Fashion at the Time of Fascism: Italian Modernist Lifestyle 1922-1943

EDITED BY MarIo Lupano aLEssanDra VaccarI FashIon aT ThE TIME oF FascIsM ITaLIan MoDErnIsT LIFEsTYLE 1922 1943 edited by Mario Lupano aLessandra Vaccari The first visual essay on fashion and modernism in fascist Italy. Drawn up in a fascinating and original manner the book investigates the active role of fashion in the affirmation of a modern aesthetic, between processes of spreading international culture and the visions induced by the regime. The result of wide ranging research, Fashion at the Time of Fascism explores and compares a broad variety of Italian sources: women’s magazines, fashion magazines, cinema and society life, exhibition and commercial catalogues, books and magazines on dressmaking techniques, design and architecture, plus publications by businesses and government departments. The book is a close-knit montage of images and texts that follow the rhythms and rituals of lifestyles in the modern Italian day, developed around four key concepts: Measurement, Model, Mark and Parade. From obsession with the exact measurement of bodies, garments and time to the creation of icons and models of modernity; from the construction of a national fashion system to the spectacular dimension of fashion shows and fascist rituals. An outline of the key figures and the fundamental steps of Italian fashion from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the crucial themes of modernism and the relationship between glamour and the fascist regime’s choreographies. Fashion at the Time of Fascism includes a selection of texts by authors of the day and a wide variety of original critical contributions dealing with and contextualising the course of iconographic development. EDITED BY Contributors: D a n I E L a BaroncInI, Marco BErTozzI, VITTorIa caTErIna caraTozzoLo, aLEssanDra cITTI, ELDa DanEsE, rIccarDo DIrInDIn, BonIzza GIorDanI araGno, soFIa GnoLI, aLEssanDro GorI, IrEnE GuzMan, anTonELLa huBEr, aLEssanDra MarIanI, GaBrIELE MonTI, EnrIca MorInI, FEDErIca MuzzarELLI, IVan parIs, EuGEnIa pauLIcELLI, ELEna pIrazzoLI, ELIsa TosI BranDI 400 pages and 1500 illustrations MarIo Lupano is Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Design, Iuav University of Venice, where he teaches Criticism and History of Design. aLEssanDra VaccarI is Researcher at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Bologna University, where she teaches Fashion Culture and Design. | E 50,00 | $ 60,00 | MarIo Lupano aLEssanDra VaccarI EDITED BY MARIO LUPANO ALESSANDRA VACCARI FASHION AT THE TIME OF FASCISM ITALIAN MODERNIST LIFESTYLE 1922-1943 edited by M A R I O L U P A N O and A L E S S A N D R A V A C C A R I texts DANIELA BARONCINI, MARCO BERTOZZI, VITTORIA C. CARATOZZOLO, ELDA DANESE, RICCARDO DIRINDIN, BONIZZA GIORDANI ARAGNO, SOFIA GNOLI, IRENE GUZMAN, ANTONELLA HUBER, MARIO LUPANO, GABRIELE MONTI, ENRICA MORINI, FEDERICA MUZZARELLI, IVAN PARIS, EUGENIA PAULICELLI, ELENA PIRAZZOLI, ELISA TOSI BRANDI, ALESSANDRA VACCARI captions GABRIELE MONTI visual design ALESSANDRO GORI.Laboratorium research CLARA CARPANINI, IRENE GUZMAN, GABRIELE MONTI with VANESSA BUJAK, ANNALISA GNESINI, LUANA LABRIOLA, GIUSI LOMBARDI, SILVIA MELATTI, MARCO PECORARI, SILVIA ZOTTI iconographic archive VALENTINA MENEGHELLO bibliography of periodicals ALESSANDRA CITTI, ALESSANDRA MARIANI bibliography and index of names ELENA PIRAZZOLI translations DAVID SMITH with EMILY LIGNITI, ELISABETTA ZONI editorial coordination ENRICO COSTANZA ELEONORA PASQUI technical coordination LORENZO TUGNOLI with the support of UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA Faculty of Arts and Humanities, 2nd Level Degree Course in Fashion Studies Rimini Campus Library U N I R I M I N I S.p.A. A L T A R O M A S.c.p.a. chairman: Nicoletta Fiorucci vice chairman: Sandro Di Castro vice chairman: Valeria Mangani board of directors: Eugenio Bernardi, Antonella Sabrina Florio, Marina Letta, Roberto Polidori, Guido Razzano, Lorenzo Tagliavanti, Santo Versace, Berta Maria Zezza CEO: Adriano Franchi L A B O R A T O R I U M (Florence) :MMIX DAMIANI EDITORE via Zanardi, 376 40131 Bologna, Italy T +39 051 63 50 805 F +39 051 6347 188 info@damianieditore.it www.damianieditore.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical - including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system - without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The images are published by kind permission of the archives, libraries and collections consulted. Damiani Editore regrets that it has been unable to trace all copyright holders and is at their disposal to meet any demands. ISBN 978-88-6208-061-3 © Damiani 2009 © the authors for their texts Printed in July 2009 by Grafiche Damiani, Bologna front cover – Grazia, XV, n. 78 (2 May) 1940 back cover – La rivista illustrata del Popolo d’Italia, XVIII, n. 1 (January) 1940 initial endpapers – Mannequin. Il Rubicone, IV, n. 4 (April) 1935; Design Giovanni T. Fercioni. Photo Crimella. Moda, XVII, n. 6 (June) 1937 final endpapers – Benito Mussolini. La rivista illustrata del Popolo d’Italia, XVI, n. 6 (June) 1938; Photo Lucio Ridenti. Natura, X, (July-August) 1937 p. 1 – Design Anita Stoianovic. Photo Lucio Ridenti. La rivista illustrata del Popolo d’Italia, XVI, n. 5 (May) 1938 p. 2 – Design Sandro Radice. Photo Crimella. Moda, XVII, n. 3 (March) 1936 p. 3 – Design Anita Stoianovic. Photo Lucio Ridenti. Moda, XVIII, n. 1 (January) 1938 p. 399 – Design Carlo Ferrario. Photo Badodi. Moda, XVII, n. 5 (May) 1936. p. 400 – Swimming costume Eneco. Per voi signora, IV, n. 39 (April) 1935 THE EDITORS AND THE PUBLISHER WISH TO THANK A.N.G.E.L.O. VINTAGE PALACE, LUGO Angelo Caroli Gian Paolo Chiari ARCHIVIO DI STATO, ROMA Margherita Martelli ARCHIVIO FOTOGRAFICO, CINETECA DI BOLOGNA Rosaria Gioia, Alessandra Bani ARCHIVIO LA ROSA S.P.A., MILANO Gigi Rigamonti ARCHIVIO PIERO BOTTONI, POLITECNICO DI MILANO Giancarlo Consonni, Graziella Tonon ARCHIVIO ROBERTO PAPINI, BIBLIOTECA DI SCIENZE TECNOLOGICHE, UNIVERSITÀ DI FIRENZE Gianna Frosali ARCHIVIO TESSILE, CASTELLO SFORZESCO, MILANO Alessia Schiavi BIBLIOTECA CIVICA CENTRALE DI TORINO Davide Monge BIBLIOTECA CIVICA DI VERONA, Laura Minelle BIBLIOTECA COMUNALE SORMANI, MILANO Grazia L. Olcelli ARADA BOOKS, ADDIS ABABA BIBLIOTECA DEL DIPARTIMENTO DEI BENI CULTURALI E DELLO SPETTACOLO, UNIVERSITÀ DI PARMA BIBLIOTECA DEL POLO SCIENTIFICO DIDATTICO DI RIMINI, UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA Alessandra Citti, Alessandra Mariani BIBLIOTECA DELL’ACCADEMIA DI COSTUME E MODA, ROMA BIBLIOTECA DELL’ISTITUTO STORICO PARRI EMILIA-ROMAGNA, BOLOGNA BIBLIOTECA DELL’UNIVERSITÀ IULM, MILANO Enrico Cavalieri Emanuela Costanzo BIBLIOTECA DELLA FACOLTÀ DI CHIMICA INDUSTRIALE, UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA Laura Peperoni BIBLIOTECA DELLA FONDAZIONE ISTITUTO GRAMSCI EMILIA-ROMAGNA, BOLOGNA BIBLIOTECA DI SCIENZE TECNOLOGICHE, FACOLTÀ DI ARCHITETTURA, UNIVERSITÀ DI FIRENZE BIBLIOTECA GAMBALUNGA, RIMINI Maria Luisa Masetti Marcello Di Bella, Orietta Baiocchi BIBLIOTECA LUIGI CHIARINI, FONDAZIONE CENTRO SPERIMENTALE DI CINEMATOGRAFIA, ROMA BIBLIOTECA “IGINO BENVENUTO SUPINO”, UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA Giancarlo Concetti Paola Taddia BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE BRAIDENSE, MILANO BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE, FIRENZE BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE, ROMA BIBLIOTECA TRISI, LUGO Morena Medri Leonarda Martino, Pietro Alessandrini Gloria Bianchino CINETECA DELLA BIBLIOTECA GAMBALUNGA, RIMINI Gianfranco Miro Gori CIVICI MUSEI DI STORIA E ARTE, TRIESTE Adriano Dugulin, Michela Messina COLLEZIONE RENATO MANZONI, IMOLA Daniela Manzoni CREATIVITALIA, ROMA Enrico Quinto EMEROTECA, PARMA Roberto Montali BIBLIOTECA WALTER BIGIAVI, UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA CENTRO STUDI E ARCHIVIO DELLA COMUNICAZIONE, UNIVERSITÀ DI PARMA EMEROTECA CLASSENSE-ORIANI, RAVENNA Umberto Cicconi, Brunella Frusciante Laura Gasparini GALLERIA DEL COSTUME, PALAZZO PITTI, FIRENZE Caterina Chiarelli ISTITUTO NAZIONALE PER LA GRAFICA, ROMA Maria Francesca Bonetti LUISA SPAGNOLI S.P.A., PERUGIA Nicoletta Spagnoli, Cristina Bendolini MAISON GATTINONI, ROMA Stefano Dominella, Edoardo de’ Giorgio MUSEO CIVICO BAILO, TREVISO Carla Brunello MUSEO DI ARTE DECORATIVA, CASTELLO SFORZESCO, MILANO Damiano Pastore MUSEO DI PALAZZO MOCENIGO, VENEZIA Paola Chiapperino, Chiara Squarcina RICCIONE TEATRO Fabio Bruschi, Antonella Bacchini UNI.RIMINI S.P.A., RIMINI Luciano Chicchi, Lorenzo Succi UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA Carla Giovannini, Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Giuseppe Sassatelli UNIVERSITÀ DI MACERATA Paola Pallottino UNIVERSITÀ DI ROMA TRE Cristina Giorcelli UNIVERSITÀ IUAV DI VENEZIA Maria Luisa Frisa FONDAZIONE ALLORI, ROMA FOTOTECA DELLA BIBLIOTECA PANIZZI, REGGIO EMILIA SERENA BECAGLI CARLA BIANCHI ELISA BRIGIDI GIOVANNA DE MARIA GIANCARLO FERCIONI STELLA MARGARI MICHELE POMPEI ITALO ROTA AGOSTINO SASSI ROBERTA SCOCCO LUCA TREVISANI LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AA AC ADM AF AFCMSA AG ALR ALS AMG APB AT BACM BCA BCCT BCS BCSAC BCV BFCI BFIGER BG BICFMG BID BISPER BLC BMPM BNB BNCF BNCR BNUT BP BPSR BST BT BUI BWB CBG CIR CPF CPR CRM CQT CRAACS EC ECO MCB SL Archivio A.n.g.e.l.o. Vintage Palace, Lugo Archivio Cicconi, Fondazione Allori, Roma [Archivio Cartoni] Archivio De Maria, Bologna Archivio Fotografico, Cineteca di Bologna [Fondo Blasetti; Fondo Comaschi] Archivio Fotografico, Civici Musei di Storia e Arte, Trieste Archivio Gucci, Firenze Archivio La Rosa S.p.A., Milano Archivio Luisa Spagnoli S.p.A., Perugia Archivio Maison Gattinoni, Roma [Fondo Ventura] Archivio Piero Bottoni, Politecnico di Milano Archivio Tirelli Costumi, Roma [Fondo Zecca] Biblioteca dell’Accademia di Costume e di Moda, Roma Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna Biblioteca Civica Centrale di Torino Biblioteca Comunale Sormani, Milano Biblioteca del Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, Università di Parma Biblioteca Civica di Verona [Fondo Magnano] Biblioteca della Facoltà di Chimica Industriale, Università di Bologna Biblioteca della Fondazione Istituto Gramsci Emilia-Romagna, Bologna Biblioteca Gambalunga, Rimini Biblioteca internazionale di cinema e fotografia Mario Gromo, Torino Biblioteca Italiana delle Donne, Centro delle Donne, Bologna Biblioteca dell’Istituto Storico Parri Emilia-Romagna, Bologna Biblioteca Luigi Chiarini, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Roma Biblioteca del Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milano Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino Biblioteca Panizzi, Reggio Emilia Biblioteca del Polo Scientifico Didattico di Rimini, Università di Bologna Biblioteca di Scienze tecnologiche, Facoltà di Architettura, Università di Firenze Biblioteca Trisi, Lugo Biblioteca dell’Università IULM, Milano Biblioteca Walter Bigiavi, Facoltà di Economia, Università di Bologna Cineteca della Biblioteca Gambalunga, Rimini Collezione Italo Rota, Milano Collezione privata, Firenze Collezione privata, Rimini Collezione Renato Manzoni, Imola Collezione Enrico Quinto e Paolo Tinarelli, Roma Civiche Raccolte d’Arte Applicata del Castello Sforzesco, Milano [Fondo Terzoli] Emeroteca comunale, Parma Emeroteca Classense-Oriani, Ravenna Museo civico Bailo, Treviso [Collezione Nando Salce] Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge (MA) CONTENTS FASHION, MODERNISM AND FASCISM: AN INTRODUCTION 8 MEASUREMENT 15 211 MARK TAKING MEASUREMENTS 16 212 CREATORS SILHOUETTES 22 214 FASHION MAISONS GRIDS 24 228 BRANDS TRACCIATI 30 236 MONOGRAMS PAPER-PATTERNS 32 238 FASCIST SYMBOLS FITTING 36 244 DUX BODY IN PIECES 38 246 ART HISTORY NEW BODY 48 250 ITALIANS IN PARIS BEAUTY MACHINES 54 252 MEDITERRANEAN CHRONOMETER OF FASHION 60 258 MODERN ORIGINAL RATIONAL WARDROBE 66 262 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE PORTABLE WARDROBE 72 268 INDUSTRY AND AUTARCHY ZIP 73 278 FASHION INSTITUTIONS TRANSFORMABLE 74 POSITIVE NEGATIVE 76 289 PARADE TRANSPARENCIES 78 290 GAITS SCALE 1:1 80 292 ROME COLOUR 84 294 MILAN INDUSTRIAL TAILORING 88 296 FASHION THEATRES ORGANISATION OF WORK 90 306 STAIRCASES RATIONING 94 308 RACETRACK DOMESTIC ECONOMY 95 310 CROSSROADS MODEL 99 312 CITY EFFECT 321 FASHION CITY DOLLS 100 332 DIORAMAS STYLISED POSES 104 334 CATWALKS SHE-SERPENTS 110 SIRENS 112 STATUES 116 342 TURIN 344 FILM 346 DEPARTMENT STORES STARS 124 348 TRANS MASKS 128 350 DRAPERIES MANNEQUINS 130 356 VENICE LIDO CELEBRITIES 134 358 CRUISE MIRRORS 140 FRAMING FASHION 142 360 SEAFRONT 364 ITALIANS IN THE FACTORY THE TOMBOY 152 366 FACTORY OF ITALIANS THE SMOKER 154 370 MASS THEATRES THE INDIFFERENT 156 MALE TYPES 158 SPORTY TYPES 162 POPULAR STYLES 184 TRAVEL STYLES 188 COLONIAL TYPES 192 REGIME MODELS 196 380 LIST OF PERIODICALS 384 BIBLIOGRAPHY 393 INDEX OF CONTRIBUTIONS 394 INDEX OF NAMES FASHION, AND AN INTRO Fashion was one of the favoured forms of expressing avant-garde culture in the early decades of the 20th century and was a legitimate part of modernism which, in Marshall Berman’s definition (1983), was a system of visions, values and ideas that aimed to render human beings the subjects and objects