, 45, 81 Vecellio’s patterns, 32 The Ladies’ Paradise (Zola), 130–1, 134–5, 135 Lafayette (department store), 121 Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di, Il gattopardo (The leopard), 65, 66 Lampugnani publishing company, Storia d’Italia narrata alle donne italiane (History of Italy narrated to Italian women), 38 Lancellotti, E.R., 102 language Barthes on signification, 61 see also French language; Italian language lanital, 108, 110–11, 162 League against luxury, 45 League of Nations, sanctions against Italy, 54–5, 101 leather, shortages, 54 Leonardo da Vinci, 39, 82 Leopardi, Giacomo, 60, 150 “Dialogue between Fashion and Death”, 131, 150–1, 152 Levi, Alberto, 199n Levi company, 139 Il libro del cortegiano (The book of the courtier) see Castiglione, Baldassare Il libro del sarto (The Book of the Tailor, attrib. Conte), 9 Libya, 108, 113, 113–14, 125 Lidel, 39, 41–2, 43, 44, 53, 80 articles on colonies, 113, 114 photographs, 41, 104, 115 short stories, 67, 68 linen, 108 literary tradition, 6 literature

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Index and fashion, 60–2, 62–73, 131, 150–3 quotations in Commentario dizionario, 59–60, 60 Renaissance, 7, 8–13 texts on fashion and cinema, 90 see also fashion magazines and periodicals; popular novels Loren, Sophia, mother of, 87 Lucchini (textile company), 143–4 Luce see Giornale Luce newsreels; Istituto Luce luxury goods “do not buy” response to economic crisis, 44–5, 55 French industry, 85 Lyons, 12 Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince, 183n made-to-measure clothing, 122–3 Madia, Titta, 44 Magritte, René, 120 Malombra (film), 91 Mankiewicz, Joseph, 166 Mannequin (film), 87, 88 Manzini, Gianna, 4–5, 38, 62–3, 67, 68, 150 short story “Una cena” (A dinner), 68–9, 71 Marchand, Roland, 86 Marchesini, Cesare, 105 Marconi, Gioia, 164 Margueritte, Victor, La Garçonne, 36 Maria José, princess of Piedmont, 21–3, 22, 23 Marinelli, G., Gli ornamenti delle donne (The ornaments of women), 12 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso Futurist Manifesto, 33, 34 writings on clothing, 35, 108, 112, 113 Marras, Antonio, 3 Maruccelli, Germana, 14 la maschietta (la garçonne), 36–7, 87, 93 in Commentario dizionario, 59, 80 mass media, 21–2, 148 mass production, 31, 121 clothing, 123, 139–40 Mateldi, Brunetta, 39, 63, 142 evening gown designs, 21–3, 22, 23 Mattè (fashion house), 44, 63, 92, 128 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 7 Meano, Cesare, 91

see also Commentario Dizionario della Moda men’s clothing Facis, 139 Futurist project, 33, 34 Michahelles, Ernesto see Thayant, Ernesto Middle Ages, 30, 81 middle class, women as consumers, 25 migrants, in recent times, 154 Milan, 9, 14, 38, 43, 44, 116, 141 in Contessa di Parma, 93, 95 establishment of Bocconi Brothers, 123 fashion houses, 137, 145 International Exhibition (1906), 31 Scuola della società umanitaria (School of the humanitarian society), 29 Trade Fair, 48–9 traditions in craftsmanship, 49 Mingolini-Guggenheim (fashion house), 55, 128, 161, 162 Mirafiori, 94, 128 Moda Documento, 90–1, 142–3, 143, 170 Moda e Cinema (Fashion and Cinema), 90, 145 modernity department stores, 121–2 and discourse on fashion, 40, 150 fascist interest in, 97, 99–100 intelligent fibers, 101, 104 and social dynamism, 59 uniforms, 77 modernization illustrated in Grandi magazzini, 130 importance of fashion, 51 social, political and cultural transformations, 26–7 textile industry, 99, 101–2 Monaci Gallenga, Maria, 45–6 Monarchi, Francesco, 34 Montano (head of Casa Ventura), 47, 49, 140–2 Montorsi (fashion house), 55, 63, 128 motherhood images of women in short stories, 68–71 stereotype in newsreels, 128 Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, 179–80n Mussolini, Arnaldo, 84–5 Mussolini, Benito, 14–15, 44, 55, 75, 76, 78, 143, 153, 154

