All Clear Trends from 1976 |

As a follow up to yesterday's post, let's look at the transparent/see-through trend via two garments designed by Giorgio Correggiari for the Autumn/Winter 1976-77 season.

Correggiari was born in 1943 near Bologna where he also studied. His family owned a textile mill and he first worked as an apprentice for a few textile companies in France, England and Germany. Back in Italy, he opened his own boutique in Riccione in 1968 (he moved onto his second store in the following year).

Better known for having designed the successful UFO jeans line for the Gruppo Zanella in Italy (from 1974), he also worked for many other companies (he was indeed one of the most prolific Italian designers), founding his own fashion house in the mid-'70s and becoming a yarn/knitwear advisor for many companies including Filature di Tollegno. He favoured unsophisticated, practical and fashionable yet avant-garde styles, sold at affordable prices.

The styles portrayed in the two images in this post (designed in the same year Correggiari was part of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York) refer to two jackets Correggiari developed for UFO using Barzaghi S.p.A.'s plastic and polyurethane based textiles. In the following years he worked on further innovative techniques and materials, such as sweaters made of a cellulose yarn paper developed in Japan.

Dolce and Gabbana met while working as assistants for Correggiari, a rebel who abandoned the catwalk show circuit in 1990, as, in his opinion, fashion had turned into finance (who could blame him?). The designer died in June 2011.

"Excellence comes about as a result of ideas, creative enthusiasm and the capacity of looking to the future” and these see-through garments prove he was genuinely ahead of his time. I'm embedding this video of Correggiari's Autumn/Winter 1987-88 collection so that people who do not know his work may be able to get further references about his style, cut and designs.