of modernisation. The 1920s and 1930s were fundamental in Italy for creating a fashion culture in which modernism allowed us to retain high and everyday aspects together and to go beyond the fact that fashion drew attention above all through the question of the artistic avant-gardes. In particular, Italian futurism’s interpretation of the modernisation of clothing and fashion had such critical success that it eclipsed other visions. The aim of our study is to investigate fashion and modernism in Italy from the 1920s to the early 1940s. As an autonomous cultural expression, fashion – on a par with the visual arts and other spheres such as design and architecture – was one of the driving forces behind modernism and not a reflection of modernity. On this subject an observation by Christopher Breward and Caroline Evans (2005) seems pertinent. They maintain that it is not so important to consider how modernity has changed our appearance but rather how the very idea of fashion is part of the condition of being modern. We have studied fashion’s contribution to the establishment of the modern aesthetic and we have reflected on the wholly Italian dynamics of comparison with the processes of spreading international culture and the actions set in motion by the policies of the fascist regime. The result is not a book about fascism but about fashion in the twenty years of fascism, from the 1922 March on Rome to the demise of Benito Mussolini in 1943. In this work it is modernism that mediates and defines the relationship between fashion and fascism which, according to historian Roger Griffin (2007: 6), “can be seen as a political variant of modernism”. Our analysis concentrates on some key concepts of modernism which establish the grounds for a comparison between fashion and fascism and which contribute to explaining their mutual interests. These concepts include totalitarian ambitions, the sense of beginning, the epoch-making factor and an emphasis placed on creation (Griffin 2007: 4). This view breaks with those which prevailed in fashion writing during the regime: on the one hand they highlighted in an anti-modern key the restrictions imposed on fashion, especially the fight against luxury, against xenomania and the curbing of women’s emancipation; whereas on the other hand they acknowledged the elements of modernity in government policies of industrial, technological and economic development with regard to fashion. What however is lacking is reflection on the active role of fashion as a subject of modernism. Another striking aspect of fashion writing is how scant it is. This notwithstanding, there was an intense beginning in the early 1980s of the 20th century with seminal research such as the exhibition 1922-1943: vent’anni di moda italiana curated by Grazietta Butazzi (1980); the section “Moda”, which was curated by Alessandra Gnecchi Ruscone (1983) and was part of the vast 1982 exhibition Gli annitrenta: arte e cultura in Italia held in Milan; and in the same year the book Il lusso e l’autarchia by Natalia Aspesi. In subsequent decades there was very little growth in literature on 1920s and 1930s Italian fashion in comparison with the cultural and publishing ferment around the art, cinema and architecture of the twenty years of fascism. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the subject with Sofia Gnoli (2000), who investigated the Italian fashion debate from a politicalinstitutional point of view; Caterina Chiarelli (2000), who curated an exhibition focused on women’s fashion; Bonizza Giordani Aragno (2002) with an exhibition on the relationship between fashion and cinema; Silvia Grandi and Alessandra Vaccari (2004) with a phenomenological interpretation of the period; and Eugenia Paulicelli (2004) with an in-depth study of the relationships between style, national identity and politics. 8 MODERNISM FASCISM: DUCTION This book investigates and recomposes the material through the approach of a visual essay, taking account of the aesthetic, design-related and production aspects of fashion, where the conception and dissemination of clothes goes hand in hand with the creation of cultural images and practices. This approach pays great attention to the power of images, questioning them and seeking to restore the complexity and heterogeneity of thought that created them, bringing isolated aspects back into circulation and attempting to identify new relationships between things. We chose to work on published fashion, setting out from images understood as fragments of past arguments in order to suggest new connections and itineraries in a historiographic and critical key. The work involved reflection on the techniques of associating and combining images developed by modernism in an artistic and historical-artistic context which, beginning with Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, had so much influence on the formation of art and fashion culture during the 20th century (Clark 2006). Our research explored the iconography of the period in question, identifying and revealing the importance of so many creators, illustrators, artists, photographers and models, and contributing to outlining their identity and that of numerous other fashion figures of the day, including columnists, magazine journalists, fashion lovers and enthusiasts. With these approaches the panorama emerged in all its vastness of largely unexplored territory. Without claiming to be exhaustive, the process of building up the research and compiling the book came about through the interweaving of materials from different disciplines and involved the retracing and study of an iconography spread throughout fashion, cinema, society and women’s magazines; photo archives of fashion houses and companies; exhibition and sales catalogues; books and magazines on dressmaking techniques, design and architecture; textile, clothing and footwear company and trade association periodicals and the publications of specialised government bodies. The research was based on Italian sources and has given great space to fashion magazines which, better than others, met the needs of the project through their extraordinary ability to produce and promulgate ideas and collective images in the form of representation. Fashion magazines have a genetic tie with time and convey a sense of beginning in each new issue. They become the pulsating memory of fashion which feeds on cuttings: “the repository of fragments is essential to the articulation of fashion as a phenomenon of modernity” (O’Neill 2005: 177). Our study was carried out during the three year period from 2006 to 2009 at the University of Bologna. It involved numerous