Valentino Garavani - fashion icon

Designer favoured by the world's best dressed women

Valentino Garavani became interested in fashion
while still at primary school

The fashion designer best known simply as Valentino was born in Voghera, a town about 70km (43 miles) south of Milan in the province of Pavia, on this day in 1932.

The favourite designer of the world’s best dressed women from the 1960s onwards, he built up a business that he eventually sold for $300 million.

Born Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani, he became interested in fashion while still in primary school. After working initially for his aunt Rosa, with the financial support of his parents he moved to Paris to pursue his interest, studying at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne.

His first taste of working life came in the salons of Jean Dessès and Guy Laroche.  Armed with the knowledge and experience he gained at the feet of two French masters, he left Paris in 1959 to set up his first fashion house in Rome, on the fashionable Via Condotti. He quickly gained kudos for his bright red dresses, in a shade that became widely known as "Valentino red."

In July 1960, Valentino met Giancarlo Giammetti at the Café de Paris on the Via Veneto in Rome. Giammetti, a little younger than Valentino and an architecture student, gave Valentino a lift home in his Fiat, starting a friendship that turned into a business partnership and a romance. The two met again on Capri 10 days later, after which Giammetti quit his studies to become Valentino's business partner. He was faced with the immediate task of saving his new friend from bankruptcy after a disastrous first year.

Giancarlo Giammetti

Together, the pair put the business on its feet, developed Valentino SpA into an international brand. Valentino made his international debut in 1962, at the Pitti Palace in Florence, which brought his designs to the attention of socialites and aristocratic women around the world.

Within a short time, Valentino's designs were considered to be at the very top of Italian couture. His client list included Queen Paola of Belgium, the movie stars Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn, and the Americian First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.

After the assassination of her husband, the US president John F Kennedy, it was Valentino to whom Jackie Kennedy turned to design the dresses in black and white that she wore for a year after her husband’s death.  When she remarried to Aristotle Onassis in 1968, Valentino designed her white wedding dress.

Valentino opened his first ready-to-wear shops in Milan and Rome and kept his ties with Florence but spent much of the 1970s in New York, where in addition to his friendship with Jackie Kennedy his friends included the artist Andy Warhol and Vogue’s editor-in-chief Diana Freeland.

Valentino and Giammetti in
the the 1960s

In the 1980s, he launched the first Valentino line in children’s clothes as well as a collection of clothing for young adults which he named Oliver, after one of many pet pugs.

In 1989, he opened the Accademia Valentino, designed by architect Tommaso Ziffer, near his first workshop in Rome, for the presentation of art exhibitions. The next year, encouraged by their friend Elizabeth Taylor, he and Giammetti created LIFE, an organisation to support of AIDS-related patients, in association with the Accademia.

Valentino became known in the fashion industry as The Last Emperor, and he and Giammetti have become renowned for their extravagant lifestyle. 

Although in times they ceased to be a couple in a romantic sense in the early 1970s, they have remained inseparable as friends, maintaining at least 10 homes around the world, including an historic villa on Via Appia Antica in Rome, a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, an apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, overlooking central park, a 19^th century mansion in Holland Park, London, and a Louis XIII château near Paris. They also have a 152-foot yacht. All their properties have extensive art collections.

Valentino's 152-foot yacht

Aside from fashion, Valentino has an obsession with dogs, specifically pugs. After he lost Oliver, he acquired six others, named Milton, Maggie, Maude, Monty, Margot, and Molly. When they travel with him in his 14-seat jet, each dog has their own seat. On arrival at the airport, wherever in the world it is, Valentino always arranges three cars to meet him – one for himself and Giammetti, another for their luggage and staff and and a third for the five of the six pugs. The sixth, Maude, always travels with Valentino.

In 2007, Valentino announced that he would hold his final haute couture show the following year. This show, at the Musée Rodin in Paris, featured many of Valentino’s most famous models, including Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Eva Herzigova.

Since then, Valentino has worked only on commissions for favoured individual clients, such as actress Anne Hathaway's wedding dress in 2012 and the bridal gown worn by Princess Madeleine of Sweden the following year.

Travel tip:

Voghera is a town in Lombardy with slightly fewer than 40,000 residents. It has a 14th century castle, an 11th century Cathedral and a Museum of History that has on display a car belonging to General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, who was killed by the Mafia in 1982, and the weapon that allegedly killed Benito Mussolini. ‘The housewife from Voghera’ (casalinga di Voghera) is a phrase used in the media and political discourse as a reference to the average, stereotypical, somewhat lower-middle class Italian voter or consumer.

The Via dei Condotti stretches out from the foot of the
 Spanish Steps in the centre of Rome 

Travel tip:

The Via Condotti – actually Via dei Condotti – is a Rome street that takes its name from the conduits that carried water to the Roman Baths of Agrippa. Beginning at the foot of the Spanish Steps, it links the Tiber with the Pincio hill. Today, it is the street which contains the greatest number of Rome-based Italian fashion retailers, equivalent to Milan's Via Montenapoleone, Paris's Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Florence's Via de' Tornabuoni or London's Bond Street.

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Ottavio Missoni - fashion designer

Former prisoner of war was also an Olympic hurdler

The fashion designer Ottavio Missoni with his wife Rosita on
the lawn of their mansion in Sumirago in 1975

The fashion designer Ottavio Missoni died on this day in 2013 at the age of 92 following an extraordinary life.

He passed away at his home in Sumirago, 55km (34 miles) north-west of Milan, having requested his release from hospital in order to spend his last days with his family.

