What do wild animals, Andy Warhol and the Chrysler Building have in common? Some may find rather difficult to answer this bizarre question, but, if you know your Italian fashion history you'll immediately answer - Mariuccia Mandelli, better known simply as Krizia, the Italian fashion designer who died on Sunday in Milan after a sudden illness.
Born in 1925, Mandelli developed a passion for fabrics and clothes as a child when dressing her dolls was her favourite pastime. When she grew up, Mandelli gave up teaching to switch career and follow her dreams, becoming a proper fashion designer and entrepreneur.
In 1954 she launched her brand with her friend Flora Dolci borrowing the name from a character in an unfinished dialogue by Plato that focused on women's vanity (in the dialogue Crizia squanders all his riches on jewelry and clothing for beautiful and compliant women...), spelling it with a "K" to make it sounded more exotic. Business started in a two-rooms flat in Milan and skirts were the first garments produced, shortly followed by dresses and skirt suits.
The brand received many awards in the '60s: by then Mandelli had already been dubbed by the foreign press "Crazy Krizia" for her eclectic prints and motifs, her unusual fabrics and materials such as eel skin, cork or gum, and innovative shapes. In 1964 her black and white collection showed at the Pitti Palace in Florence won her the "Critica della moda" prize.
Later on in 1971, Krizia was awarded the Tiberio d’Oro prize in Capri for her "mini" hot pants at a time when midi and maxi lengths were prevalent.
The fashion house reached its apex between the '70s and the '80s when the designer developed her first kids line, Kriziababy, and her knitwear line, Kriziamaglia, while Krizia Uomo (menswear) was launched in 1988.
In the '80s her trademark knitwear pieces with figures of wild animals such as panthers and sculpted tops and skirts characterised by sharp shapes and silhouettes won her many new clients and the favour of the fashion critics.
In 1982 Krizia was featured in the "Intimate Architecture" exhibition at the MIT together with Giorgio Armani, Gianfranco Ferré, Stephen Manniello, Issey Miyake, Claude Montana, Ronaldus Shamask and Yeohlee Teng.
The exhibition included designs characterised by monumental fans that, pleating around the shoulders, curved down to the ankles, and blouses with shoulders that fluttered with sculpted stand-up seams. Mandelli's designs were accompanied in the exhibition by her statement explaining: "Only when one is completely free, can one make a valid choice...Everyone must dress as they like, provided that the dress becomes for them a second skin."
A friend of many artists (she was portrayed in Pop Art colours by Andy Warhol) and passionate about the performing arts, Krizia sponsored in 1984 Carmelo Bene starring in L'Adelchi, while the following year she supported a show entitled El Tango with Milva and Astor Piazzolla and Grande Magia by Giorgio Strehler.
In the same year she bought a share in the publishing house La Tartaruga: this decision came not from the hope of expanding her business in a very different area and discipline, but from the fact that some of her favourite writers - including Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Gertrude Stein and Karen Blixen - were published by this company.
Her passion for the performing arts prompted her to organise a workshop at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan in 1986, but she also worked with Alessandro Mendini on Famiglia Horror with music by Franco Battiato, and her designs appeared in Francesco Barilli's 1974 thriller Il profumo della signora in nero and in Bob Cohen's TV series Scandalous (1982).
Krizia's inspiration came from different disciplines: while she loved the theatre, she also had a passion for films and paintings.
Throughout her career she was inspired for example by Magritte, Lucio Fontana, Malevich, and Kandinsky, but also by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. She also liked mixing more than one muse in her designs, referencing for example in one collection icons such as Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe.
Krizia developed several lines, opening boutiques all over the world, from the States to Japan (the latter remained until 2003 the company's largest market). While leveraging a string of licenses, in 1990 Krizia opened the K Club, a multimillion exclusive luxury resort hotel on the Island of Barbuda in the British Western Islands. Mandelli designed everything down to the silverware and uniforms for the maids for this resort that soon turned into Princess Diana's Caribbean hideaway (in 2015 Robert de Niro planned to reopen the abandoned club).
Decline started in the mid-'90s when, during the "Mani Pulite" (Clean Hands) investigation in Italy, Mandelli was accused of having bribed the Italian tax police, though she was acquitted in 1998.
In 1995 the show "Krizia, una storia" celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Italian fashion house at the Triennale di Milano, while the Milanese Palazzetto Melzi D'Eril, which Mandelli bought in 1984, became the headquarter of the maison with a secondary space attached to it transformed into a cultural centre where many famous names (including Ettore Sottsass, Isabel Allende, David Leavitt, Sting and Dario Fo) have appeared throughout the years.
Important collaborations followed for the Krizia Top line, that revamped her previous historical collaborations with Walter Albini and Karl Lagerfeld: in 2000 Krizia worked with Alber Elbaz; in 2001 and 2002 with Belgian designer Jean Paul-Knott, and later on with Giambattista Valli.
Last year, Mandelli sold a controlling stake of Krizia SpA to Chinese fashion retailer Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion Co. Ltd., based in Shenzhen, and owned by entrepreneur Zhu Chongyun.
Mandelli's funerals will take place tomorrow at the Sant'Angelo Church in via della Moscova, in Milan. Mandelli is survived by her husband Aldo Pinto.
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