other universities, institutions, libraries and public and private collections in Italy and enjoyed cultural and technical support from the Rimini Campus Library which acquired a series of bibliographical documents that were invaluable for our research. The book follows a twofold movement. On one hand it pursues modern day narrative patterns where time and actions are measured and well-ordered, drawing inspiration for linking icons and thoughts that have emerged through research and comparing them with the irregular materiality of life. On the other hand it employs a conceptual framework set around four key words dear to modernism and fashion: Measurement, Model, Mark and Parade. The essay begins by taking measurements and concludes with an imaginary fashion show. This structure organises a critical discourse on the modernist concept of fashion design in Italy: from conception to production, from distribution to consumption. The emergence of this systemic vision of fashion was expressed by the lively debate which arose at the time in Italy, at many congresses and in numerous publications, involving fashion creators, industrialists, dressmakers, journalists, writers, photographers, designers, artists and politicians. Reading through the accounts we get the impression that the establishment of a fashion system in Italy was so urgent that ideological differenc- 9 es, otherwise irreconcilable, could be overcome. It is no coincidence that in the debate on the concept of fashion as a system of relationships with the economy and industrial development, figures like Ente nazionale della moda (National Fashion Board) general manager Vladimiro Rossini and Antonio Gramsci (1928) found themselves on the same side. MEASUREMENT inquires into the aspects of modernism most linked to the concepts of order, rationality, scientific rigour and technical control. The eager desire for measurement was applied to the body, to time and to things. The idea was stated with greater force that tailoring was a scientific and projectual discipline with its own laws and not dependent on fashion. But it was precisely the emphasis on the scientific rigour of sartorial measurement that constituted a fashion. Sartorial techniques were central to the debate in those years, which is borne out by the existence of numerous specialised magazines such as Eleganze italiane, L’osservatorio sartoriale, La moda maschile and La scuola moderna. At the same time there was a considerable production of sartorial treatises, cutting methods and measuring systems, manuals whose roots lay in the enlightenment and positivist tradition. It is in this key that we should read the words of writer and critic Massimo Bontempelli (1933) who compared the tailor Domenico Caraceni to the rationalist architects when the latter, in 1933, published a system and a treatise concerning measurement of the human body. In their manuals the tailors and dressmakers published heliographies of geometrical designs, diagrams and photographic sequences that portrayed them intent on taking measurements with the tape or devices of their own invention. This section aims to be a first step towards an understanding of the relationships between technical-production aspects of fashion and their cultural representations, a central question especially with regard to Italy, and to date neglected in studies of fashion. “Scientific” measuring instruments and grids subdivided space in an ordered way; paper patterns and sartorial sketches made an abstraction of the body, breaking it up into its anatomical parts. Fashion magazines illustrated a body in pieces since in tailoring, as in gymnastics and plastic surgery, one piece was worked on at a time. Eyes, nose and mouth were cut out with the same exactness of the paper pattern for a dress, or vice versa. The plastic surgery scalpel, which was making its name in those days, gymnastic discipline and mastery of the body were all instruments for the creation of a new humanity that fascism wanted to mould. The regime’s discourse affirmed the vision of a “new man”, also through the doctrine of eugenics and the racial laws. Fashion design was called on to take part in this vision by stating a link between biology, racial theory and tailoring. The year of the racial laws the National Fashion Board published anthropometrical studies by the physician Nicola Pende (1938: 3-7) on the constitution of the Italian woman, subdivided and classified into “Alpine race”, “Mediterranean race” and “Adriatic race”. The scansion of time was closely related to the construction of modernity. The everyday measurement of existence had its rhythm and order throughout the 24 hours: the use of diaries became widespread for planning daily activities, and the 19th century idea of organising the bourgeois home remained strong, where every space was assigned a specific function. In the modern day, time was punctuated by work, movements, leisure and rest. The measurement of time was reflected in the elaborate scansion of the wardrobe in the course of an ideal day, envisaging morning, afternoon and evening dresses. With each issue the fashion magazines renewed the sense of beginning and they often gave instructions about when to wear the dresses illustrated. At the same time the fashion of transformable clothes spread, with their idea of integrated functions offering a response to the need for quick changes. Obsession with the passage of time also influenced the regime’s propaganda: they always stated the precise number of days employed to complete public works, and they dotted the new stations, piazzas, factories and towns with clocks. Modernism evinced a real obsession with measuring things, which was transposed into the scientific organisation of work and time schedules. In the years between the wars there was a progressive focusing on the idea of mass clothing production, 10 and fashion opened up to industrial techniques and materials: Pirelli for example manufactured rubber raincoats and the FACIS, Fabbrica abbigliamento confezionato in serie (Mass produced clothing factory) brand was set up. Standards were defined for the colour card and sizes of ready made clothes. This aspect was studied in 1940 by the Textile Commission of the UNI (Ente nazionale unificazione 1940) in collaboration with the Corporazione dell’abbigliamento (Clothing Corporation). The transparency and sparkle of cellophane fed an aesthetic of purification and the immaterial. The scientific vision led to combating approximation and to an insistence on the correction of errors in measurement, on the elimination of defects in clothes and bodies. An objective and close-up eye