Missoni was the co-founder of the Italian fashion brand Missoni, which he set up in 1953 with his wife, Rosita. The company became known around the world for its brightly coloured geometric knits and zigzag patterns and were among the pioneers of Italian ready-to-wear clothing lines.

Earlier, he had been an infantryman during the Second World War, fighting at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942. He was captured by the 7^th Armoured Division of the British Army, popularly known as the Desert Rats, and spent the remainder of the war in an English prisoner-of-war camp in Egypt.

After the war, he pursued his passion for competitive athletics, becoming good enough to be selected in the Italian team for the 1948 Olympics in London, where he reached the final of the 400m hurdles event.

Missoni was born in Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast, in 1921. His mother was a countess, his father, Vittorio, a Friulian sea captain who had moved to Dalmatia while it was under Austrian rule. He grew up in Zadar, now part of Croatia but then called Zara and part of Italian territory, before going to college in Trieste and Milan.

The Missoni logo

He had participated in athletics events before the war. A member of the Italian national team at 16, he took part in an international meeting in Milan in 1937 in which he won the 400m in a time of 48.8 second, which remains the fastest for his age in Italian track history. In 1939, over the same distance, he won a gold medal at the International University Games in Vienna.

Sport provided his entry into the fashion business. Back home after the war, Missoni and his fellow athlete Giorgio Oberweger opened a business in Trieste making wool tracksuits, which they called Venjulia suits.

The tracksuits featured zippered legs, which Missoni has been credited with inventing. The Venjulia suits recognised the need of athletes for functional, warm garments enabling freedom of movement. In fact, they were worn by the Italian Olympic team in 1948.

It was while in London that he met 16-year-old Rosita Jelmini, an English student from Golasecca, Italy, who watched him compete.  They married in 1953, and their first son, Vittorio, was born in 1954. Luca (1956) and Angela (1958) followed.

Rosita’s family had a textiles business, making shawls, and together she and Ottavio set up a machine-knitwear workshop in Gallarate, not far from Sumirago and the town in which Rosita grew up. 

Soon they were supplying designs to the Biki boutique in Milan and to La Rinascente, the department store, where the first Missoni-labelled garments, a line of colourful vertically striped shirt-dresses, were displayed in the window in 1958. 

Ottavio Missoni in 2010

They held their first catwalk show in 1966, and the following year, presented a show at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, which landed them in controversy after the show’s lighting had the effect of turning the models’ clothing see-through, a misfortune made worse by the fact that most of the models went without underwear so as not to spoil the line of the clothes they were showing off. The show was likened to a bawdy cabaret and the Missonis were not invited back.

However, the publicity the scandal attracted helped the Missonis. Their next presentation, in Milan, drew much press attention and, as Milan grew as a fashion capital, the Missonis went on to feature in many leading fashion magazines. 

With a new factory in Sumirago, in a beautiful country setting in the shadow of Monte Rosa, they opened their first in-store boutique at Bloomingdale's in New York in 1970. Their first directly-owned boutique in Milan followed in 1976. 

The company enjoyed such heights of prestige that in 1983 they were invited to design the stage costumes for a performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, starring Luciano Pavarotti, and in 1990 some of the costumes for the opening ceremony for the football World Cup.

In 1997, Ottavio and Rosita retired, entrusted the future of the business in their children, appointing Vittorio as marketing director and Angela as creative director, with Luca taking a technical role. The company expanded into furniture and car interiors and even set up a chain of boutique hotels.

Sadly, tragedy struck the family shortly before Ottavio died when Vittorio was killed, along with his wife, Maurizia, when a small plane in which they were travelling crashed off the coast of Venezuela.

Travel tip:

As the crow flies, the city of Zadar in Croatia is 206km (128 miles) south-east of Trieste along the Dalmatian coast. At the time of Missoni’s birth it was called Zara, and was on Italian territory as part of the settlement of the Treaty of Rapallo, which rewarded Italy’s participation on the side of the Triple Entente (France, Russia and the United Kingdom) in defeating Germany in the First World War. With considerable Venetian influence, having for many years between the 13^th and 18^th centuries been part of the Republic of Venice, it is a city with a strong Italian flavour, retaining its beauty despite being bombed heavily during the Second World War.

Travel tip:

Sumirago, where Missoni made his home, is 15km (9 miles) south of Varese, a pleasant town a short distance from Lake Maggiore and overlooking its own picturesque lake. Well known as the location of the Sacro Monte di Varese (the Sacred Hill of Varese), which is scaled along a 2.5km path that passes 14 monuments built in the early part of the 17^th century, it is also home of the imposing Palazzo Estense and Villa Recalcati. Varese also has a cathedral, the Basilica di San Vittore, who can be found in an elegant square in the historic centre.

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Fulco di Verdura - jeweller

Exclusive brand favoured by stars and royalty

Fulco di Verdura, pictured in around 1939 at the time
of launching the Verdura business in New York

The man behind the exclusive jewellery brand Verdura was born Fulco Santostefano della Cerda, Duke of Verdura, on this day in 1898 in Palermo.

Usually known as Fulco di Verdura, he founded the Verdura company in 1939, when he opened a shop on Fifth Avenue in New York and became one of the premier jewellery designers of the 20th century.

Well connected through his own heritage and through his friendship with the songwriter Cole Porter, Verdura found favour with royalty and with movie stars.

Among his clients were the Duchess of Windsor - the former socialite Wallis Simpson - and stars such as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Katharine Hepburn, Paulette Goddard, Millicent Rogers and Marlene Dietrich.

Although Verdura died in 1978, the company lives on and continues to specialise in using large, brightly coloured gemstones.

The Oppenheimer Blue, the most expensive
diamond ever sold at auction

The most expensive gemstone ever sold at auction, the so-called Oppenheimer Blue diamond, was set in a ring designed by Verdura. It changed hands at Christie's in Geneva for $50.6 million (£34.7 million) in May 2016.

The last to bear the now defunct Sicilian title of Duke of Verdura, Fulco grew up in aristocratic surroundings largely unchanged since the 18th century.  The novel The Leopard, written by his cousin, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, is said to depict his eccentric and artistic family.

However, his family were not so wealthy that he could live a life of leisure and it became clear he would need to find a profession appropriate to his stature in society and lucrative enough to fund the lifestyle he wished to maintain.

He wanted to be an artist but his destiny was shaped by meeting Linda and Cole Porter in Palermo in 1919.  They became friends and it was through the Porters that Di Ventura met Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel in Venice in 1925, when they were both guests at a party hosted by the American couple.

Chanel invited him to Paris, initially as a textile designer, but then asked him to update the settings of jewellery she had been given by a number of former lovers and it became clear where his talents lay. They began an eight-year collaboration when Chanel made him head designer of Chanel jewellery.

Cole Porter became a friend and financial
backer of Fulco di Verdura

It was not long after Fulco started working for Chanel that he designed the Maltese Cross Cuffs that are now considered the hallmark of the Verdura brand.

Fulco left Chanel in 1934 and moved to the United States, where Diana Vreeland, a Chanel client based in New York, introduced him to the jeweller Paul Flato, with whom he opened a boutique in Hollywood.

He set up on his own in 1939, opening a small salon called Verdura in New York at 712 Fifth Avenue, with the financial backing of Cole Porter and Vincent Astor. His designs were influenced by both his love of nature as a child in Sicily and his admiration for the art of the Renaissance.

His long list of celebrity clients prompted the New York Times to dub him "America's Crown Jeweller".

In 1941, Di Verdura collaborated with Salvador Dalí on a collection of jewellery designs and in the same year designed “Night and Day” cufflinks for Cole Porter, inspired by the lyrics of the hit song.

He continued to work in the United States until 1973, when he sold his stake in the Verdura business to Joseph Alfano, his business partner, and moved to London, where he would focus on painting. He died there five years later at the age of 80.

In 1985, Alfano sold the company to Ward Landrigan, a former head of Sotheby's American jewellery department. Landrigan decided to preserve the Verdura aesthetic and made jewellery the same way Fulco had, using many of the same jewellers Fulco used.

Landrigan's son, Nico Landrigan, joined Verdura in 2003, becoming President of the company in 2009.

Today, Verdura continues to appear on the pages of the top fashion magazines and celebrity clients include Sarah Jessica Parker, Brooke Shields, Anne Hathaway and Cameron Diaz.

Most of Fulco's designs were from individual commissions, yet he produced an estimated 5,000 items of jewellery during his lifetime.

Travel tip:

If there is one attraction in Palermo that most visitors would describe as a must-see it is the Palatine Chapel, the royal chapel of the Norman kings of Sicily situated on the ground floor of the Palazzo Reale.  The mosaics of the chapel are of unrivalled elegance, noted for subtle changes in colour and luminance. The mosaics of the transept, dating from the 1140s and attributed to Byzantine artists and include an illustrated scene, along the north wall, of St. John in the desert. The rest of the mosaics, dated to the 1160s or the 1170s, feature Latin rather than Greek inscriptions.

Palermo hotels by Booking.com

The Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi in Palermo

Travel tip:

Fulco di Verdura was a cousin of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, author of the novel The Leopard, much of which is set in Palermo.  The director Luchino Visconti, who made a film of the book, chose for the magnificent ball at the end of the book the Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi in Piazza Croce dei Vespri, a palace designed in Baroque style.

More reading:

Guccio Gucci - the lift boy who went from carrying bags to designing them for the rich and famous

Miuccia Prada's journey from the Communist Party to head of family fashion empire

Gianfranco Ferré's quest to make clothes for real women

Also on this day:

1934: The birth of Italy's 1990 World Cup coach Azeglio Vicini

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Santo Versace - businessman and politician

Entrepreneurial brain behind Versace fashion empire

Santo Versace's business skills lay
behind the brand's success

Santo Versace, sometime politician and the business brain behind Italy's world famous luxury fashion label, was born on this day in 1944 in Reggio Calabria.

Along with his brother and sister, Gianni and Donatella, Santo grew up in Italy's southernmost major city, which is situated right on the "toe" of the Italian peninsula and separated from the island of Sicily by barely 10km of the Strait of Messina.

Unlike his younger siblings, who were inspired by their mother, Francesca, a dressmaker who owned a small clothes shop, to become designers, Santo took after their father, Antonio, a coal merchant who in time became an interior decorator, in wishing to become a business entrepreneur.

He helped his father hump sacks of coal while still a child and learned the basics of running a business as a teenager before attending the University of Messina, from which he graduated in 1968 with a degree in economics.

At first, Santo worked in banking for Credito Italiano in Reggio Calabria before switching to teaching economics and geography to high school students. In 1972, after completing his military service, he set up as an accountant and management consultant in Reggio Calabria.

By this time, Gianni and Donatella were beginning to attract attention in the fashion world and when Gianni was invited to work in Milan in the mid-70s, Santo decided to follow him and base himself in the northern city.

Versace's current flagship Milan store is in the
prestigious Via Monte Napoleone

It was he who encouraged Gianni to turn his talent into a business and the company Gianna Versace Donna was launched in 1977, opening their first Milan boutique in Via della Spiga the following year.

