fashion in italian film
The words ‘fashion in Italian cinema’ are most likely to conjure up images of buxom blondes frolicking in fountains, or gaudy seductresses posing with lips pouted over curvaceous, Sophia Loren-esque frames. Despite these blunt connotations, a perusal of Italian cinema demonstrates that the style on display is anything but archetypal, and that it involves much more than mere sultry curls and heavy lids. Jacinta Mulders digs into the archives of Italian cinema and discusses some of the most inspirational and impressionable of trends…
Any look at experimental style should start with the maestro of experimental film, Federico Fellini. Aesthetically obsessed, Fellini moves from gaudy extravagance to pared back cool in the space of a single take. In his semi-autobiographic classic, 8½ (1963), old women mill about draped in an excess of pearls, diamonds, netting, feathers and lace, displaying a pageantry that’s almost grotesque in its glamour. It’s as if Fellini has captured the showy exuberance with which Italian fashion is renowned and has injected it with a shot of speed: traces of Versace tinsel can be perceived in sparkles of overwrought crystal, while the pride and ostentation with which the characters move is reminiscent of the Dolce & Gabbana brand of flaunt. Aside from all the bling, there is something of a proud femininity to Fellini’s extravagance. The late sixties drapery of the dresses in Juliet of the Spirits (1965) suggest the frivolity of an era past, where block, bleeding colours are used to evoke a psychedelic sunset. Black bob cuts are played against cattish eyes, mint ruffles and matching parasols, while flowers, folding and ruching create a dreamscape of cascading hues.
Fellini’s scenes of boundless extravagance are tempered with images of pure cool. It’s something for which Italian fashion is renowned; one need only think of a navy Armani suit accompanying perfect sunglasses and a chiseled jaw, or a bronzed Gucci face shielded by cascading tresses and bug-eyed frames to recognise this national fashion insignia. Italian cinema is seemingly no different. Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) sees Marcello Mastroianni and French belle Anouk Aimee as a sharply cut duo against the midnight skyline: cat sunglasses, the sharpest suits and nonchalant leans in tow. This film, which coined the term ‘paparazzi’, sees even the snap-hungry press dressed immaculately in trench coats that would make Christopher Bailey sigh.
A different brand of timeless cool is reflected in the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, who is probably most famous for directing the iconic sixties film Blow Up (1966). Despite the fact that the film is largely representative of sixties British fashion, Antonioni’s earlier work in Italy speaks of a more subtle style. Magic resides in Antonioni’s lingering shots, particularly as they are cast over his muse, Monica Vitti. In The Adventure (1960) her windswept long, blonde bob is pared perfectly against simple cottons and elegant cuts, displaying undeniable restraint and timeless good taste.
Indeed, as much as Italian fashion seems capable of extravagance and self-assured cool, austere luxury seems to be just as regularly on offer. This is the Milanese culture so regularly documented on the blog of a certain Mr. Schumann, and most recently represented in Luca Guadagnino’s revelation, I Am Love (2009). This is a style that doesn’t scream out to everyone; it whispers only to those in the know. It’s all in the details, whether it is the stitching on an apparently anonymous Hermès Birkin, or the tailoring of a red Jil Sander shift. This innate attention to detail is hardly new: cult director Luchino Visconti made meticulous detail an art form in his films of the sixties. His classic, Death In Venice (1971), witnesses a German composer spend a spiel in Venice dressed in an immaculate white suit, while The Leopard (1963) recreates Sicily in the 1800s in sumptuous, adoring detail.