came to the fore, generating representations of fashion based on enlargement, attention to detail and the X-ray effect of the photographic negative. This latter vision exalted the structure of things and was much used at the time for depicting needlework and crochet: on the one hand the local and regional lacework published in the Rassegna dell’Ente nazionale della moda and on the other the ones published in the monthly Fili which, in the context of women’s work, offered original interpretations of abstractionism and rationalism, with lace and embroidery designed by critics, artists and architects, including Giulia Veronesi, Franco Albini, Giancarlo Palanti and Gio Ponti. In 1934 the magazine Maglieria announced that “The most effective method for studying the causes of defects in knitwear is to observe very enlarged photographs of the fabric and films obtained with special apparatus” (C.C. 1934: 395). Still in the same field, lenses and microscopes were recurrent themes in fashion and women’s work magazine graphics, where details of dresses, yarns and fabrics were shown in detail. The microscope eyepiece was also the porthole of transatlantic liners and of modern architecture, and it was thenceforth that porthole openings remained linked to a collective imagination of the future, right down to André Courrèges’ collection in the 1960s. MODEL. “Rational fashion arises from the competence in ourselves,” wrote director Anton Giulio Bragaglia in 1933. Fashion is not only what you wear but a grouping of gestures and behaviours: smoking a cigarette, going to the cinema, driving a car. Model is the section most directly linked to the question of “types” – we have dealt particularly with the tomboy, the indifferent, the she-serpent and the siren – and to lifestyles, an expression introduced precisely at the end of the 1920s by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler to indicate the way in which the individual seeks to build up his existence, prefiguring future behaviour (Woodham 2004). A central text inquiring into mutations of identity in relation to fashion clothes is the play Nostra Dea which – written by Bontempelli in 1925 – deals with the symbolist woman in a Novecento key. In this section society occasions, tourism, sport, care and management of the body are explored in their relationships to fashion: the journey and the definition of an essential weekend wardrobe; seaside holidays where costumes and beach pyjamas were worn; sport, with both the codification of technical clothing including the overall and with the transition towards the everyday urban nature of tennis, riding and golf clothes; the regime’s demonstrations, with the Young Italian Girls’ cape and pleated skirt, the fez, the bush jacket and the regulation boots of the Black Shirts’ uniform. Models of clothes and behaviour were promoted in Italy under the joint action of modernism and fascism. The condemnation of cosmopolitan fashion – seen as a symbol of extravagant urban and bourgeois lifestyles – was a fixed point in the regime’s criticism, but the regime was also aware that in order to upgrade the image of “Italian fashion” certain concessions had to be made to the officially much deprecated cosmopolitan fashion. There was also an idea of perturbing fascist glamour to which we may trace for example the monumental and vigorous sirens, Italian interpretations of the vamp, sketched in an exemplary manner by fashion illustrator Mario Vigolo. This is the section of dress code and style models that became reference points for an epoch: from the icon of the duce to Hollywood and Italian film stars. Isa Miranda was the diva of the period, employed on the screen and in magazines to endorse Italian fashion. An icon of elegance was Edda Ciano who appeared not only in Italian magazines but also, for example, in Time. The fashion magazines created a homogeneous image of the modern woman. In the United States of the 1930s, conformist ideals produced models who all seemed the same (Arnold 2008) whereas in Italy the tendency to uniformity cohabited with selection criteria that favoured elegance of bearing and the style of wearing the garment, rather than the photographic look (Koda and Yohannan 2009). This is one result of our research, which brought to light the modern aspects of the modelling profession through figures like sisters Carmen and Valentina Terzoli and explored the bond between models and the fashion houses that employed them. The fashion houses felt a great need to communicate a precise image through the choice of a feminine “type”, as may be seen from the appearance in the fashion magazines of the long-limbed blonde model for the Giovanni T. Fercioni fashion house in the second half of the 1930s. It is further borne out by the use of photomontage, for example grafting the head of Tamara de Lempicka, taken from a photo by Madame d’Ora, onto the body of a house model from Fernanda Lamma. Model is understood as pose. In rhythmic gymnastics, in Giannina Censi’s futurist aerodances, in fashion photography and also in the outstretched arm of the Roman salute, what strikes us is the presence of a stylised gesturality, controlled, in certain ways expressionistic and very selfconscious. The fashion houses announced original garments. The modern experience was founded on the dialectic between uniqueness and reproducibility, between individual and mannequin. The vehicles for the new clothes were cinema, women’s magazines (strewn with new etiquettes and prescriptions for modernity) and, lastly, fashion photography which began to gain ground in Italy during that period. In Milan there were photographers like De Marchi and Mauro Camuzzi working for the Studio Fotografico Crimella; in Turin, Luigi Bogino and Lucio Ridenti. Rome was represented by the Studio Bragaglia, by Elio Luxardo who covered all genres, including fashion photography and still life, and by the society portraits of Arturo Ghergo, Ghitta Carell and Eva Barrett who has yet to be studied in depth. The photographers were the first to theorise about fashion photography, perceived as a new genre and field of action. In the second half of the 1930s it consisted of two visions, represented respectively by Luxardo and Ridenti. Research has rediscovered the latter’s extraordinary role in the fashion culture of the age. On the one hand there was the realism of the snapshot as against the artificiality of the retouch which, Ridenti wrote (1940: 90), “takes us a hundred years back in time”; on the other hand there was formal perfection, hypothesised by Luxardo (1940: 246-47), and achieved through “an actual ‘direction’ in the choice of the ‘frames’, of