Santo was chief executive officer from the outset, a position he retained until 2004.  While his siblings concentrated on design, he brought his business skills to bear in the areas of communication, organization, productivity, and quality. He oversaw sales, distribution, production and finance and gained a reputation as one of the fashion industry's most able and well-respected business people.

His first involvement in politics was at a fashion industry level. In 1992, he co-founded the Association of Italian High-Quality Enterprises and from 1998 to 1999 was president of the National Chamber for Italian Fashion, which aims to support and the develop Italian fashion.  Even beyond his own business, he would always support initiatives to promote Italian brands.

Santo's personality and skill as a speaker did not go unnoticed and he was invited by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to run for office in 2008 as a member of Berlusconi's new party, Il Popolo della Libertà - The People of Freedom.  He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as member for Calabria and Berlusconi won a second term in office after forming a coalition with the Lega Nord and the Sicilian Movement for Autonomy.

However, it was an uneasy alliance. Friends considered Santo too left of centre to sit comfortably in a Berlusconi government and he quit the party in 2011 over the coalition's decision to back a mafia-tainted cabinet minister, describing his decision as "my present for Berlusconi” in a reference to the media tycoon's upcoming 75th birthday.

Donatella and Gianni Versace pictured
in around 1990

He initially joined the Allianza per la Libertà Nationale and subsequently aligned himself with Stop the Decline, a small party formed by a group of economists with the aim of cutting Italy's national debt by 20 per cent within five years.  Since 2012, he has been part of the Gruppo Misto, a group that comprises politicians of no party affiliation.

Divorced from his first wife, Cristiana, Santo is now married to Francesca De Stefano, a lawyer.  Francesca Versace, one of his children from his first marriage, is a fashion designer herself, based in London.

Santo, of course, has known tragedy in his private life.  The murder of Gianni Versace in Miami Beach in 1997 left him with only one surviving sibling from a family of four children, his older sister, known as Tina, having died when he was a child from complications relating to a tetanus infection.

Away from fashion and politics, he has been a financial supporter of Viola Reggio Calabria Basketball, and has been chairman of Operation Smile Italy Onlus, an association of doctors and volunteers which deals with children with facial deformities in 70 countries around the world.

A sweeping waterfront is a feature of modern day Reggio
 Calabria, which had to be rebuilt after the 1908 earthquake

Travel tip:

For a port city with a population of 200,000 people in a metropolitan area of more than half a million residents, Reggio Calabria is a surprisingly elegant and pleasant place to visit, its attractiveness owing much to the careful rebuilding programme undergone after a devastating earthquake in 1908, which destroyed most of its historical centre and inflicted similarly catastrophic damage on Messina, across the water in Sicily. Such remains as were salvageable, including many of Greek origin, are preserved in some impressive museums. The rebuilt city featured many Liberty style buildings and the seafront is particularly panoramic.

Hotels in Reggio Calabria from Hotels.com


Travel tip:

The Via della Spiga, where the first Versace shop opened in 1977, is one of Milan's top shopping streets, forming the north-east boundary of the city's fashion quarter, of which Via Manzoni, Via Monte Napoleone and Corso Venezia form the other borders.  It is one of Milan city centre's few streets restricted to pedestrians only.  Details of the stores with premises on Via della Spiga can be found at the Amici Di Via della Spiga website.

Hotels in Milan from Expedia

More reading:

How former army medic Giorgio Armani became a fashion icon

Short life and tragic death of Gianni Versace

How horses inspired the world's most coveted shoes and handbags

Also on this day:

1945: The death of Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli

(Picture credits: Versace shop by Bahar via Wikimedia Commons)

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Emilio Pucci – fashion designer

The heroic, sporting, creative genius behind the Pucci label

Emilio Pucci

Don Emilio Pucci, Marchese di Barsento, who became a top fashion designer and politician, was born on this day in 1914 in Florence.

Pucci was born into one of the oldest families in Florence and lived and worked in the Pucci Palace in Florence for most of his life. His fashion creations were worn by such famous women as Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Jackie Kennedy.

A keen sportsman who swam, skied, fenced, played tennis and raced cars, Pucci was part of the Italian team at the 1932 Winter Olympics in New York, although he did not compete.

He studied at the University of Milan, the University of Georgia, and Reed College in Oregon, where he designed the clothes for the college skiing team.

Pucci was awarded an MA in social science from Reed, where he was known to be a staunch defender of the Fascist regime in Italy. He was also awarded a doctorate in political science from the University of Florence.

It was his success as a fashion designer that would in time make his name but before that came some wartime experiences that were extraordinary to say the least.

In 1938 Pucci joined the Italian air force and served as a torpedo bomber, rising to the rank of captain and being decorated for valour.

Mussolini's daughter, Edda, who was helped by Pucci
in her bid to secure clemency for her husband, Ciano

He became a confidant of Mussolini’s eldest daughter, Edda, whom he had known as a child and met again by chance on the island of Capri, where he was sent to recuperate after being struck down with a tropical fever.

He played a key role in a plan to save her husband, Mussolini’s former foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, who was put on trial for his part in removing Mussolini from power in 1943.

Pucci and Edda planned to deliver some of Ciano’s papers, which were highly critical of Mussolini, to the Gestapo, so that they could be bartered for Ciano’s life. After Hitler vetoed the scheme, Pucci drove Edda to the Swiss border in January 1944 and helped her to escape.

Edda had written last-minute pleas to Hitler, Mussolini and General Willhelm Harstner, the German commander in Italy, to spare her husband.

Pucci delivered these letters to an intermediary and then attempted to flee to Switzerland himself but was arrested by the Germans. The Gestapo tortured him to extract information about the location of the rest of Ciano’s papers in Italy.

