As a follow up to yesterday's post let's look at two examples of '40s style from Italy, rather than the UK, and make a comparison between a day look and a more formal suit. .
The first example is a simple pale blue short-sleeved day dress from 1942-44 made in a mixed fibre (lanital and rayon). The front of the dress featured a triangle-shaped panel with an embroidered double edge and hand-embroidered floral motif. Five pale blue Bakelite buttons completed the front, while the skirt was made using three panels of fabrics pleated around the waist. While in the UK there was the Utility Clothing scheme, in Italy Fascism dictated austerity and promoted autarchy, controlling consumption habits and promoting self-sufficiency in textile production and fashion design.
The dress perfectly falls into these categories: it was was probably made at home and decorated with basic embroidery techniques, and it was made with two autarchich synthetic fibres. Lanital in particular, as you may remember from a previous post, was a synthetic wool that combined in its name the words "lana" (wool) and "Italia" - and was considered as the most national of Italian fibres. First developed in 1916 by a German chemist and improved by Italian engineer Antonio Ferretti in 1935, lanital was obtained from milk casein and had a molecular structure very similar to that of wool.
The second example is a shantung skirt suit in ivory cotton from the early 1940s. The short-sleeved jacket, nipped to the waist and falling over the hips, is characterised by wide lapels and ample padded shoulders. Four decorative pockets with a sort of cloud-shaped flap and three mother-of-pearl buttons completed the jacket. Four different panels form instead the short skirt enriched by four pleats in the front.
The suit was probably made by Giuseppe Tortonese, who had originally founded the brand La Merveilleuse. The latter was closed down to abide to the rules and regulations established by the fascist Ente Nazionale della Moda (National Fashion Board) that forbid the existence in Italy of brands with foreign names. The silhouette of this skirt suit was very fashionable also in Paris at the time: fashion magazine Le Jardin de Modes suggested then that such formal and simple outfits were ideal for sober ceremonies and war weddings especially when accessorised with a simple veil and a bouquet of flowers.
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