the composition as a whole and above all in the attitude of the subject [...] since it is of great and absolute importance to know how to choose the subject, the pose and the best moment”. In the space of fifteen years fashion photography moved from the ethnographic model of cataloguing to the construction of atmospheres that could say something about the clothes. In 1925 the magazine Fantasie d’Italia was founded which published specially commissioned fashion photographs, thus breaking the mould of buying French photographs from international agencies. Fifteen years later the fashion magazine Bellezza was offering photography of narrative glamour and theatrical atmospheres. It was the age of the secular interpretation of charisma. MARK examines the links between fashion and the processes of constructing national identity, between autarkic policy and plans for industrial development. The twenty year period of fascism inherited the legacy of the great debate between art and industry that had influenced Italian culture since the beginning of the 20th century. Between 1922 and 1923 the magazine Arte pura e decorativa came out, a school of decorative arts was opened at Villa Reale in Monza and, also in Monza, a biennale of decorative arts was set up, run by Guido Marangoni until the end of the decade. In the 1920s, against a background of the emergent Novecento style, the nascent culture of design and fashion were brought together by the need to upgrade the identity and originality of the Italian product. They shared a nationalistic spirit, a desire for comparison with the international situation and an urge to favour the integration of ideational, productive and commercial aspects. Lastly, they shared the need to achieve these objectives through a new way of understanding the design-related professions. Fashion drawing emerged as one of the most original and important aspects in reinforcing the still fragile identity of Italian fashion in the 1920s. The first events promoting “Italian” fashion were organised around the fashion sketch: from the pioneering Mostra della moda femminile (Women’s Fashion Exhibition) at the Circolo artistico internazionale in Rome (1914), with fashion sketchs by Sto (Sergio Tofano), Aleardo Terzi, Vittorio Grassi and Bruno Angoletta (Piccini 1922; Bossaglia, Quesada and Spadini 1987), to the exhibition promoted by the magazines Lidel, Vesta and Per voi signora at the Galleria il Milione in Milan (1933). The latter exhibition was held in a leading gallery of the Italian avantgarde and was introduced by Pietro Maria Bardi’s text which declared, “Let’s get down to writing fashion criticism” (Bardi 1933: 4). There were drawings by Brunetta, René Gruau, Nino Pagotto, Mario Soresina, Ester Sormani and Albe Steiner, photographs by Mauro Camuzzi and models of dresses from the fashion houses Bernasconi, D’Avanzo, Palmer and Radice, created on the basis of the sketches on show. In the first issue of the magazine Quadrante Mario Soresina pointed out fashion as a problem (unresolved) for Italy and interpreted, in a nationalistic key, the need to train artists as specialists in fashion drawing, in textile design, “who know how to make a dress or any garment, imagining it on the wearer” (Soresina 1933: 30). In an article four years later Soresina hoped for the creation of a University of Fashion where models, fashion designers and illustrators might be trained (M.S. 1937). The regime policy also attributed importance to fashion drawing and design, with the intention of forming a new creative class. It was in this context that the Regia Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti of Turin established a Scuola d’arte del figurino per l’abbigliamento (Fashion design school), directed by Giuseppe Vitrotto, at the behest of the Ente nazionale della moda (Bollettino ENM 1942/a). If it is true that up to the early 1930s Italian magazines published mainly French models, it is equally true that Italian artists worked for them, some of whom developed such a personal identity as to be proposed as original creators of models, as in the case of Brunetta, René Gruau, John Guida, Filiberto Mateldi and Mario Vigolo. In the absence of a complex, efficient fashion industry as in France, it was also through the instruments of fashion drawing that Italy fine-tuned its own temporary identity in those years. The Measurement section has shown how affirmation of the cultural authority of tailors and dressmakers came about through spreading a projectual and scientific vision of their profession. Instead, fashion creators gave greater weight to the artistic element, as in the case of Marta Palmer, she herself part of the avant-garde artistic and literary scene (De Buzzacarini 1985). As Marta Palmer wrote (1929/a: 21), commenting on the fashion shows at the X Milan Fiera campionaria (Trade Fair), Italian creators “are taking a line of pure art and experiencing the joy of colour, abandoning the old dressmaking systems of pleats, à jour, trimmings and suchlike. / The show was a triumph of colour and line: impressionism and modernity, and no abstruseness”. Fashion creators got new attention from the media, they talked about their artistic training, sought alliances with the cinema and reinforced the recognisability of their style. The activity of the main Italian fashion houses turned around their image. Stylistic specificities are identified and evaluated in this section, the result of the first phase of a far vaster work, much of which is yet to be carried out. The survey has been chiefly iconographic, interrelating images of clothes, photographs of fashion house interiors, brand graphics, editorials and interviews with proprietors. The brands taken into consideration include Ventura, Fumach-Medaglia, Giovanni T. Fercioni, Sandro Radice, Gabriellasport, Biki, Fernanda Lamma, Sorelle Botti, Giovanni Montorsi, Nicola Zecca and Luigi Bigi. In Paris the extraordinary figures of Elsa Schiaparelli and Vera Borea came to the fore whom, with designers like the French-Italian Gruau, the book considers not with nationalistic intent but in order to understand the important role they played in opening up Italy to international fashion. In fashion as in art, creative independence is one of the great themes of modernism. The regime made rhetorical use of the creators’ artistic qualities to promote the idea of a “purely” Italian fashion. In December 1932 a law was issued to establish the Ente autonomo per la mostra nazionale permanente della moda (In- 11 dependent Board for the Permanent National Fashion Exhibition) in Turin, which was transformed in 1935 into the Ente nazionale della moda. During the 1930s the Ente organised fashion trade fairs and shows, twice a year in spring and autumn, also handling coordination of trends and related publishing activities. Documento moda was a luxury volume on fashion trends, published annually from 1941 to 1943 by the Ente with the aim of promoting fashion as part of contemporary artistic culture, side by side with painting and the cinema. One of the Ente’s objectives was to create a fashion documentation centre at the Turin headquarters. The material included photographs of garments from fashion houses enrolled with the Ente, issues of national and international fashion magazines, cloth samples and historic fashion-plates (Bollettino ENM 1938). It was above all in the second half of the 1930s that the Ente nazionale della moda intensified its commitment to promoting Italian creativity by inhibiting the importation and copying of French haute couture. The Mark of guarantee was established in 1936, with the purpose of ensuring the Italianness of the design and production of clothing, and was followed by establishment of the trademark Texorit, for Italian textiles, and the Golden Mark for the most exclusive high fashion creations. Those were years of great industrial growth in the textile and clothing fields, further stimulated by the autarkic policies launched by the regime as a reaction to sanctions imposed on Italy by the League of Nations during the conquest of Ethiopia in 1935. The regime saw autarky as a form of economic autonomy for Italy by avoiding the importation of raw materials. In the fashion sector it was concentrated on the production of textile fibres, leather and furs, both real and artificial. Inseparable from nationalistic and propagandistic causes, autarky became a way of affirming an ideology, as demonstrated by the 1936 publication of the Commentario dizionario italiano della moda by writer Cesare Meano. The work took its place in a broader government project to Italianise foreign loan words and it made direct reference to fashion figures like Biki, René Gruau and John Guida who were transformed into Bichi, Renato and Gion. For this book it was decided to retain the spelling usage of the reference period, noting all the various versions in the Index of Names. In the textile field there was a revaluation of local and colonial resources such as the rough woollen cloth of Sardinia, the Casentino fabric from Tuscany and Ethiopian cotton. An attitude emerged – crossing all disciplines – which we have defined as “modern original” and set in relation to the concepts of Mediterranean rationalism and Italian primitivism. An example in architecture is Luigi Cosenza and Bernard Rudofsky’s Casa Oro in Posillipo. This vision of modern original includes the sense of a new beginning, as in the “Industria tessile senza macchine” (Textile industry without machinery) theorised by Anita Pittoni (1939: 54) and the “dressmaking without dressmaker” of Austrian architect Rudofsky. In Italy the latter came into contact with the circle of Gio Ponti and the magazine Domus where, in 1938, he published his first nucleus of reflections on the inhumanity of fashion, anticipating the themes of his fundamental 1944 exhibition Are Clothes Modern? at the MOMA in New York. Rudofsky (1938: 10-11) believed that “there is no hope for a human garment until we change our way of seeing the human body only through the eyes of tailors and dressmakers”. A whole aesthetic was developed around the autarkic policy. Enthusiasm for the artificial purity of new industrial products was perceptible even in the phantasmagorical names – Acesil, Argentea, Lunesil, Fibrilla, Ivorea and Viscofan – used to market one of the most widespread fibres of the day: rayon. Autarky and artificial fibres took a predominant place in official exhibitions such as the Mostra del tessile nazionale (National Textile Exhibition) in Rome, between 1937 and 1938, a high profile event in regime propaganda. Our critical interpretation of the autarkic question has brought out, for the first time, a hypothesis of its dependence on the forms of avant-garde art, borrowing especially from futurist and surrealist principles of surprise and exaltation of the incongruous: for example the “milk dress” in Lanital fibres celebrated by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Reptilia and Sirena leather shoes by SALP (Società anonima lavorazione pelli) and the ones by Ferragamo made from cellophane wrappers for sweets. An early idea of “Made in Italy” was outlined in the ex- 12 portation of Italian fabrics and in the growth of industrial brands like Superga, Persol, FACIS and Luisa Spagnoli. This section includes the debate between provincialism and cosmopolitism in Italian culture of the period. In the cities and small towns fashion had a profound influence on craft and industrial production, as well as on people’s taste and style (Gundle 2006). From Perugia to Torviscosa, from Biella to Cesano Maderno, that polycentric Italian landscape was delineated which is still so characteristic of Italian fashion today. PARADE. As in fashion itself, in the book the parade is the conclusive moment. This section deals with one of the central places of formation, in the early decades of the 20th century, of the modern aesthetic. Metaphor of consumption, the logics of standardisation and the flow of the modern day, it presents the rite of the fashion show in its elements of seriality and tackles the theme of the display of fashion in the form of exhibitions, shop windows, cities and catwalks. At the beginning of each season Italian fashion houses announced shows of their latest collections. For spring 1924 Vittorio Roveri quantified its own in one hundred models, some original and some French (Lidel 1924). Presentations were held on the dressmakers’ premises and, from the 1920s onwards, at the increasingly frequent collective shows. On the occasion of the 1923 Milan Fiera campionaria the Fashion Pavilion was inaugurated with the aim of putting on shows with French and Italian fashion houses. The first building was in wood but as early as 1924 was replaced by the Palazzo della moda in brick (Vera 1924). Following the example of Milan, fashion buildings and theatres sprang up in other Italian cities including Turin and Bologna. The Milan experience was also one of the first forms of coordination among fashion houses which, in 1924, came together in the Sindacato dell’alta moda italiana (High Fashion Union) coordinated by Vittorio Montano, director of the fashion maison Ventura. In 1929 the CIMA, Consorzio industriale mostre abbigliamento (Industrial Consortium of Clothing Exhibitions was