In today's fashion glossary, luxury is interpreted as something reserved to very few wealthy people. But there are famous costume designers who have been providing eternal luxury for theatre, opera and film productions for decades, proving that there may be more craftsmanship on the big screen than on your average runway. One of them is Italian Piero Tosi.
A friend and collaborator of Umberto Tirelli (founder of the eponymous tailoring house in Rome), Tosi (born in 1927) is known as the designer behind the fabulous gown donned by Claudia Cardinale in the ball scene of Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (1963). The art and skills that went into the costumes and the obsessive historical details used to make all the garments in this film (for Cardinale's ballgown - a symbolic piece, as iconic as Vivien Leigh's green curtain dress in Gone With the Wind - Tosi opted for a refined organza by Dior supported by twelve layers of tulle) are among the main reasons why The Leopard is still considered as a masterpiece. A recently opened exhibition at the Galleria del Costume (Costume Gallery) at Palazzo Pitti in Florence celebrates Piero Tosi.
"Omaggio al Maestro Piero Tosi" (Homage to Master Piero Tosi, until 11th January 2015) features a selection of costumes from the Tirelli archives at the Costume Gallery of Palazzo Pitti. Though Claudia Cardinale became an icon of style very much connected to Tirelli and Tosi's work (Cardinale worked with Tosi on 8 films), this exhibition proves that Tosi created further iconic images like the costumes for Silvana Mangano in Death in Venice.
Visitors to the exhibition will have the chance to rediscover costumes for Romy Schneider in Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (1972), Laura Antonelli in Visconti's L’innocente (1976) and Maria Callas in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Medea (1969). The latter remains a wonderfully unique piece, a sort of mix of inspirations, cultures, ancient Mediterranean civilisations including Sardinian folk costumes and Moroccan, Tunisian and African traditional dresses.
A true visionary, Tosi is well-known not just for his costumes, but for being a reserved and humble man. "Every time he was asked to collaborate to an important project, he would think he wasn't good enough for that," Dino Trappetti, current Head of the Tirelli tailoring house and Chairman of the Tirelli-Trappetti Foundation, remembers. "For example, when they were working on The Leopard he was afraid he would have never managed to turn Burt Lancaster into Fabrizio Corbera, but his costumes turned the actor into an unforgettable Prince of Salina."
Quite often directors such as Visconti, Bolognini and Zeffirelli had to ask Tirelli to speak to Tosi and convince him to collaborate with him. "Federico Fellini asked him to prepare the preliminary sketches for Ginger & Fred and Tosi did so," Trappetti recounts. "Then he went to Fellini's house, and, just before ringing the bell, he thought 'he won't like my work' and went away. Tosi then told Fellini he had never done the drawings and the director eventually gave the job to another talented costume designer, Danilo Donati."
Last November Piero Tosi was awarded the Honorary Governors Award in Los Angeles, and, since he doesn't travel anymore, he asked Cardinale and Trappetti to go in his place. It was only natural for the panel to assign Tosi the Honorary Oscar since he created some of the most iconic images of Italian cinema, yet his iconic costumes quite often spawned fashion collections in which Tosi wasn't credited.
Cinema always inspired fashion - Visconti's La caduta degli dei (The Damned, 1969) prompted designers to rediscover and relaunch the '30s - but in more recent years designers just lifted famous images from specific films and reused them for their collections. Quite a few of Marc Jacobs' looks for Louis Vuitton's A/W 2011-12 collection were borrowed from a disturbing scene in Liliana Cavani's Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter, 1974) in which Lucia, wearing only a pair of trousers, suspenders, long leather gloves and a beret with a turquoise mask on top of it sings for a group of SS officers. Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli borrowed instead the style of Medea for Valentino's Spring/Summer 2014 collection.
"Cinema has always borrowed from fashion and has always inspired it in return," Trappetti recounts. "Norma Shearer in van Dyke's 1938 Marie Antoinette wore crinoline dresses, but specific elements pointing towards late '30 trends reveal this is not a historical film," Trappetti explains. "Italian costume designers such as Gino Carlo Sensani and then Piero Tosi always interpreted history instead in a precise yet critical way and, in doing so, they relaunched certain fashion trends. Tosi and Umberto Tirelli made outstanding contributions to the history of cinema because they created visual images that are so well coded and crafted that they can be easily identified. It's only natural then for a fashion designer to use their visual language to call back in their audiences' minds certain references and I'm definitely happy to see that in this way Tosi's work is still out there."
"Omaggio al Maestro Piero Tosi", Galleria del Costume, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy, until 11th January 2015.
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