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Index De Liguoro’s loyalty to, 48, 49 declaration of economic autarchy, 101 image of in shop displays, 135, 136 and national gathering of women, 1939, 17 policy on fashion industry, 20–1, 51, 54, 85, 124 rallies and parades, 17, 81, 162 Naples, department stores, 125, 127 National congress of clothing and autarchy, Turin, ENM papers for, 136–42 national identity, 5, 153–4 and artisan work, 45, 167 Genoni’s proposals, 42 iconic dress, 7 importance of Lidel, 39 and Italian style, 1–3 and rayon, 101 and regional identity, 3, 21 and the Renaissance, 6–7, 148 role of cinema, 89–91 role of ENM, 54, 75 role of fashion in fascist period, 2, 14–15, 20, 21, 26, 46, 59, 75–8, 84, 95, 100, 143, 148, 153 role of fashion in pre-fascist period, 26 and style, 13–14 see also Italian identity nationalism and aesthetics, 148 Balla’s designs, 33–4 Genoni’s notion of, 42 and Meano’s Commentario, 75–8, 82, 148 Milan, 44 pre-war, 32–3 textile industry, 108 La Nazione, 108 Negri, Ada, 39 Negrone, Carina, 80 New York department stores, 121 today’s corporate world, 181n World Exhibition of Textiles, 109, 137 newspapers, 15 articles on colonies, 113, 114–15 North America Albanese’s experience in, 42–3 see also United States of America (USA)

Novarese, Nino, 89 Olivetti, Camillo, 26, 122 oral history, 15, 149 orbace, 108 Ortoleva, Peppino, 2, 5, 27 Orvieto Academy, 17, 53, 80–1 Pact of Steel (1939), 129 Palmer (fashion house), 55 Panzini, Alfredo, 84, 84–5 Parini, Giuseppe, Il Giorno, 131 Paris, 33, 85, 89 designers living in, 40, 47–8 as fashion centre for privileged Italians, 21, 40, 45, 49, 55, 66, 107, 162 fashion shows (1935), 109 Genoni’s experience in, 28 see also Exposition internationale des arts decoratifs et industriels modernes (1925) Parma, 115, 156, 157 Passerini, Luisa, 147 Patè (fashion house), 178 patriotism De Liguoro, 45, 82 pre-war, 32–3, 36 and rayon, 101 and sport, 81 Patrizi, Giorgio, 10 pattern-books, Renaissance, 9 Pavese, Cesare, 201n Pedrini, Rina, 107 Per voi signora, 53, 81, 85 perfumes, advertising, 39, 87, 114–15 Peter, Mario, 84 Petrarch, 150 Piccolomini, Alessandro, Raffaella, 32 Piedmont, 108 Pirandello, Luigi, 39 Pirelli, Giovanni Battista, 26 Pisanello, Antonio, 31, 82 Poiret, Paul, 47 Polhemus, Ted, 5 Poli, Doretta Davanzo, 12 political transformations, 26–7 politics role of fashion, 5, 46, 82, 91 standards in early 16th century Italy, 12

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Index symbolic dress, 7 see also cultural politics Popolo d’Italia, 49, 50, 55 popular culture, 38, 100, 130 American influence, 26, 86 popular novels, 130, 131 Porta, Giovan Battista della, Magia Naturalis (Natural magic), 8, 11 post-fascist period, 6, 13, 139 post-war period, modernization, 26–7 Power, Tyrone, 161 Prampolini, Enrico, 34 pre-fascist period, 6, 26 fascist period’s continuity with, 27, 82 pre-war period modernization, 26–7 patriotism and nationalism, 32–3, 36 Primo congresso delle donne italiane (First congress of Italian women), Rome 1908, 29, 30–1 propaganda Calcagno’s writing on clothing, 66–7 ENM, 100–1 in film, 91 textile industry, 101, 104–5 two modes, 99–100 see also Giornale Luce newsreels Prosperi, Carola, 38, 39 Pucci, Emilio, 26, 54 Putelli, Lina, 81 Quicherat, Jules Ètienne Joseph, 32 Quondam, Amedeo, 10 racial laws, 129 Racinet, Auguste, 32 ramia/rami, 108 Rassegna del tessile e dell’abbigliamento autarchico (Review of textiles and autarchic clothing), 116–21 Rassegna dell’Ente Nazionale della moda, 139 rayon, 99, 101, 108, 108–9, 110 ready-to-wear industry American, 15, 26, 85, 128 and department stores, 122, 128 papers for National congress, 138–9, 140 regional costume contemporary creations, 3

