December 29, 2011 |
Living in Soho, in the centre of London, I see a lot of very stylish young guys and girls. But the ones who make me look twice are those who remind me of Italy. The guys are knife-edge thin, dark-haired and cadaverous. The girls have legs going up to their collar bones, bouncy-clean hair and a way of working a Prada bag like nobody else. They always recall for me the days when I worked in the Italian fashion industry and lived in Rome.
Did the sun always shine? Did we always get tables in restaurants the moment we walked in? Was the cost of living la dolce vita really as low as it now seems in retrospect? Was every weekend a holiday – a villa here; a castle there; a yacht wherever? Probably not. Memory romanticises. But it wasn’t far off.
Which is why I love Italy and everything about it, with the exception of football, which I hate no matter which country it comes from. Yes, I know. The Italians didn’t win the war and they do have the Mafia. They have had more governments in the last sixty years than any other country and have ended up with Mr Berlusconi and endless sex scandals. But, you know what? None of that matters because what Italians have is what every country in the world – and every fashion follower – wants. And that is style. Inborn, natural, unforced style, whether at work or play – and let’s not forget that dolce fa niente (the pleasure of doing nothing) was invented under the hot blue Italian skies. The rest of us are still trying to catch up.
And, of course, I love Italian fashion. Admittedly, Milan isn’t like Paris. Not as cerebral. Not as questioning. But often infinitely more desirable. Italian designers create clothes for people to wear, not in order to answer some arcane philosophical question – valid as that may be when the designer is a Rei Kawakubo or even Viktor and Rolfe. In fact, there is no place at all for cerebalists in Milan fashion. Why? Because the Italians know a great deal about art – as you would expect from the nation that gave us the Rennaissance – and even more about reality. But, most of all, about sensuality – and that is the basis for their fabulous fashion.
This was a dirt-poor country for the first fifty years of the last century, with subsistence agriculture and eking out a living the lot of the contadini (peasant class); crumbling castelli and no funds left to pay for the grand life for the aristocrats (whose titles were abolished shortly after World War II but are still used everywhere) and the only ones with any prospects being those working in the factories of the north.
But then things changed, and very quickly. In the fifties the Americans discovered Italy. Writers like Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams fell in love with the louche pleasures of Rome and Capri. Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn couldn’t keep away from Florence and Gucci. Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton in Rome. Suddenly, Rome’s Cinecitta became the top place to make Hollywood films. And why not? The sun shone, union rates were low and extras were plentiful, beautiful and cheap. Half-derelict Tuscan villas were going for a song and duplex apartments with 14th-century frescoes and Roman marble everywhere were going for even less of a song in Florence, Siena and small unknown hill towns down the entire spine of Italy. Suddenly, it seemed that every foreigner could be a Renaissance prince – and at a bargain basement price.
And to service the new wealth all these developments were creating, a fashion industry was born. Virtually from scratch, although there had always been chic but rather unimaginative dressmakers in cities like Rome and Naples. In fact, Rome had a thriving couture week that, featuring stars like Simonetta and Robert Capucci, commanded international attention through magazine and newspaper coverage in the rest of Europe, Britain and the States.
Italy was ready to go global but, before it could, there was a little war that needed to be fought. A territorial war, involving three cities: Milan, Florence and Rome. Each thought it had the superior claim to be Italy’s fashion capital. Rome boasted of its couture; Florence championed its unrivalled knitwear and Milan pointed out that it was Italy’s commercial heart.
Of course, commerce won and, by the seventies, all the designers who mattered showed in Milan, regardless of what part of Italy they lived and worked in. International interest was stimulated. Instead of visiting three cities, buyers and press could see all they wanted to see in one place, just as they could in France, Britain and the States. Milan was up there on the international calendar just like Paris, London and New York. And it was producing exciting new names. Tai and Rossita Missoni were founder members, having set up a business in a basement as early as 1958. By the late seventies their beautifully coloured, complex knits had taken America by storm. Hugely expensive, there were waiting lists for them, long before Vuitton bags had been heard of.
And there were the new guys. Giorgio Armani opened his own-name business in 1974, Gianni Versace in 1978, Gianfranco Ferre in 1978. And hovering on the outskirts, hanging on in Rome, Valentino was quietly developing his life-long love affair with the American rich and powerful, from Jackie Kennedy – who once said, ‘Valentino, live forever’ – to Nan Kempner and all the ladies who lunch, a sub-genre just beginning to appear in New York.
But the man who was the nearest thing to being the father of Italian fashion is a designer whose name has almost been forgotten by history. Walter Albini was socially Italy’s answer to Halston, with a little Oscar de la Renta on the side – elegant, suave and urbane, he was the only Italian designer able to appear in his own advertisements and look perfect. But he was much more than that. It was Albini who made Italian design chic, understated and confident but, more than even that, he brought it the hand of authority, the hand of impeccable taste. His death in 1983 devastated Italian fashion circles.
Not for long, however. Warring factories were ready to take his place in a fight to be Milan’s brightest and best. Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, Mariuccia Mandelli of Krizia – all were ready and all, in very different ways, not only good designers and superb craftsmen but also pointing the paths that Italian fashion would carve across the globe. Any buyer or journalist who had not followed what had been happening in Italy had to wise-up now as Milan became the hottest place in the fashion world.
And more was to come. In 1986 I went to the second show that Dolce and Gabbana gave – the only English journalist there, I am pretty sure – and was bowled over by their fresh new take on what Italian fashion could be and what it could say to the new young high-fashion buyers just beginning to appear. And there were others: Romeo Gigli, who first showed in 1983; Franco Moschino, who died far too young in 1994, aged only 44. And yet more. In 1978 Miuccia Prada took over the business set up by her grandfather and his brother in 1913. And after the murder of her brother in 1997, Donatella Versace entered the arena as a designer in her own right. Roberto Cavalli had a second coming and hit the big time second time around. Gucci went stellar under the guidance of Tom Ford. And so it goes on.
What is the secret of Milan’s amazing fashion fecundity and quality? To try to explain the luxury, perfection, taste and often couture-quality work of the Italian designers we need to look at Italian cuisine, one of the oldest in Europe. It was the Italians who introduced the table fork to France, after all.
For centuries, cooking in Europe was a crude affair. But not in Italy. Whereas in other countries, a slab of meat was thrown into a pot with some water (and herbs if you were lucky), then left for hours – even days – to stew, Italian cooking, even at peasant level, was infinitely more refined, involving skills unknown to the rest. The staple food was pasta, which cannot be left untended as pot-cooking can. Timing is all important. The pasta must be served al dente, which means not a minute undercooked or overcooked. No other European cooking was so precise, dedicated or careful.
And that, in my opinion, survives not just in the Italian kitchen but also in many aspects of Italian life. Italian drivers know the width and stopping time of their cars almost to the millimetre; they know precisely how to make love – and they create clothes that are perfectly al dente. It is the skill behind the craft that has made them a great fashion nation and gives credibility to almost everything they do in dress.
by Colin Mcdowell
