Italy and the students of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC; Experimental Centre for Cinematography) in Rome have just lost an iconic costume designer and inspiration, Piero Tosi, who died today at 92.
Born in 1927 in Sesto Fiorentino, near Florence, Tosi was mesmerised by a show the Allies put together at the Santa Maria Novella railway station as the war was ending and that he watched with two friends - Danilo Donati and Franco Zeffirelli. 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.
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, 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).
Tosi also worked with Federico Fellini and dressed Maria Callas in Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Medea".
In this case he opted for a mix of inspirations from ancient Mediterranean civilisations, including Sardinian folk costumes and Moroccan, Tunisian and African traditional dresses.
The secret of Tosi's success was his passion for the tiniest detail: Claudia Cardinale often revealed in interviews 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.
In November 2014 Tosi was awarded the Honorary Governors Award in Los Angeles (on his request Claudia Cardinale and Dino Trappetti from the Tirelli tailoring house 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.
This gown was made in collaboration with Umberto Tirelli, founder of the eponymous tailoring house in Rome: together with Tirelli he created powerful visual images that can be easily identified not just by cinema experts and critics, but also by passionate film fans.
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 modern 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; his costumes for "Medea" inspired instead Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli's Valentino's Spring/Summer 2014 collection while Valentino's Pierpaolo Piccioli evoked Claudia Cardinale's iconic white dress in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard and the moods of this film in his A/W 19 collection for Moncler's Genius Group initiative.
Tosi passed this passion for costumes onto his students at the CSC in Rome where he worked between 1988 and 2016. He was celebrated in various exhibitions and more recently with the retrospective "Piero Tosi. Exercises on Beauty" - at Rome's Palazzo delle Esposizioni.
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, but he was also a very humble man. In an interview with Irenebrination he once stated: "Every time Tosi was asked to collaborate to an important project, he would think he wasn't good enough for that. 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. Federico Fellini asked him to prepare the preliminary sketches for Ginger & Fred and Tosi did so. 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."
Pippo Zeffirelli, son of Franco, stated about Tosi's death, "Franco (Zeffirelli), Piero, and Oscar winner Danilo Donati, formed a unique and extraordinary group of people together with costume and set designer Anna Anni. They were genuine talents in the world of performing arts. (...) For quite a few years they shared a flat in Rome, living a bohémienne lifestyle, they had very little money but a lot of talent. The last artist from this great group of people died today - Tosi was definitely one of the greatest costume designers in the world."
Costume designers Milena Canonero, Gabriella Pescucci, Maurizio Millenotti and Quirino Conti, are considered Tosi's spiritual children. Tirelli will be buried in the chapel of the Zeffirelli family, in the Porte Sante cemetery in Florence, where Franco Zeffirelli, who died in June this year, and Anna Anni also rest.
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