They then sent Pucci to Switzerland to tell Edda that she would be killed if she published any part of the diaries. After he had delivered the message he remained in Switzerland for the rest of the war.

Pucci made ends meet after the war by teaching Italian and giving ski lessons in Zermatt. He designed ski wear for himself and his friends and in 1947 one of his female friends was photographed wearing his ski wear by the magazine, Harper’s Bazaar.

He was then asked to design ski wear for a spread on European fashion which was featured in the 1948 winter edition of the magazine.

Marilyn Monroe was a fan
of Pucci's designs

Pucci set up his first boutique on Capri. He used his knowledge of stretch fabrics to produce a swimwear line, but moved on to design boldly-patterned silk scarves in bright colours, later using the designs for blouses and dresses.

He opened a boutique in Rome and by the 1950s was getting international recognition and winning awards.

Marilyn Monroe became a fan of his designs in the 1960s and was wearing his creations in some of the last photographs ever taken of her.

Subsequently, his designs were worn by celebrities such as Sophia Loren and Jackie Kennedy and, even Madonna, by the early 1990s.

Pucci designed six complete collections for Braniff Airways, to be worn by their air hostesses, pilots and ground crew, between 1965 and 1974.

In 1959 he was introduced to Baronessa Cristina Nannini at his boutique on Capri and they were later married.

Still keenly interested in politics, in the elections of 1963 Pucci contested the Florence-Pistoia district for the Liberal party. He came second on that occasion but won a seat in parliament later in the same year.  He retained his seat in 1968 but lost it in 1972.

Pucci set up his first workshop in the family's
ancestral home in Florence's San Lorenzo district

After his death in Florence in 1992 at the age of 78, his daughter, Laudomia Pucci, continued to design under the Pucci label.

The French Louis Vuitton-Moet Hennessy Group acquired 67 per cent of Pucci in 2000, with Laudomia becoming Image Director for the company.

Emilio Pucci clothes and accessories, featuring the designer’s distinctive colourful prints, are still being sold in Pucci boutiques and high-end department stores around the world.

Travel tip:

Palazzo Pucci, the ancestral home of Emilio Pucci, is in Via dè Pucci in the San Lorenzo district of Florence. The Pucci family were friends and allies of the Medici family and their palace, designed by Bartolomeo Ammannati, was built in the 16th century.

The Via Camerelle on Capri, where a
new Pucci boutique opened this year

Travel tip:

A new Pucci boutique opened earlier this year in Via Camerelle on the island of Capri. The cobblestone street in the centre of the fashionable shopping district is where Emilio Pucci himself used to stroll with his friends while living on Capri in the 1950s. He set up his first boutique, La Canzone del Mare, in 1951 at Marina Piccola, the bay opposite the huge pointed rocks known as I Faraglioni, which have become an iconic symbol of the island.

More reading:

Giorgio Armani - former army medic who forged brilliant career

Guccio Gucci - from equestrian leather shop to fashion 
empire

Salvatore Ferragamo - shoemaker to the stars

Also on this day:

1851: Birth of a Queen who had a pizza created in her honour

(Photo of Via Camerelle by Averain by Wikimedia Commons; workshop picture from emiliopucci.com)

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Gianfranco Ferré - fashion designer

Sought to create clothes for real women 

Gianfranco Ferré

Gianfranco Ferré, who became one of the biggest names in Italian fashion during the 1980s and 1990s, was born on this day in 1944 in Legnano, a town in Lombardy north-west of Milan, between the city and Lake Maggiore, where in adult life he made his home.

Ferré was regarded as groundbreaking in fashion design in the same way as Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent in that his clothes were created with real people rather than catwalk models in mind, yet without compromise in terms of aesthetic appeal.

At the peak of his popularity, his clients included Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Taylor, the Queen of Jordan, Paloma Picasso, Sophia Loren and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. 

Ferré first trained to be an architect, placing emphasis on the structure of his garments in which strong seams were often a prominent feature. He was once dubbed the Frank Lloyd Wright of fashion, which was taken to be a reference to the powerful horizontals in his designs.  His staff addressed him as "the architect".

He was also well known for inevitably including variations of white dress shirts in his collections, adorned with theatrical cuffs or multiple collars.  At one point, Ferré blouses were an essential in the wardrobe of high-flying career women.

Ferré won the Italian fashion industry's 'Oscar' - the Occhio D'Oro Award - six times and became the first designer from outside France to be made artistic director of Christian Dior in Paris, for whom he worked between 1989 and 1997.

From high school in Legnano, Ferré moved to the Politecnico di Milano University, where he graduated with a degree in architecture.  His first job was in the design studio of a furniture company but amused himself by designing accessories for a girl friend that were noticed by the owners of a boutique in Portofino, who asked him to design for them.

The Basilica of San Magno in Legnano, where the funeral
of Gianfranco Ferré took place in 2007

After a period working for a rainwear company, he founded his own company, Baila, in 1974, and four years later in 1978 founded his own fashion house in the Brera district of Milan with his friend and business partner, Franco Mattioli.  He launched his first collection of pret-a-portér (ready-to-wear) clothing for women, which was followed the same year by a more sporty line, Oaks by Ferré. His first man's collection was released in 1982 and added a perfume range in 1984.

On leaving Dior, he returned to full-time to working on the Ferré clothing and accessory lines, which by now had substantial export sales in the United States.  But he and Mattioli fell out over the direction of the company and in 2000 they sold 90 per cent of Gianfranco Ferré SpA, although Ferré stayed on as creative director. 

Ferré died in 2007 at the age of 62, a few days after being admitted to hospital in Milan, having suffered a massive brain hemorrhage.  A big, bear-like figure, nonetheless always beautifully dressed in one of his trademark three-piece suits, he had always struggled to control his weight and had had at least one stroke previously. 

