Fashion under Fascism

Eugenia Paulicelli is Professor of Italian and Women’s Studies at The Graduate Center and Queens College of The City University of New York, USA, where she is the Founder and Director of the Concentration in Fashion Studies. She is author, editor and co-editor of 13 books and monographs. Among her latest publications: Italian Style: Fashion & Film from Early Cinema to the Digital Age (Bloomsbury: 2016); The Routledge Companion to Fashion Studies (with V. Manlow and E. Wissinger, 2021).

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Preface: Fashion/Fascism: Odd bedfellows?

Chapter 1: Introduction: Fashion/Fascism

Fashion and historiography

Methodology. Thinking Fashion, Rhythm and Spatializing Time

Object and Intersectionalities

Beyond the Black Shirt: Continuity and Change

La moda è una cosa seria. Fashion is a Serious Business

Gianna Manzini and her Approach to Fashion

Structure and Sources

Chapter 2 Fashion/Fascism: Why and How it Matters

Origins of Italian Fashion?

Fashion and totalitarianism

Uniforms and Fashion under Fascism

“Read my Pins”

Chapter 3 Per una moda italiana: From the Interwar Years to Fascism

Imagining an Italian Style: Between Modernity and Tradition

Regional Dress and Fashion during Fascism

Rosa Genoni: Fashion and Feminism in 1910s

Performing Dress and Gender: Futurist Avant-gardes between Nationalism and Revolution

From Balla to Thayhat: Transgressing Gender and Genres in the New Language of Dress

The Fascist “New Woman.” Lydia De Liguoro and the Project for an Italian Fashion

“An Italian Fashion does not exist yet. We must create it”

Chapter 4 The Language of Fashion: Narratives, Style and Women’s Voices under Fascism

The Discourse on Fashion under the Fascist Regime: the 1936 Italian Commentary Dictionary of Fashion by Cesare Meano

Restless Voices. Femininity, Motherhood and Gender in Women’s Writing in the Fashion Magazine Bellezza

Dress, Style and the National Brand: Meano’s Commentary on Nationalism

Sport, Gender and Models of Femininity in Meano’s Commentary

Chapter 5 Cinemoda and Cinelandia under Fascism

The Istituto LUCE Fashion Film: Education, Entertainment, Propaganda

Fashion, Film and the Politics of the Regime

From Hollywood to France and then to Italy: Alta Moda in Alessandro Blasetti’s Contessa di Parma (1937)

Grandi Magazzini, Department Stores and Standardization

Dressing the Mass Market: I Grandi Magazzini (1939) by Mario Camerini

Chapter 6 Nationalizing the Fashion Industry?

The Intelligent Fibers: Between Innovation and Autarchy

Fashion and Fascism for Export: Race, Colonialism, Empire. From Ethiopia to New York

Italy at War. Autarchic Textiles and Clothing at the 1941 Venice Exhibition

Looking Back: The National Conference on “Clothing and Autarchy.” Turin, June 1940. Italian Fashion between Alta Moda and Confezione (Ready to Wear)

Chapter 7 Conclusions

Fashion and Fascism after Fascism

Interrogating the Past. Fashion between History and Memory:

Appendices:

Interview with Micol Fontana by Eugenia Paulicelli (June 2000)

Gianna Manzini, “Fashion is a Serious Business”

Alba De Céspedes, “Eve and the Feathers”

Illustrations from the fashion magazine Bellezza

Notes

Bibliography

Index