and fascism, 17, 19–20, 20–3, 143 regional handicrafts in Contessa di Parma, 97 promotion of in Commentario, 81 regional identity clothing manufacturing traditions, 141 and national identity, 3, 21 traditions in craftsmanship, 49 Renaissance and the fascist period, 14, 32, 76 influence on fashion, 5, 6, 6–7, 14, 143, 153 as inspiration for Genoni, 28, 30, 31–2 and Italian national identity, 6–7, 148 literature on self-help and conduct, 7, 8–13 in Meano’s Commentario, 58, 81, 82, 83, 85 paintings, 5 silk industry, 102 sumptuary laws, 20, 84 resistance, to fascist codes, 25, 147, 148, 149, 150 Ribuoli, Patrizia, 19–20, 184n Ridenti, Lucio, 89, 116 La Rinascente (department store), 121, 124, 125, 128 catalogue, 125, 125, 126 Rinascente-UPIM (department store), 15, 94, 121, 124, 132 Risorgimento, 7, 65, 91 Rivetti, Alessandro, 139 Roberta (film), 87, 88 Robiolo (fashion house), 63 Roma, città aperta (film), 133 Rome, 43, 66, 110, 141 Circo Massimo National Textiles Exhibition, 110–12, 111, 112, 114 department stores, 123, 124–5 fashion houses, 45–6, 92, 121, 124, 145 fashion show shown in newsreel, 128–9 imperial, 76 Micol Fortuna’s experience in, 157–60 national gathering of women, 1939, 17–19, 18, 19 traditions in craftsmanship, 49 see also Primo congresso delle donne italiane Rosa company, Milan, 116 Ross, Andrew, 179n

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Index Rossellini, Roberto, 133 Rossini, Vladimiro, 57 Rosso, Francesco, 139–40 Rovigo, 110 Rucellai, Countess, 45 rural areas failure of regime regarding national identity, 142–3 massaie rurali, 19–20, 25, 110 textile industry laborers, 99 Salvori, Francesco, 77–8 San Francisco, 45 San Lorenzo (fashion house), 63, 172 Sansovino, Jacopo, 32 Sarfatti, Margherita, 55 Savoy, house of, 44 Saxl, Fritz, 9 Scaparro, Mario, 113 Schiaparelli, Elsa, 33, 37, 40, 55, 88, 129 science, Genoni’s views, 29–30 Scola, Ettore, 69 seamstresses, 88, 122 Secessione romana, 45 Il Secolo, 35 Secondo congresso nazionale dell’abbigliamento (Second national clothing congress), 1920, 44–5 self, and fashion, 5, 148 Sensani, Gino, 89 separates, knitwear ensembles, 51, 52, 53 Serao, Matilde, 39 La seta, 104–5 Seterie d’Italia (National silk body), 47 Settembrini, Luigi, 5 sewing skills, 122 see also dressmakers; seamstresses Sforza, Caterina Riario, Experimenti, 12 shoes Ferragamo’s autarchic designs, 54, 63, 137, 170, 171 in Florence Trade Exhibition, 116 use of new materials, 136–7 silk, 108 silk industry, 47, 102, 104–5 Simmel, Georg, 4, 148, 150 Simonetta, Rina, 144 skiing, in Grandi magazzini, 133–4

SNIA/SNIA-Viscosa company, 102, 106, 108, 108–9, 111 SniaFiocco, 104, 105 social body disciplining of, 55, 110, 148 and the state in Renaissance period, 20 social transformations, 23, 26–7, 68, 88 Socialist Party, and Genoni, 29, 35 Società agricola industriale per la produzione Italiana di cellulose (SAIC), 106 Somenzi, Mino, 34 Sordi, Alberto, 165 Sorelle Gori (fashion house), 55 Sormani, Ester, 39, 142, 143 Spain, influence of Il cortegiano on, 9 Spindler, Amy, 195n sport and outdoor activities and cinema, 50 in Commentario dizionario, 58 fascist cultural politics, 78 in Meano’s Commentario, 79–81 relationship with fashion, 50, 54, 79–80 in women’s magazines, 39, 51–3, 80 sprezzatura (the art of concealing art), 6, 10, 92 Standa (department store, formerly Standard), 124, 125–8 Starace, 110 Steele, Valerie, 1, 5, 6, 179–80n Stein, Gertrude, 37, 40 Stolen Holidays (film), 87, 96 style centrality to fascist project, 75, 78 in Commentario dizionario, 58 icons, 6, 27 and national character, 13 personal, 83 see also Italian style suits and costumes, 51, 53, 54, 171, 172, 173 Sullivan, Brain, Il Duce’s Other Woman (with Cannistraro), 55 sumptuary laws, Renaissance period, 20 Surrealism, 37, 40 see also Carboni, Erberto Swanson, Gloria, 89 synthetic textiles, 106, 108 taffeta, 64 tailors, 9, 42