He was buried in his home town of Legnano after a funeral attended by giants of the fashion world, including Giorgio Armani, Valentino Garavani and Donatella Versace.

Travel tip:

Legnano is famous for being the only town, apart from Rome, to which reference is made in the Italian national anthem, thanks to the historic Battle of Legnano, in which the Lombard League inflicted a heavy defeat on the forces of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in 1176.  Almost 700 years later, Garibaldi referred to the battle as an inspiration in the struggle for unification of Italy.  The 16th century Basilica of San Magno, where Gianfranco Ferré's funeral took place, is the town's most important building.

Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore

Travel tip:

Lake Maggiore is the largest lake in Italy at some 34 miles (64km) long, its most northerly extremity extending into Switzerland.  While the upper end is of alpine character, the lake in general enjoys a mild climate all year round and is famous for the greenery of its surrounding terrain and for its gardens, many growing rare and exotic plants, in particular those located on the Borromean Islands and Isola Bella.

(Photo of Basilica of San Magno by Heimdall CC BY-SA 2.5)
(Photo of Isola Bella by MbDortmund GFDL 1.2)

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Giorgio Armani – designer

Former army medic forged brilliant career in fashion

Giorgio Armani

Giorgio Armani, who is considered by many to be Italy's greatest fashion designer, was born on this day in 1934 in Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna.

Known for his menswear and the clean, tailored lines of his collections for women, Armani, who celebrates his 82nd birthday today, has become a multi-billionaire.

His original career plan was to become a doctor and he enrolled in the Department of Medicine at the University of Milan but after three years left to join the army. Due to his medical background he was assigned to the military hospital in Verona.

After he left the army, Armani decided to have a complete career change and got a job as a window dresser for La Rinascente, a Milan department store.

He progressed to become a sales assistant in the menswear department and then moved on to work for Nino Cerruti as a menswear designer.

In 1973 Armani opened a design office in Milan from where he worked as a freelance designer for fashion houses. He founded his own company, Giorgio Armani, in Milan in 1975.

La Rinascente in Milan, with its rooftop garden,
as seen from the roof of the neighbouring Duomo

He began producing designs specifically for the United States and his label soon became one of the leading names in international fashion. He also designed costumes for the film industry and suits for many sports teams, including the England football team.

Armani has built up a network of hundreds of boutiques and stores across nearly 40 countries.

He was also the first designer to ban models who had a BMI of less than 18, following the death of a model from anorexia.

Travel tip:

La Rinascente in Milan, where Giorgio Armani once worked, is right in the centre of the city in Piazza Duomo, close to the entrance to the Duomo metro stop. The store, which sells clothes and cosmetics as well as house wares, was nominated the Best Department Store in the World at a Global Department Store Summit in 2016.

Milan's Via Montenapoleone

Travel tip:

The original Giorgio Armani store in Milan is in Via Montenapoleone in the centre of the city. It reopened in April 2015 after Armani and his team of architects had completely redesigned the store to bring out the original architecture of the building. This was part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the company.

(Photo of Giorgio Armani by GianAngelo Pistoia CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Via Montenapoleone by Geobia CC BY-SA 4.0)

More on fashion:

Humble beginnings of shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo

Guccio Gucci: the lift boy who designed the world's favourite handbags

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Salvatore Ferragamo - shoe designer

From humble beginnings to giant of the fashion industry

Shoes by Salvatore Ferragamo

Salvatore Ferragamo, the craftsman once dubbed 'Shoemaker to the Stars' after his success in creating made-to-measure footwear for movie stars and celebrities, was born on this day in 1898 in Bonito, a small hill town in Campania, in the province of Avellino.

Although in time he would become a prominent figure in the fashion world of Florence, Ferragamo learned how to make shoes in Naples, around 100 kilometres from his home village.  He was apprenticed to a Neapolitan shoemaker at the age of just 11 years and opened his first shop, trading from his parents' house, at 13.

When he was 16 he made the bold decision to move to the United States, joining one of his brothers in Boston, where they both worked in a factory manufacturing cowboy boots.  Salvatore was impressed at how modern production methods enabled the factory to turn out large numbers of boots but was concerned about compromises to quality.

This led him to move to California and to set up shop selling his own hand-made shoes in Santa Barbara, where he made his first contacts in the burgeoning American film industry.  Eager to make shoes that not only looked good but were comfortable to wear, he enrolled at the University of Southern California to study anatomy.

He moved to Hollywood when the movie makers relocated there and it was after opening the Hollywood Boot Shop that he acquired the label 'shoemaker to the stars'.

The famous Ferragamo logo

In 1927, after 13 years in the United States, Ferragamo returned to Italy to base his business in Florence, a city with a wealth of skilled craftsmen. He opened a workshop in the Via Mannelli and was soon making shoes for some of the wealthiest women in the world.

The collapse of the US stock market in 1929, sparking the Great Depression, hit him hard, virtually destroying the export side of his business, and he filed for bankruptcy in 1933.  Yet such was his enterprise and appetite for work that, by concentrating on the domestic market, he was able to make a rapid recovery.

In 1936 he rented two workshops and opened a shop in Palazzo Spini Feroni in Via de' Tornabuoni, which he subsequently bought and which remains the company's headquarters.

By the 1950s, as Italy recovered from wartime austerity and embraced la dolce vita, Ferragamo was the shoe of choice for wealthy young socialites in Italy and beyond and the company workshops were employing 700 craftsmen turning out up to 350 pairs of shoes per day.

