Textile and Fashion Production in Italy 1945-1985

Italian fashion narratives have often focused on the stylistic trajectories of couturiers and individual stilisti or on the biographies of fashion centres such as Turin during the interwar period, Florence as symbol of the renaissance of Italian fashion in the postwar years, Rome and its Hollywood-on-the-Tiber glamour and finally Milan as the hub for the boom of the prêt-à–porter. However, the observation of the very material that constructs fashion, that is, textiles and their fibres, their quality, innovation in design, materials (natural, artificial, or man-made fibres), production techniques and their impact on the country’s overall fashion and design aesthetic is still largely uncharted. Equally unexplored is the interdisciplinary nature of such studies, especially if we think that fashion and textile’s ideation, design and production merge more than one art and disciplines, as do couturiers and designers who have been inspired by (and have influenced) artists and society.

Figure 1, Simonetta Visconti, coat, wool, circa 1961 – Victoria and Albert Museum, London

These are the premises of the research project I am currently working on: Italy’s Textile Production and its Influence on the Ready-to-Wear System and its Aesthetics 1945-1985, which critically examines the rapid development of Italian fashion from a country of dressmakers and couturiers to a producer of mass-produced ready-to-wear at the forefront of international scene between 1945 and 1985. In previous studies on Italian fashion, the term “Made in Italy” was unpacked, analysed, criticised and connected historically with early modernity (Carlo Marco Belfanti, Renaissance and Made in Italy, 2015; Grace Lees-Maffei and Kjetil Fallan (eds.), Made in Italy, 2014; Eugenia Paulicelli, Fashion: The Cultural Economy of Made in Italy, 2014). Still, the accent has fallen more on the style and quality associated with the tag, than on understanding what the production of these goods entail.

Figure 2 Emilio Pucci, label with Capri and Florence symbols from a beach playsuit, cotton, 1955 – Victoria and Albert Museum, London

In my study, I look instead at the use of modern advances in technology, new fabrics and machine or technical developments that allowed Italian fashion to be branded with adjectives such as “traditional” and “artisanal”, as well as “modern”, “simple”, and “sporty”. In particular, I connect production and commerce with aesthetics, situating national change within global contexts and fusing textile, fashion studies and design history in a multidisciplinary approach. For instance, I plan to assess the extent to which artificial and synthetic yarns are employed in the making of textile used in Italian high fashion during the 1950s and the impact this had on Italian textile production, fashion exports and fibre imports as well as on textile and fashion’s design and style.

The importance of the material employed in making Italian fashion has often been considered a very significant characteristic of the country’s aesthetic, but its impact has not been yet critically assessed. I address this gap and contribute a new approach to the object-based study, by reversing the attention from style and composition to the materials and production and by uniting the usually separated studies of fashion and textile history.

My project heavily relies on primary research in archives in Italy, UK and USA. The variety of these sources (textile manufacturers, museum collections, departments stores, designers, couturiers) and their far-flung locations often make them quite challenging to navigate. However, the diversity and richness of the materials, from personal letters, to cloth samples, to sketches is contributing to inform the diversity of the field I am investigating.

Figure 4, Clerici Tessuto, textile sample, rayon and viscose, 1948, Clerici Tessuto

Lucia Savi is a PhD candidate at Kingston University, London