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Index technology artificial fibers, 101–2, 106 Genoni’s views, 29–30 and mass production, 139 regime’s promotion of, 99, 128 transformations in 16th century, 7 Tescosa company, 139 Testa (fashion house), 55 textile industry competition with France, 47–8 exhibitions, 47, 108, 109–10, 110–12, 137 laborers, 99, 103 modernization, 101–2 periodicals and magazines, 15, 101 pioneering ideas, 43, 47 role in interwar economy, 99–121 in years of worst economic hardship, 55 see also Ente Tessile Nazionale textiles in Florence Trade Exhibition, 116 Genoni’s promotion of Italian traditions, 31 intelligent fibers, 99, 101–2, 104, 105–12 Monaci Gallenga’s designs, 46 see also fabrics Thayant, Ernesto, 33, 45 Tietz (department store, Germany), 128 trade unions, 43 Tremelloni, Roberto, L’industria tessile italiana (The Italian textile industry), 101–2 Treves, Eugenio, 39 Trieste, department stores, 123 Tripoli, 113–14 Truman, Margaret, 163–4, 164, 165 Turba, Umberto, 140 Turin, 49, 141 De Liguoro’s ideas for, 43–4 fashion houses, 44, 92 as headquarters of ENM, 21, 90, 91 industrialists from, 139–40 national exhibitions, 94, 100–1, 112, 128 Palazzo delle esposizioni, 48 as setting for Contessa di Parma, 91 working class experience of fascism, 147 see also National congress of clothing and autarchy uniformity cultural politics of fascism, 24, 45, 147

and individualism, 19, 20 and ready-to-wear, 140 uniforms lack of reference to in Commentario, 76 under fascism, 77–8, 106–7, 108, 128, 139, 142, 153 “United Colors of Benetton”, 3 United States of America (USA) as buyer of French couture, 40 department stores, 121, 124, 128, 137 economic ties with, 106, 109 European designers in, 89, 140 export of Italian goods to, 41 Fontana Sisters in, 160–1, 163 influence on culture and consumption, 26, 37–8, 85, 88, 129 Italian immigrants, 129 newsreel reports from, 130 ready-to-wear industry, 15, 26, 85, 128 visits of Sarfatti to, 55 see also Hollywood cinema; New York; San Francisco UPIM (department store), 88, 121, 124, 125–8, 128 Vanna (fashion house), 171 Vassallo (fashion house), 172 Vecellio, Cesare, Abiti antichi et moderni... (Modern and ancient dress...), 8, 12, 32 Venice exhibition of textiles and autarchic clothing, 116–21 show promoting silk industry, 47–8 Ventura (fashion house), 47, 55, 107, 128, 140, 173 Versace, 3 Versailles, Treaty of, 44 Vianino, Giovanni, 57 Villa (fashion house), 128 Villa d’Este, Lake Como, 94, 128 Villani, Romilda, 87 Vionnet, Madeleine, 33, 45 Viscardi (fashion house), 92 Vita d’Arte, 32 Vita femminile italiana, 29 Vita Tessile, 102 Volare. The Icon of Italy in Global Pop Culture, 5

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Index Volli, Ugo, 5 Volt (Vincenzo Fani), 112–13 Westwood, Vivienne, 192–3n White, Nicola, Reconstructing Italian Fashion, 5, 13–14 White Stag (American clothing company), 54 Wiener Werkstaette, 138 Williams, Rosalind H., 181n window dressing, 135, 136, 137, 138 Withers, Audrey, 195n women ambivalent policy of fascist regime, 17–20, 25, 27, 81 craftsmanship, 122 descriptions in Meano’s Commentario, 79–81, 81–4 encapsulating exotic beauty, 114, 115 ENM propaganda, 100–1 Great Parade of Female Force, Rome (1939), 17–19, 18, 19 inequality of opportunity to work, 49 influence of cinema screen personae, 86–7 major roles in fashion, 150 new image of after World War I, 36–7, 46, 51–4 short story writers, 38, 67, 68–73 stereotypes in Luce newsreels, 128–9

see also feminity; maschietta; Primo congresso delle donne italiane women’s publications see fashion magazines and periodicals Women’s Studies, 149 wool alternatives to, 108 scarcity of, 67 Woolworth’s (USA), 124, 128 working class Turin, 147 women’s views on cinema and fashion, 194n World War I, aftermath, 124 World War II, 33, 90, 106, 110, 116, 136, 143 creativity of fashion industry, 143–4, 145 fashion magazines, 144–5 shortages of materials, 54, 145 written texts see literature youth organizations, 77 youth subcultures, 149, 193n Zecca (fashion house), 55 Zecchin, Vittorio, 45 Zingone (department store), 121, 121–2, 124 Zola, Emile, 10, 40 The Ladies’ Paradise, 130–1, 134–5, 135

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