I rarely have the chance to indulge my cinematic passions while following trade fairs and catwalk shows, but, while at the Pitti, I was lucky enough to see a small, yet well organised exhibition in a Florence-based gallery.
Entitled "Dive Glamour and Moda" (Glamour Icons and Fashion), curated by Elisabetta Bruscolini and Gaia Casagrande and organised at the Aria Art Gallery, the event looks at the most popular icons and fashion trends from the 50s-60s through photography and dresses and accessories from the archives of the Annamode tailoring house.
The latter is one of the main tailoring houses I usually lecture about during courses about Italian cinema and fashion.
Annamode first started creating costumes for films in 1947 with Giuseppe De Santis’s Caccia Tragica (Tragic Hunt; the tailoring house made the dresses worn in this film by actress Vivi Gioi) and its collaborations with directors and costume designers continued throughout the years.
The sisters behind the tailoring house, Anna and Teresa Allegri, made the costumes for famous films such as King Vidor’s War and Peace (1956), Mauro Bolognini’s Il bell’Antonio (Bell'Antonio, 1960) and Luchino Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His brothers, 1960).
In more recent years Annamode collaborated on films such as Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and Ridley Scott's Robin Hood and also created costumes for theatre and opera productions.
The most interesting thing about this tailoring house is the fact, when it was first founded, Annamode had two distinct "souls": the tailoring house worked for the film industry but also created ready-to-wear and high fashion designs, while most tailoring houses working for the film industry mainly focused on costumes.
Anna and Teresa Allegri were actually born in the business since their family owned a small textile company that lost everything during the conflict when the Nazi-Fascists raided their workshop in the Pistoia area.
When the war ended, the eldest daughter Anna started selling in Rome underwear made by the Florence and Pistoia-based artisans.
In 1946 Anna opened a small shop near Via Veneto and also started creating skirts, tops and suits for a demanding clientele of Rome-based ladies.
At the time a group of young men who wanted to work in the film industry had also moved from Tuscany to Rome, among them there were also Franco Zeffirelli, Mauro Bolognini and Piero Tosi.
Some of them started working as assistants of Italian directors and often turned to Anna whenever they needed help for costumes on the set and soon she became one of the first collaborators of Italian Neorealist directors.
There is something very important that we should note from a fashion and film point of view: during these years, while more established tailoring houses such as Safas mainly worked on historical and costume films, for its connection with modern fashion trends, Annamode was favoured by all those directors tackling in their works contemporary issues.
Many costumes (designed by Piero Tosi) for Visconti’s masterpiece Bellissima (Beautiful, 1951) were for example made by Annamode and the tailoring house kept on flourishing when Neorealism spawned a more romantic genre, the so-called "Neorealismo rosa" (pink Neorealism) with films such as Luciano Emmer’s Le ragazze di Piazza di Spagna (Three Girls from Rome), mainly shot at the Fontana sisters's atelier, though the day wear costumes worn by the main characters in this film were actually made by Annamode.
After the tailoring house moved to via Borgognona, Teresa mainly worked on film costumes, while Anna focused on fashion.
As Cinecittà expanded offering the chance to many Rome-based tailoring houses to work with the national and international movie industry, historical films became rather popular in the 50s and Teresa managed to get commissions for major film productions, getting assignments also for the costumes of Anita Ekberg and Anna-Maria Ferrero in King Vidor's War and Peace.
In the 60s Annamode moved its atelier in Via Torlonia and started organising catwalk shows to present its high fashion creations.
Anna worked in the workshop on the first floor, Teresa in her own workshop located on the top floor; the former created high fashion designs and costumes for the main actresses and stars, while the latter concentrated on the costumes for the male characters and the extras.
Both the sisters also worked on the costumes for TV series and shows, and, at the end of the 60s, after moving to a bigger location, they decided to focus entirely on costumes.
More films followed and at present the tailoring house is directed by Anna’s grandchild, Simone Bessi, who created a digital archive system to catalogue all the pieces and costumes (you can check the entire list of films Annamode collaborated to in the "Credits" section of its site) and moved the collection - comprising 100,000 costumes plus various accessories - to a warehouse in Formello, near Rome.
The Florence-based exhibition features a small selection of fashion designs and accessories by Annamode: there is an evening gown in
pale blue dégradé lace decorated with crystal beads (1950); a cocktail dress in a blue silk faille fabric with a bubble skirt (1958); a New Look-like cream skirt
with geometric details (1951) and a day ensemble in grey printed silk with
a delicate floral motif with a red taffeta underskirt and a matching cropped
jacket with a taffeta lining (1951).
Accessories aren't missing and visitors will be able to see lace purses, nylon hats, silk handbags with spiral-like motifs, clutches encrusted with sequins and crystal beads, and hats and headdresses decorated with ostrich feathers.
One of the cutest piece exhibited remains a swimming ensemble from 1955 comprising a swimming suit in a cotton fabric with prints of green candies matched with a green rubber bathing cap.
The main idea behind this part of the exhibition is showing how a diva may have dressed in the 50s and which styles she may have opted for according to different times of the day, from morning till night.
The photographic section of the exhibition includes instead images of various actresses and directors, from classic pictures of Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni or Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni to more controversial shots of Jane Fonda on the set of Barbarella, Catherine Deneuve,
Roger Vadim and Brigitte Bardot, Jayne
Mansfield's screen tests; Dawn Addams, Eleonora Vargas and Anna
Magnani, Marlene Dietrich and Vittorio De Sica, Beba Lancan and Britt Ekland.
This part of the exhibition also features shoots by Angelo
Frontoni who often took images of Italian and foreign divas from those
years.
The best images in this section are the ones portraying actresses and divas such as Marisa Allasio, Martine Carol
and Gina Lollobrigida during fittings at Emilio Schuberth’s atelier or Kim Novak’s trying on a few designs at the Fontana sisters' fashion house.
The “Glamour Icons and
Fashion” exhibition actually opens a series of events dedicated to cinema and fashion that will continue in Florence throughout the summer, trying to discover the connections between film, photography, fashion and costumes.
Starting from September, the Florence-based European School of Economics will also offer a course in costume design.
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