I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the programmes broadcast on Italian television, but if you don’t know anything about them, well, don’t worry, you’re not missing anything. The Italian state TV broadcaster Rai has always been heavily influenced by the government, and, for years, it has been broadcasting piles of crap, from quiz to entertainment shows with lots of semi-naked women in the background. Silvio Berlusconi’s private channels are obviously infested not only by semi-naked women but also by his political propaganda (which is obviously now also ruling the Italian state broadcaster since he’s again Prime Minister…), so that people are brainwashed into thinking he’s a saint. 
What is usually referred to as "fiction" in Italian TV slang is rather popular in the country at the moment: the word usually indicates a film divided in a few episodes. Sadly, though, the main characters are often the same: Carabinieri, police officers, doctors, coast guard officers, priests and so on (as long as they wear a uniform, the characters fit the bill...), in the same way as the plots are usually thin, sickly sentimental and often feature hero-like men and useless women. 
You can imagine then that when last Sunday and Monday, RaiUno broadcast the American film Coco Chanel, advertising it as "fiction", the channel scored a huge success. In fact some people thought it was the most brilliant thing they had watched in years. Directed by Christian Duguay, written by Enrico Medioli with Lea Tafuri, Carla Canalini and James Carrington and starring Barbora Bobulova (as young Coco Chanel) and Shirley MacLaine (Coco in later years), the film followed the French designer throughout 60 years of her life. 
The opening was rather banal: Chanel’s 1954 unsuccessful catwalk sparked the first flashback about Coco’s childhood. The misadventures of Gabrielle “Coco” Bonheur Chanel followed, from her mum’s death and her childhood in an orphanage to her loves and her hat business.
Despite being somehow interesting, the film was way too sentimental: aimed maybe at a family audience, it kept on highlighting the most tragic moments in Gabrielle’s life, but reduced her groundbreaking ideas that revolutionised fashion to a few shots, compared to the space given to her love story with Etienne Balsan (Sagamore Stévenin) and Boy Capel (Olivier Sitruk). Even choosing the fragrance for Chanel No. 5 was a brisk little thing, once the director got rid of it, he had more time to concentrate on Coco's doomed love affair with Boy Capel. 
I guess that one of the main reasons why the fashion element in the film was rather sparse was that, though the maison approved the use of the trade mark, the house of Chanel wasn’t involved in the film, while it is heavily involved in two other films about Madame Coco’s life, Anne Fontaine’s Coco avant Chanel with Audrey Tatou and Jean Kounen’s Chanel & Stravinsky with Anna Mouglalis, about the relationship between the designer and Igor Stravinsky. Apparently, Karl Lagerfield is working on the costumes for both the films, while the costumes Bobulova and MacLaine wore and the outfits made for the catwalks in Duguay’s film were redesigned by Stefano De Nardis and Pierre-Yves Gayraud (original costumes from the 1900s-1920s were also used for the secondary characters). So far I think the best thing shot about Chanel is not about Coco, but about Karl Lagerfeld working for the house of Chanel and that's the documentary Signé Chanel by Loïc Prigent. 
So while Coco Chanel inspired Shirley MacLaine to develop her own line of jewellery, I just hope that in Italy it will inspire something else. Yes, probably a lot of people in Italy watched it because it didn’t feature the usual story, but I wish with all my heart that someone watched it also because some of the costumes were actually taken from the archives of the Tirelli tailoring house. Many have forgotten that Italy still has some of the most incredible tailoring houses that have the most beautiful costume archives in the world. In fact I think that rather than doing the umpteenth film about fashion, someone should shoot a film about at least one of these historical tailoring houses that worked for the cinema, theatre, opera and ballet. You think it would be less glamorous than a film about fashion with designers backstabbing each other and models taking drugs? Well, maybe, but it would be extremely refreshing and would also help young people who are into fashion design to rediscover the great work of a few Italian pioneer tailors.
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