founded with the support of the Confederazione generale fascista dell’industria italiana (General Fascist Confederation of Italian Industry). Still coordinated by Montano, the purpose of the initiative was to set up a national fashion palazzo in Milan and to organise shows in high society venues like the Grand Hotel Excelsior at the Venice Lido (Moda C.C. 1929: 15). In the second half of the 1920s fashion shows were still held without a catwalk and they maintained the frontality of a theatre stage. In a bare setting, to avoid distracting attention from the creations, the models came out at a rhythmic pace, pirouetting to show the dress through 360 degrees. The 1930s saw the introduction of monumental raised catwalks that passed among the public and opened up vanishing points. Fashion shows fed the collective imagination of high society and were one of the fashion promotion instruments in which the regime invested considerably, starting with the Ente nazionale della moda initiatives. From 1933 onwards, twice a year in spring and autumn, Turin hosted the Mostra nazionale della moda (National Fashion Exhibition), promoted by the Ente and held in the building created by Umberto Cuzzi through intervention on the existing Palazzo del Giornale in Valentino Park. After the VI Fashion Exhibition in autumn 1935 all traces were lost of this event’s rigorous regularity. With the objective of “bringing together all textile products and clothing activities”, the Salone delle industrie tessili e dell’abbigliamento (Textile Industries and Clothing Salon) opened in 1936 at the XVII Milan Fiera campionaria, “under the aegis of the Ente nazionale della moda” (Sovrana 1937). “Official event” fashion shows remained in Turin, but not at the 1933 Palazzo. Designed in rationalistic trade-fair style and gaudily painted orange, this structure was certainly functional in its planimetric organisation but gradually revealed its temporary nature and was replaced by a more lasting building designed by Ettore Sottsass senior. The Palazzo della moda, in the new look given by Sottsass, was inaugurated in 1938 on the occasion of an event entitled Turin and Autarky (La rivista illustrata del Popolo d’Italia November 1938). 1940 was the last year of the Turin event: great space was given to textiles (De Angeli Frua, Marzotto, Piacenza) and to mass production (La Rinascente, FACIS). A show within the show, the Istituto Luce newsreels regularly documented fashion events: the procession the of authorities at the opening, the visit to the rooms, the sequence of display windows and mannequins. At the Mostra del tessile nazionale in Rome Mussolini attended the fashion show and received a Roman salute from the models. Careful analysis of materials allowed us to examine the change in fashion exhibition methods, setting out from the presupposition that there is a visual and functioning analogy between the catwalks and the cinema camera. Unlike the small fashion theatres of the early 20th century, which imposed a frontal vision of the models, the catwalks of the 1930s alluded to a rhythmic, simultaneous and serial vision of clothes in movement. As Caroline Evans writes (2006: 72), the fashion show expressed “a desire to materialise modernity rather than represent it”. In this perspective there was a continuity between the dynamic vision of cinema and the contemporary lifestyles formerly praised by futurism: the advent of car races like the Mille Miglia, and new shopping streets appearing in the cities, like Via Roma in Turin. The asphalt ribbons of the first Italian motorways linked the industrial cities of the north and led to the ski slopes and beaches that began to function as winter and summer catwalks for holiday and weekend rituals. “How many times I put my foot down on the accelerator of my Balilla in the direction of the Turin motorway! I set off with cases full of woollen sweaters and ski-pants, but also elegant evening dresses for the weekend,” recounts Gabriella di Robilant in her autobiography (Di Giardinelli 1988: 71-72), talking about her trips to Sestrière, a tourist resort created in the 1930s by the Agnelli family. The linearity of fashion shows was not so different from the geometry of military parades: the similarity of the models’ bodies and the uniforms of the Giovani italiane (Young Italians); the regime’s parades and industrial mass production; depersonalising order and the cinematography of new behaviours dictated by Hollywood. The parade was fundamental to the regime’s choreography, starting with the 1922 march on Rome. Soldiers marched with the Roman step – introduced by Mussolini in 1938 – and the parades of the fascist party organisations exalted the uniform, symbol of the levelling and depersonalising order imposed by the regime. In his diary the writer Giaime Pintor (1978: 38) recalls the regime’s preparations for Hitler’s visit to Rome in 1938: “We penetrated deeply into the spectacular complex of totalitarian regimes. We learned to disappear among the tens of thousands of people who took part in the parades, to walk to the sound of traditional music and to enjoy the impersonality granted by a uniform. During Hitler’s stay in Rome we didn’t miss a single parade”. The mass marching past was also the “designed” mass, as may be seen from the group photos of athletes, students and children. The dancers’ perfect legs and the rhythmic exercises of children in holiday camps, which the regime identified as “factories producing Italians”. The same goes for the group photos of students at the Girls Vocational Training schools, with the perfect alignment of their checked smocks, and at the Accademia nazionale femminile di educazione fisica (National Female Academy for Physical Education) in Orvieto, with uniforms that highlight an idea of collective discipline. The group photograph satisfied the regime’s choreographic bent and corresponded to the taste for order, series and geometrical composition in an industrial aesthetic of goods and bodies, as Siegfried Kracauer noted in his 1927 article “The Mass Ornament” (Kracauer 1995). The media spectacle of the masses was recounted in newsreels, documentaries and films. Those were the years when the Istituto Luce, the Cinecittà studios and the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia (Experimental Cinematography Centre) were set up in Rome. The 1937 film Contessa di Parma, directed by Alessandro Blasetti, may be considered a programmatic manifesto of the new collaboration between fashion and cinema that was a feature of the regime years. It is not at random that the film closes with a sumptuous catwalk. MARIO LUPANO ALESSANDRA VACCARI 13