The Rainbow platform sandal Ferragamo crafted for the
 actress and singer Judy Garland

Among Salvatore's creations were stiletto heels with metal reinforcement made famous by Marilyn Monroe, and a platform sandal he made for Judy Garland, which he called The Rainbow as a tribute to the actress and singer's performance in the Wizard of Oz. His 'invisible' sandal, which featured almost transparent nylon thread uppers, won the Neiman Marcus Award in 1947, the first time the prestigious mark of recognition in the fashion world was given to a shoe designer.

In 1940 Salvatore had married the daughter of the local doctor in Bonito, Wanda Miletti, who joined him in Florence. They had six children: three sons - Ferruccio, Leonardo and Massimo - and three daughters - Fiamma, Giovanna and Fulvia.

Salvatore died in 1960 aged just 62, leaving the company to be run by the family, with Wanda initially in charge.  Nowadays, Ferruccio is the president of a business employing more than 4000 people with 550 stores in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

It now has a range of products that includes eyewear, perfume, belts, scarves, bags, watches and clothing, as well as shoes.

Travel tip:

Bonito, perched on top of a hill between the valleys of the Arvi and Calore rivers, is roughly equidistant between Benevento and Avellino in inland Campania.  The Church of the Assunta contains the tomb of Santa Crescenzo, an 11-year-old boy killed during the persecution by the Roman Emperor Diocletianus in the third century and subsequently celebrated as a martyr.

The entrance to the Ferragamo museum at
the Palazzo Spini Feroni

Travel tip:

A museum dedicated to the life and work of Salvatore Ferragamo was opened in 1996 within the company's headquarters at the historic Palazzo Spini Feroni in Via de' Tornabouni, Florence's famed upmarket shopping street.  The museum has films, press cuttings, advertising posters, clothing and accessories and a staggering 10,000 shoes created by Salvatore himself or the skilled craftsmen he employed.

(Photo of Ferragamo shoes by Ben CC BY-SA 2.0)
(Photo of Judy Garland shoe by Sailko CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Marco Zanuso - architect and designer

Innovative ideas put Italy at the forefront of contemporary style

Marco Zanuso

Marco Zanuso, the architect and industrial designer whose innovative ideas helped revolutionize furniture and appliance design in Italy after the Second World War, was born in Milan on this day in 1916. 

Influenced by the Rationalist movement that emerged in the 1920s, he was one of the pioneers of the Modern movement, which brought contemporary styling to mass-produced consumer products.  His use of sculptured shapes, bright colours, and modern synthetic materials helped make Italy a leader in furniture fashion.

Italy had for many years been something of a trendsetter in interior design but during the post-War years, with the fall of Fascism and the rise of Socialism, there was a sense of liberation among Italian creative talents.

With the recovery of the Italian economy there was a substantial growth in industrial production and mass-produced furniture. By the 1960s and 1970s, Italian interior design reached its pinnacle of stylishness.

Zanuso was at the forefront, producing designs that used tubular steel, acrylics, latex foam, fibreglass, foam rubber, and injection-moulded plastics.

His first major successes came for Pirelli, the tyre makers, who in 1948 opened a new division, Arflex, to design seating using foam rubber upholstery. They commissioned Zanuso to produce their first designs and his distinctively shaped "Lady" armchair won first prize at the 1951 Milan Triennale.

A folding radio cube designed by Marco Zanuso and
Richard Sapper for Brionvega

In 1957, Zanuso entered into a partnership with German designer Richard Sapper. 

They convinced consumers that plastic could be a viable material for furniture in the home with a brightly coloured, stackable child's chair. Their moulded metal "Lambda" kitchen chair became a worldwide bestseller.

In 1959, Zanuso and Sapper were hired as consultants to Brionvega, an Italian company trying to produce stylish electronics that would challenge those being made in Japan and Germany. They designed a series of  radios and televisions that became stylistic icons. Their portable "Doney 14" was the first completely transistorised television.

They also designed a folding "Grillo" telephone for Siemens in 1966, one of the first telephones to put the dial and the earpiece on the same unit.

Zanuso turned his ideas and versatility to other household items, including a bright red fan, bright yellow kitchen scales, a knife sharpener and a streamlined sewing machine.

Several of his award-winning product designs eventually became part of a permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

As an architect, Zanuso also designed housing, factories and offices, not only in Italy but in South America and South Africa.

He designed the Olivetti factory buildings in Buenos Aires in 1954, which featured external air conditioning, another Olivetti building in São Paulo, the Necchi sewing machine company's office building in Pavia in Italy and IBM factory buildings in Milan.

As a member of the city planning commission in Milan, his projects included the renovation of the Teatro Fossati and the construction of the Teatro Strehler, a new venue for the Piccolo Teatro della Città di Milano.

The fifth of six sons of an orthopaedic doctor, he trained in architecture at the Milan Polytechnic university and after military service in the Italian Navy he opened his own design office in 1945 and edited the influential design magazines Domus and Casabella.

He taught architecture and design at the Milan Polytechnic from the 1960s, and served twice as president of the Italian Association of Industrial Design.  He continued working into his late 70s, designing a cutlery set for Alessi in 1995.

He died in Milan in 2001, aged 85.  His son, Marco Zanuso Jnr, one of four children, followed him into architecture and design.

Zanuso's Piccolo Teatro Strehler in Milan

Travel tip:

The Piccolo Teatro della Città di Milano, founded in 1947, was Italy's first permanent repertory company. It has three venues, the Teatro Grassi, in Via Rovello, between Sforza Castle and the Piazza del Duomo, the Teatro Studio and the Teatro Strehler.  The company puts on around 30 performances per year, while the venues host cultural events, including festivals, films, concerts, conferences and conventions.

