“Irenebrinentrano, Irenebrindano, Irenebrinescono.” This is not a
strange magic formula, but a play on the name of writer and journalist Irene
Brin, published in the late ‘30s by the journal Bertoldo. This Italian satirical
publication had at the time already spotted the arrival on the scene of a new
cultural phenomenon, Irene Brin. Her real name was Maria Vittoria Rossi and she
was born in 1914 in the small city of Sasso. As a young girl, her mother
introduced her to literature, art and languages, and, when she wasn’t even
twenty, she started writing for the Italian daily Il Lavoro. In 1937, Leo
Longanesi invited her to write for his magazine, Omnibus, re-christening
her with what turned out to be the luckiest pseudonym of her life, Irene Brin. 
Irene’s style was sophisticated
and witty: intrigued by fashion, she was also obsessive about art. Together
with husband Gaspero Del Corso she opened an art gallery in Rome, the
“Obelisco”, that soon became Rome’s cultural hub and also provided the set for
many fashion photo shoots that tried to compare garments and accessories to
paintings, drawings and sculptures.
One day in 1950, Irene was
walking with Gaspero on Park Avenue, New York. As usually she was impeccably
dressed in a Fabiani suit and a Jacques Fath hat. A very curious lady
approached her asking where she had bought the stylish suit she was wearing.
For the sake of fashion Irene forgot the American lady’s lack of discretion and
launched into a lesson on the fabrics used by Fabiani. 
The “lady” turned out to
be Harper’s Bazaar’s fashion editor Diana Vreeland and that fateful
encounter helped Irene becoming the first Italian contributor of the magazine
and the voice of Italian fashion in New York. An estimator of the concept of
“made in Italy”, Irene Brin’s writings on Emilio Pucci, the Fontana Sisters and
on many other designers contributed to spread around the world the Italian
style and fashion.
Irene truly was an unconventional woman: she was a voracious reader, a translator and an indefatigable writer who used to write everywhere, in bed, taxis and bathtubs, in five different languages and about almost everything. One of her most famous books is Usi e costumi 1920-1940 (1944), a seminal volume about the post-war years, in which she proved an attentive and precise observer of the crazes and fads of the men and women who lived in those times, combining her impeccable style with subtle irony. The book includes short pieces about a bit of everything, from department stores and beauty treatments to models, men and women’s fashion, and even one of the very first features on fashion and cinema that was ever written in Italy. All the topics are carefully analysed, criticised, admired and laughed at in a volume that, as Brin stated in its intro, tried to understand a “boisterous, naïve and sad generation who had deluded itself it was living at a frenetic pace.”
Throughout her life Irene Brin kept on writing and rewriting her persona, adopting different pseudonyms: Marlene, Mariù, Oriane, Geraldine Tron, Maria del Corso, Contessa Clara, Madame d’O, are just a few among the numerous faces of her fluid identity. Italian journalist Indro Montanelli wrote in 1952 a wonderful portrait of Irene Brin in which he claimed that, no two photographs of Irene Brin were alike.
“There is a
blonde Irene Brin, as diaphanous and transparent as a sheath of cellophane, and
there is another, dark-haired one, as solid and nocturnal as a crow’s wing," he wrote. "There is one in the classical style, as plump and full as a quail; and there is
a Gothic one, as slender and twisted as a snake.” The blonde Irene, Montanelli
stated, talked, dressed and even thought in a different way from the brunette
Irene; the plump Irene moved, did her hair and wrote in a different way from
the slender one.
This woman who continuously metamorphosed into different women was simply an unstoppable force of nature. When she learned of her cancer she simply kept carrying on with her life the way she always had: working and travelling until her death on 31st May 1969.
This is where this blog comes
from: Irene Brin’s style, her desire to combine art and fashion and her passion
for discovering beautiful things and writing about them. The blog’s name? It’s
a modern twist on the old Bertoldo play on Irene’s name, a tribute to
this amazing woman, but also an experiment with global intentions (the “nation”
part of the name) that, through its contents, will hopefully “inebriate” its
readers. Enjoy.
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