Italian Style

Eugenia Paulicelli is Professor of Italian, Comparative Literature and Women's Studies at Queens College and The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY), USA. At The Graduate Center she directs Fashion Studies in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) and the PhD Concentration. Among her books: Fashion under Fascism: Beyond the Black Shirt (2004); Moda e Moderno (editor, 2006); The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, Globalization (co-editor, 2009); Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy (2014); Rosa Genoni: Fashion is a Serious Business (2015). Visit her website at www.eugeniapaulicelli.com.

This critically elegant and highly readable book tackles anew how fashion and cinema combine social history with aesthetics. Impressively well researched, Italian Style is a compelling exploration of how the fashion industry and its costume designers shaped the cultural context of national identity. With vigor and clarity, Paulicelli illuminates such films as Fellini’s Roma, Antonioni’s Le amiche, and Sorrentino’s La grande bellezza. A must-read for anyone with an interest in cinema and passion for this glorious art.

• List of Illustrations viiAcknowledgments xi1 Fashion, Film, Modernity 1Nostra Dea: the goddess of fashion 1Pirandello, cinema, and clothing: elective affinities 4“The Tight Frock-Coat”: performing dress 7Film, costume, fashion, and intermediality 10Italian style: fashion and film 102 Italian Fashion and Film in the 1910s: From the Futurists to Rosa Genoni 19The Futurists, fashion, film, and performance 20Rosa Genoni: Per una moda italiana: fashioning the diva 263 From the Body of the Diva to the Body of the Nation 41The Italian divas and the “gowns of emotions” 41Lyda Borelli (1887–1959): the ethereal melancholic beauty and Ma l’amore mio non muore! (love everlasting) 48The veil: modernity in motion in Nino Oxilia’s Rapsodia Satanica 54Francesca Bertini (1892–1985): the glamorous embodied 63Nino Oxilia’s Sangue Bleu (1914) and Gustavo Serena’s Assunta Spina (1915) 63Pina Menichelli (1890–1981): “the other woman” and the end of an era 694 Fashion, Film, Modernity, under Fascism 77Fashion in motion: the LUCE newsreels 81Rhythms of the modern city: fashion in Corrado D’Errico’s Stramilano (1929) 88Contessa di Parma (Alessandro Blasetti, 1937): a manifesto for the promotion of Italian fashion and Turin as a fashion city 91Grandi Magazzini (1939, Mario Camerini): fashion consumption, gender roles, and work in Milan 101Epilogue: towards a new dawn 1065 Launching Italian Style in Cinema and Fashion: The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni 113The fabric of film: Sette canne, un vestito (1949) 113The 1950s: Cronaca di un amore, La signora senza camelie and Le amiche 119The fashion show in Cronaca: a narrative mise en abyme 127“Was I a good femme fatale?” (Lucia Bosè (Clara) in La signora senza camelie) 128The fashion show in Le amiche: the end of the game 132The 1960s: from costume to fashion. L’Avventura and beyond 133Outsiders, doubles, wanderers 137Conclusion: a visual tactility 1516 Rome, Fashion, Film 157From “Hollywood on the Tiber” to La Dolce Vita 157Rome as a fashion city in the postwar years 161La Dolce Vita 170La Dolce Vita and its discontents 174Roma (Fellini, 1971): space and time 175The broken watch of history 177The ecclesiastical fashion show 1787 After La Dolce Vita: La Grande Bellezza (2013) by Paolo Sorrentino 185Fashion, film, and Rome today: national identity revisited 192Appendices:The Photographic Archive by Giuseppe Palmas (1918–1977) 195Interview with Fernanda Gattinoni, Rome, June 16, 2000 199Dressing the Dreams: Interview with Dino Trappetti—Tirelli Costumi Rome, December 2015 207Interview with Teresa Allegri, founder of Annamode, Rome, Fondazione Annamode, June 6, 2013 215Adriana Berselli 227Some notes on the set of L’avventura (1960) by Michelangelo Antonioni 227“Cesare Attolini” and La Grande Bellezza: Interview with Massimiliano Attolini, Son of Cesare and Grandson of Vincenzo, Founder of the Sartoria 233Selected Bibliography 239Filmography 255Index 259