Travel tip:

The Medieval city of Pavia, once the most important town in northern Italy, has many fine churches, including a cathedral boasting one of the largest domes in Italy and the beautiful Romanesque Basilica di San Michele.  The Visconti Castle, surrounded by a large moat, houses the Civic Museum. Another notable attraction is the covered bridge across the Ticino River, a reproduction of a 13th-century bridge destroyed during the Second World War.

(Photo of Zanuso radio by Andrea Pavanello CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Piccolo Teatro Strehler by Dispe CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Miuccia Prada – fashion designer

Talented businesswoman studied politics and mime

Miuccia Prada Bianchi

Miuccia Prada, the businesswoman behind the fashion label Prada, was born Maria Bianchi on this day in 1949 in Milan.

The youngest granddaughter of the fashion firm’s founder, Mario Prada, she took over the family business in 1978 having previously been a mime student and a member of the Italian Communist Party.

Since then the company, which is famous for its luxury goods, has gone from strength to strength and taken over other labels. Prada has been listed as the 75th most powerful woman in the world, worth an estimated $11 billion.

After graduating with a PhD in political science from the University of Milan, Maria Bianchi trained at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano in mime and was a performer for five years.

As a member of the Italian Communist party she became involved in the women’s rights movement.

She took the name Miuccia Prada in the 1980s, making her first impact on the fashion world with an unusual handbag design in 1985, which was followed by her first women’s ready-to-wear collection.

The Miu Miu line was introduced in 1992 as a less expensive womenswear line and was inspired by Prada’s own personal wardrobe and given her own nickname, Miu Miu.

She is now joint Chief Executive Officer of Prada with her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, who is responsible for the commercial side.

Prada's Milan store in the
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

Travel tip:

The main Prada store in Milan is in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II just off Piazza del Duomo. The elegant, glass-roofed Galleria, which is lined with smart cafes and shops, was built in 1865 to connect Piazza del Duomo with Piazza della Scala and was opened in 1867 by the King, Vittorio Emanuele II.

Travel tip:

The Piccolo Teatro in Milan , where Miuccia Prada trained in mime, was founded in 1947 in Via Rivoli in north west Milan by theatre impresario Paolo Grassi and director Giorgio Strehler. The first public theatre in Italy, it aimed to be an arts theatre for everyone and continues to stage quality productions for the broadest possible audience to this day.

More reading on fashion:

Nina Ricci - designer from Turin who wowed Paris

The Meteoric Rise of Gianni Versace

Guccio Gucci - lift boy who became a fashion giant

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Guccio Gucci – fashion designer

The man whose name inspired the interlocking G logo

Guccio Gucci

The founder of the House of Gucci, Guccio Gucci, was born on this day in 1881 in Florence.

In the early 1900s Gucci worked as a lift boy at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he was inspired by the elegance of the wealthy people who stayed there and their smart luggage.

On his return to Florence he started making his own line of leather travel bags and accessories and in the 1920s he opened a small leather and equestrian shop in Via della Vigna Nuova.  Some of his skills were inherited from his father, Gabriello, who was a leather craftsman from San Miniato, near Pisa.

Gucci later added handbags to his line and relocated to a bigger shop. He was fascinated with horses and his handbags featured clasps and fasteners resembling horse bits and stirrups. He gained a reputation for hiring the best craftsmen he could to work on his products.

In 1938, encouraged by his son, Aldo, he expanded his business to Rome. When raw materials became scarce during the war he used materials such as hemp and linen to make his bags, but still trimmed them with metal resembling horse bits and stirrups.

A Gucci bag in vintage design featuring leather
and fabric and the familiar interlocking G logo

The Gucci label later became famous for certain key products, such as a bag with bamboo handles and a pair of classic loafers.  

Gucci and his wife, Aida Calvelli, had six children and four of their sons, Aldo, Vasco, Ugo and Rodolfo later joined the business.

In 1951 Gucci opened a store in Milan. His preference was for keeping the business relatively small and limiting it to Italy. But his sons had more ambitious ideas and two years later expanded overseas by opening a store in Manhattan.

Gucci died in Milan in 1953, just two weeks after the New York store launched. After his death his sons continued to expand the business, opening boutiques in London and Paris.

In addition to the interlocking Gs, the House of Gucci also featured products displaying Gucci's 'knight logo', a coat of arms with a knight in full armour carrying two suitcases or bags at the centre. The coat of arms was based on an inherited ancestral coat of arms, which the family claimed the right to use after the Kingdom of Italy had transitioned into the Italian Republic.

Via de' Tornabuoni, which is Florence's
most elegant shopping street

Travel tip:

Although the first Gucci shop in Florence was in Via della Vigna Nuova, their flagship store is now in nearby Via de' Tornabuoni, the city’s most elegant shopping street, where it sits alongside the other top couturiers and jewellers. The street also has some fashionable cafes where smart shoppers can pause for refreshment.

Florence hotels by Booking.com

The Gucci store in Milan can be found
in fashionable Via Montenapoleone 

Travel tip:

Milan’s Gucci store is right in the heart of the fashion district in Via Montenapoleone, which is a short walk from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. It is one of the four sides of the quadrilateral which makes up Milan’s fashion district. The other three sides are Via Manzoni, Via della Spiga and Via Sant’Andrea.

Find a hotel in Milan with Tripadvisor

More reading:

Nina Ricci - designer from Turin who wowed Paris

The Meteoric Rise of Gianni Versace

Also on this day:

1941: The birth of racing driver Lella Lombardi

1958: The birth of racing driver Elio de Angelis

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