'Sculptor in cloth' who rejected ready-to-wear
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| Roberto Capucci is still involved with the fashion and design world even in his 80s |
The fashion designer Roberto Capucci, whose clothes were
famous for their strikingly voluminous, geometric shapes and use of unusual
materials, was born on this day in 1930 in Rome.
Precociously talented, Capucci opened his first studio in
Rome at the age of 19 and by his mid-20s was regarded as the best designer in
Italy, particularly admired by Christian Dior, the rising star of French
haute-couture.
It was during this period, towards the end of the 1950s,
that Capucci revolutionised fashion by inventing the Linea a Scatola – the box-line
or box look – in which he created angular shapes for dresses and introduced the
concept of volume and architectural elements of design into clothing, so that his
dresses, which often featured enormous quantities of material, were almost like sculpted pieces of modern
art, to be not so much worn as occupied by the wearer.
Growing up in Rome, Capucci was artistically inclined from
an early age. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and wanted to
become either an architect or a film director, designing clothes initially as
no more than a diversion.
Yet he quickly revealed a talent for creating innovative, non-conformist
dresses and fashion became his main occupation. He opened his first atelier in
the Via Sistina in Rome in 1950 and the following year was invited to exhibit
at one of the earliest fashion shows in Italy, organised by the aristocratic entrepreneur
Giovanni Battista Giorgini.
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| Some of the Capucci designs on display at the Roberto Capucci Foundation Museum in Florence |
His coats lined with ermine and leopard and capes trimmed
with fox fur would not have found favour with many of today’s buyers yet at the
time were a hit. The press noted Capucci’s
youth and dubbed him ‘the boy wonder’. Giorgini was well aware of the appetite
for spending among post-War jet setters and promoted his young protégé for all
his worth.
It was not long before Capucci was being hailed as Italy’s
best designer and was becoming known in Paris, the world’s fashion capital. But it was the American market that Giorgini
was keen to exploit, having made good contacts while the Allies were liberating
Italy.
After he had unveiled his Linea a Scatola collection in 1958 Capucci was awarded the Boston Fashion Award, considered to be the clothing trade’s equivalent
of an Oscar, which established his reputation beyond Italy.
He opened an atelier in Paris in 1962 and remained in the French
capital for six years, living in some style in a suite at the Ritz Hotel and
keeping the company of Coco Chanel among others. He launched a perfume range, the first
Italian to do so in France, but in 1968 he decided to go back to Italy, establishing
a new Rome studio in Via Gregoriana.
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| The logo of today's Capucci fashion house |
Where Capucci differed from other designers is that he was
not interested in producing clothes for the mass market. He considered himself an artist and an
architect and regarded his creations less as garments so such as sculptures in
cloth. He used yards and yards of
material in order to create volume and shape; one critic observed that his
clothes were ‘like soft body armour’.
So when ready-to-wear clothing and consumer fashion took
hold in Italy in the 1980s, Capucci withdrew.
He would not allow his agenda to be set by the demands of the market and
resigned from the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, the body that promoted
Italian design, membership of which would have required him to participate in
four fashion shows each year. He would
exhibit, but only at times that suited him and in carefully chosen settings,
often museums.
He also opposed the cult of the supermodel, which in his
opinion was a distraction from the garment.
He preferred to create dresses for individuals – opera singers, actresses,
the wives of politicians and debutantes from Roman society. He made outfits for
Marilyn Monroe, Gloria Swanson, Jacqueline Kennedy and Silvana Mangano, the
Italian actress, who was raised in poverty in Rome during the Second World War
but who blossomed, in his opinion, to be ‘the most elegant woman in the world’.
Capucci today is a brand, with a ready-to-wear range
established in 2003. The clothes are not designed by Capucci himself but by
young designers such as the German Bernhard Willhelm and the American Tara
Subkoff, who have access to a huge archive of the maestro’s work, which runs to
30,000 individual designs.
Today, aged 87, he remains involved through the Fondazione
Roberto Capucci, set up in 2005, which preserves an archive of 439 historical
dresses, 500 signed illustrations, 22,000 original drawings and a large photo
and media library.
In 2007, at Villa Bardini in Florence, he opened the Roberto
Capucci Foundation Museum, which hosts organised exhibitions and teaching
activities.
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| The Via Sistina in Rome looking towards Piazza Trinità dei Monti |
Travel tip:
Via Sistina, where Capucci opened his first studio in Rome,
is the wealthy Campo Marzio district of the city centre, linking Piazza
Barberini with the church of Trinità dei Monti, at the top of the Spanish Steps. It was orginally part of the Strada
Felice, commissioned by Pope Sixtus V to link the Pincian Hill with the Basilica
of Santa Croce in Jerusalem, about two kilometres to the east of the centre. The street today is lined with elegant palaces.
The Via Gregoriana, where Capucci established his second studio in the city,
runs almost parallel with Via Sistina
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| Elegant Via della Spiga in Milan's 'fashion quadrilateral' |
Travel Tip
Anyone wishing to admire the designs of today’s Capucci fashion
house should head for Via della Spiga in Milan, where the company has its main prestige
showroom. The elegant, pedestrianised street forms the northeast boundary of
the luxurious Quadrilatero della Moda – the fashion quadrilateral – bordered by
Via Monte Napoleone, Via Manzoni, Via Sant'Andrea and Corso Venezia.