We all remember the famous scene in Billy Wilder's "The Seven Year Itch" (1955) featuring Marilyn Monroe and co-star Tom Ewell exiting a movie theater. A gush of wind from the subway passing below lifts Monroe's pleated skirt, but, rather than covering her legs, Marilyn enjoys the breeze, commenting "Isn't it delicious?"”
Designed by William Travilla, the ivory cocktail dress featured a halter-like bodice attached to a fitted body band situated immediately under the breasts and opening into a pleated skirt.
Not many people known that the pleats for that dress were made by the Rome-based Sorelle Antonini Atelier. The production director discovered the atelier in Via Quintino Sella while going to Via Veneto and told Travilla about it. Yet, should you try and look for it, you wouldn't be able to find it as the workshop closed down at the end of January. Current owners Simona Belcastro and her husband Sergio Sacco were indeed unable to pay the monthly rent that had risen to €1,800.
It was Belcastro's great-grandfather Nazareno Antonini who started the shop in the early 1900s together with his son Armando. They began selling sewing machines, but a trip to France introduced them to the pleating art and from then on they never looked back. They developed this art that was then passed onto Armando's daughters, Giuliana and Ornella, who renamed the atelier from Ditta Antonini Nazareno to Sorelle Antonini (Antonini Sisters).
The process to make pleated fabric is long, but it is also as fascinating as an ancient ritual: the fabric is set on a special pleater board (Antonini Sisters' were mainly made with cardboard) that is closed, secured with wooden boards and weights and left in a stove at 100°-105°. In this way the pleats become perfect and resist throughout time.
In the heydays of the Hollywood on the Tiber the Sorelle Antonini collaborated with great costume designers: they created the pleated fabrics for the gowns donned by Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in the eponymous 1963 film by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and also worked with the Tirelli and Farani tailoring houses. The sisters also developed pleats for high fashion collections by famous Italian designers including Valentino, Capucci, Sarli, Sorelle Fontana, Fendi, Versace, Rocco Barocco and Balestra.
The atelier also made made-to-measure garments and embroideries: the list of icons that donned gowns and dresses by or integrating pleats by the Antonini Sisters is long and features Greta Garbo, Assia Noris and Isa Miranda.
Until a few years ago the atelier employed around 30 artisans, but in more recent times Belcastro, daughter of Ornella, mainly worked by herself in the shop. Financial issues piled up and the atelier, the only one still making pleats by hand in Rome, was forced to close down, writing the final chapter of a story that had revolved around four generations of women who were considered pleating masters.
Last year Belcastro and her husband also turned to the Italian institutions and wrote a letter to the Minister of Labour and Employment and Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio (yes, Italy has got two Deputy Prime Ministers at the moment...) and contacted the fashion houses their atelier had worked with asking for help, but they got no replies.
They eventually managed to sell some pieces of furniture from the 1700s that they had in the shop, while the cardboard pleater boards, weights, stoves, and sewing machines were sold to the Pala-Expo (a company organising art and culture events and managing the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome).
The materials were moved to the Palazzo delle Esposizioni and will be showcased at the Pelanda, an exhibition space located in Rome's historic abattoir, becoming part of the research project Artisanal Intelligence (A.I.). The idea is to use the materials as the starting point for a training course to teach young artisans the pleating technique.
There are still pleating workshops in Paris mainly working for Haute Couture houses and in the last few years Chanel has been acquiring through its Paraffection subsidiary 26 maisons and houses working with different materials and producing a variety of artisanal pieces or specialised in traditional techniques including pleating (Lognon), feather and flower adornments (Lemarie) and embroidery (Lesage).
Italy has instead just lost its last pleating masters, and while you may argue that's the fault of a widespread crisis that has also pushed quite a few French textile companies to close down or face bankruptcy, you wonder if other fashion groups or houses should maybe start saving the last artisanal workshops left (would Kering for example do it in Italy considering some of the brands in its portfolio have Italian origins?). Surely if powerful fashion groups and houses have money to invest on influencers peacocking on Instagram, they also have the financial resources to build something more durable and restart in innovative ways an artisanal tradition that may offer in future different jobs and opportunities to young people who may want to work in the fashion industry.
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