According to Dino Trappetti, current Head of the Tirelli tailoring house and Chairman of the Tirelli-Trappetti Foundation, Italian costume designer Piero Tosi created some of the most iconic images of Italian cinema. Disagreeing with Trappetti is practically impossible as Tosi is a legend in the history of Italian cinema.
A friend and collaborator of Umberto Tirelli (founder of the eponymous tailoring house in Rome), Tosi is known all over the world as the designer behind the fabulous gown donned by Claudia Cardinale in the ball scene of Luchino Visconti's "The Leopard" (1963). Yet there is more behind his art, work and career, as proved by an exhibition currently on at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome.
"Piero Tosi. Esercizi sulla bellezza. Gli anni del Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC), 1988-2016" ("Piero Tosi. Exercises in Beauty. The Experimental Centre for Cinematography Years", until 20th January 2019) is a way to re-explore his career and look at the work he did with his students at Rome's CSC.
Born in 1927 near Florence, Tosi had a revelation about his career in 1944: the war was ending and to celebrate it the allies did a sort of show at the Santa Maria Novella railway station that he attended with two friends – Danilo Donati and Franco Zeffirelli. Mesmerised by the show the allies had put together, as soon as the war was over Tosi enrolled in the Accademia di Belle Arti.
In 1947 he started creating his first costumes, working with Franco Zeffirelli and Luchino Visconti. He dressed Anna Magnani in "Bellissima" (1951), studying the style of his character by visiting the local markets and observing real people. For Magnani's character – Maddalena Cecconi – Tosi borrowed a skirt suit from a woman and aged it by dyeing it in tea.
Visconti turned to Tosi also for the staging of Goldoni's "La Locandiera" and Bellini's "La Sonnambula". Then the costume designer went back to working with Visconti for the big screen, creating iconic gowns for Alida Valli, Silvana Mangano and Claudia Cardinale (Cardinale worked with Tosi on 8 films), showing an incredible attention for details in the costumes of the secondary characters in "Senso" (1954) and using a combination of ready-to-wear affordable clothes from '50s high street retailers such as Onestà, Standa and Upim, urban looks and sport designs in "Rocco e i suoi fratelli" (1960) (Alain Delon in his Lombarda gym top entered the history of cinema, but also the local history of the Milanese gym).
Tosi also worked with Federico Fellini and dressed Maria Callas in Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Medea", opting in this case for a mix of inspirations from ancient Mediterranean civilisations, including Sardinian folk costumes and Moroccan, Tunisian and African traditional dresses.
In November 2014 Tosi was awarded the Honorary Governors Award in Los Angeles (on his request Claudia Cardinale and Dino Trappetti travelled to the States to get the award).
The prize was well-deserved as Tosi undoubtedly created some of the most memorable costumes in the history of Italian cinema: for Cardinale's ballgown in "The Leopard" for example he opted for a refined organza by Dior supported by twelve layers of tulle and squeezed the actress in a whalebone corset that reduced her waistline to just 51 cm.
While at times Tosi turned to designer clothes for his characters (in "Boccaccio '70" Romy Schneider as Pupe wears a Chanel suit), he often ended up creating connections with fashion or inspiring collections.
Visconti's "La caduta degli dei" (The Damned, 1969) prompted indeed fashion designers to rediscover and relaunch the '30s; Silvana Mangano's soft pink dresses matched with hats wrapped in yards of tulle maline in "Morte a Venezia" (Death in Venice, 1971) inspired Karl Lagerfeld's designs in Chanel Cruise Collection 2009/10. Tosi's look for Charlotte Rampling as Lucia in Liliana Cavani's "Il portiere di notte" (The Night Porter, 1974) was replicated on Marc Jacobs' A/W 2011-12 runway for Louis Vuitton and his costumes for "Medea" inspired instead Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli's Valentino's Spring/Summer 2014 collection.
The secret of Tosi' success is revealed in interviews with actors and actresses who worked with him, who often mention his passion for the smallest details. Cardinale often stated that in the bag that accessorised her grand gown for "The Leopard" there were all the objects her character may have needed in real life, including a carnet de bal or dance card, even though we never actually see them in the film.
Tosi championed indeed a philological approach to costume design (an approach that followed the steps of another Italian costume designer, Gino Carlo Sensani) and his background research for a costume always started from history and art. Another key point was his collaboration with the hairstylists and the make up artists working on a character as well.
This obsession with historical precision derived from a very basic reason – clothes make the character and help an actor getting into the part. In a nutshell in Tosi's practice a costume is related to the Latin term "habitus", meaning the physical or constitutional characteristic of a person.
Tosi passed this lesson onto his students at the CSC in Rome where he worked between 1988 and 2016.
The event at Rome's Palazzo delle Esposizioni features not just Tosi's own costumes, drawings, photographs and materials relating to the films he contributed to (these materials were donated by Tosi to the archives of the CSC library), but also images showing his students working during his workshops and the selected creations of a new generation of costume designers, including Massimo Cantini Parrini (on display here there's the red and black gown donned by Salma Hayek as the Queen of Longtrellis in Matteo Garrone's "Tale of Tales"), Daniela Ciancio, Andrea Cavalletto and Andrea Sorrentino (a hair and makeup designer).
The costume designers he taught to often talk about Tosi's strictness and his rigorous research for perfection – according to Tosi paying attention to details helps a film feeding the viewers' dreams and introduces them to beauty.
The exhibition, that is also accompanied by a series of dedicated screenings of famous Italian films, is also a way to ponder a bit about artisanal techniques, style and made in Italy fashion.
After touring the exhibition you'll realise that Tosi made outstanding contributions to the history of cinema because together with Tirelli he created powerful visual images that are embedded in the history of film, and that can be easily identified not just by cinema experts and critics, but also by passionate film fans. In rare interviews (Tosi is a humble and reserved man who dislikes fame), he loves to highlight that choosing a set and costume designer represents for a director the first step towards a great film. Judging from the gowns, dresses, suits and robes on display at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Tosi is definitely right.
