Chances are that, while leafing through an early Italian fashion magazine from the '40s, at some point you will stumble upon a design by Jole Veneziani.
Among the pioneers of Italian high fashion, she will be homaged this week with an exhibition entirely dedicated to her. "Jole Veneziani: Alta Moda e Società a Milano" (Jole Veneziani: High Fashion and Society in Milan) will open on Thursday at Villa Necchi Campiglio (designed by architect Piero Portaluppi in the '30s) in Milan.
Born in Taranto in 1901, influenced by her playwright brother Carlo, Jolanda Veneziani Aragone first moved to Milan hoping to become an actress. But, after her father died, she started working for an important leather and animal skin company and, in 1937, opened her own furrier's workshop in Via Nirone 5.
As the years passed, she moved to Via Montenapoleone, opening also a dressmaking department and adding a high fashion workshop in 1946.
Veneziani first started designing dresses keeping fur firmly in mind, this meant that she focused a lot on colours and surfaces, favouring skirt suits and evening gowns, and designing iconic outerwear pieces that often featured delicate fur inserts.
A tweed connoisseur, she became well-known in later years for dramatically reducing the weight of cumbersome luxurious furs. Famous for her eccentric, sparkling glasses that she designed herself, Veneziani was dubbed by Italian journalist Maria Pezzi "zampa di velluto" (velvet paw) for her knowledge of furs, animal skins, fabrics and materials.
In 1951 Veneziani took part in the first catwalk show of the Italian fashion history, organised by Giovanni Battista Giorgini, and attended among the others by Carosa, Alberto Fabiani, Simonetta, Emilio Schubert, Germana Marucelli, and Emilio Pucci.
For that first show she designed crinoline dresses and embroidered tulle and satin gowns characterised by the "siren line".
In 1952, after getting a cover on Life magazine, she was invited to take part in the American catwalk shows.
Throughout the '50s and ‘60s, Veneziani’s luxury atelier in via Montenapoleone was also considered as a sort of hip meeting point for Milan’s high society, thanks to her famous clients and actresses, among them Josephine Baker, Marlene Dietrich, Maria Callas, Elsa Martinelli, Lucia Bosè, Wally Toscanini, Anna Proclemer, Giovanna Ralli, Paola Pitagora, Anna Bonomi Bolchini, Ljuba Rizzoli, Emanuela Castelbarco, Sandra Milo, Franca Rame and Ornella Vanoni.
In the same years the fashion house expanded, launching a perfume, a millinery workshop, a knitwear and pret-a-porter line.
The Milan exhibition - designed as a travelling event that will hopefully reach in the next few years other European capitals and the Far East as well - will feature original garments, sketches and illustrations, photos, and documents selected among the 15.000 pieces stored in the Veneziani Archive.
The event is designed to combine the history of Veneziani's fashion house with that of 20th-century Milan and will therefore open with the recreation of a typical day of an upper middle class Milanese woman, engaged in everyday activities from setting the table for lunch to playing cards or reading a magazine.
The exhibition - including a special area to screen films of the period - will feature sections about Veneziani's atelier and her collaborations: the designer worked indeed as a consultant for Alfa Romeo, creating interior designs in bright and vivid colours, and was asked to decorate La Scala with flowers, a prestigious commission.
An accurate selection of sketches will document the most important silhouettes launched by the Veneziani fashion house: the "Tree Line" (1953) characterised by a pleated fan-like motif; the "Quick Line" (1954, in the same year Veneziani came up with waterproof skirt suits) with its emphasis on ample collars and verticality; the "Bare Line" (1955) with ample pockets defined as the "almoner's pockets"; the "Spiritosa" or "Humorous Line" (1956) with pannelled jackets and V-shaped motifs on evening gowns.
Veneziani considered high fashion as the final expression of technical perfection, an art that consisted in researching proportions, materials, textiles, fibres and prints.
Quite often from the mid-50s to the early '60s Veneziani moved from birds, taking inspirations from seagulls, doves and swallows for the shapes and silhouettes of her jackets and coats.
In the late '60s she opted for embroideries in fluorescent colours for her short capes and evening gowns, launching a geometrical trend as well.
By the end of the decade, when furs started being criticised and ostracised at the Scala openings, Veneziani's star began to wane.
Still this exhibition is an interesting one since it focuses on Italian society in general between the second half of the 1930s and the 1960s and on a woman designer and entrepreneur who embodied the boom years of the "Italian miracle", when a mink fur was not just a symbol of luxury, but the tangible proof the wearer had achieved financial stability (remember the 1956 Italian film La pelliccia di visone - The Mink Fur - by Glauco Pellegrini?).
There is also another reason why we should remember Jole Veneziani - her rebel attitude to fashion. As she stated in 1980 (she died 9 years later): "I've always been stubborn and I've always thought with my mind. I never cared about fashion. When a client of mine would arrive asking 'what's fashionable at the moment?' I would angrily reply: 'You shouldn't care about what's fashionable. You must just try and wear a dress that fits your personality.' Fashion is indeed something personal, I've always refused to consider it as a categorical imperative and an implacable tyrant."
"Jole Veneziani: Alta Moda e Società a Milano", Villa Necchi Campiglio, Via Mozart 14, Milan, 10th October - 24th November 2013.
Image credits
1. Cocktail dress, late '40s, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
2. Evening gown, 1946, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
3. Coat, 1949, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
4. Day dress, 1956, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
5. Evening Gown, 1948, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
6. Coat, 1948, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
7. Veneziani Atelier, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
8. Evening Gown, 1950, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
9. Life Magazine, April 1952, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
10. Poster for the play "Chi ruba un piede è fortunato in amore" (Odeon Theatre, Milan, 8 September 1961) with Franca Rame and Dario Fo, photographs by Carlo Cisventi, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
11. Giovanna Ralli, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
12. Joséphine Baker, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
13. Alfa Romeo, 1957-1958, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
14. Veneziani knitwear, 1960s, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
15. Day ensemble , 1960s, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
16. Veneziani designs in New York, 1954, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
17. Catwalk show at Palazzo Grassi, Venezia, 1957, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
18. Catwalk show at Palazzo Pitti's Sala Bianca, Firenze, 1964, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
19. Vogue Australia, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
20. Jole Veneziani, 1972, Archivio Veneziani - Fondazione Bano
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments