28 February

Mario Andretti – racing driver

American champion was born and grew up in Italy

Mario Andretti, who won the 1978 Formula One World Championship driving as an American, was born on this day in 1940 in Montona, about 35km (22 miles) south of Trieste in what was then Istria in the Kingdom of Italy.  Andretti is the only driver in motor racing history to have won an Indianapolis 500, a Daytona 500 and an F1 world title, and one of only two to have won races in F1, Indy Car, NASCAR and the World Sportscar Championship. The last American to win an F1 Grand Prix, he clinched the 1978 F1 title at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Read more…

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Karl Zuegg - jam and juice maker

Businessman turned family farm into international company

Karl Zuegg, the businessman who turned his family's fruit-farming expertise into one of Italy's major producers of jams and juices, was born on this day in 1915 in Lana, a town in what is now the autonomous province of Bolzano in Trento-Alto Adige. His grandparents, Maria and Ernst August Zuech - they changed their name to Zuegg in 1903 - had been cultivating fruit on their farm since 1860, when Lana was part of South Tyrol in what was then Austria-Hungary.  Zuegg and the company's other major brand names, Skipper and Fruttaviva, are among the most recognisable in the fruit products market in Italy. Read more…

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Dino Zoff – footballer

Long career of a record-breaking goalkeeper

Dino Zoff, the oldest footballer to be part of a World Cup winning team, was born on this day in 1942 in Mariano del Friuli in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.  Zoff was captain of the Italian national team in the final of the World Cup in Spain in 1982 at the age of 40 years, four months and 13 days. He also won the award for best goalkeeper of the tournament, in which he kept two clean sheets and made a number of important saves. In club football, Zoff spent 11 years with Juventus, whom he joined in 1972, winning the Serie A championship six times, the Coppa Italia twice and the UEFA Cup once. Read more...

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27 February

Franco Moschino - fashion designer 

Made clothes with sense of humour

The fashion designer Franco Moschino, founder of the Moschino fashion label, was born on this day in 1950 in Abbiategrasso, a town about 24km (15 miles) southwest of Milan.  Moschino became famous for his innovative and irreverent designs, which injected humour into high fashion. For example, he created a miniskirt in quilted denim with plastic fried eggs decorating the hemline, a jacket studded with bottle tops and a suit covered with cutlery. He designed a dress that resembled a shopping bag and a ball gown made from black plastic bin bags. Read more...

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Simone Di Pasquale – dancer

Ballroom talent has been springboard for business success

Ballroom dancer and television celebrity Simone Di Pasquale was born on this day in 1978. In 2005, he became a household name after he started to appear regularly on Italian television in Ballando con le Stelle - the equivalent of the US show Dancing with the Stars and Britain’s Strictly Come Dancing. The show, presented by Milly Carlucci, is broadcast on Saturday evenings on the tv channel Rai Uno. Pasquale has also appeared in numerous other television programmes, on stage in musical theatre and as an actor in a television drama. Read more…

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Italy's appeal for help with Leaning Tower

Fears of collapse prompted summit of engineers

The Italian government finally admitted that it needed help to save the Leaning Tower of Pisa from collapsing on this day in 1964.  There had been numerous attempts to arrest the movement of the tower, which had begun to tilt five years after construction began in 1173. One side of the tower started to sink after engineers added a second floor in 1178, when the mistake of setting a foundation just three metres deep in weak, unstable soil became clear. Despite several interventions, by 1964, the top of the 180ft (55m) tower was a staggering 17 feet out of alignment with the base. Read more…

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Mirella Freni – opera singer

Good advice from Gigli helped soprano have long career

Singer Mirella Freni was born Mirella Fregni on this day in 1935 in Modena in Emilia-Romagna.  Freni’s grandmother, Valentina Bartolomasi, had been a leading soprano in Italy from 1910 until 1927. By coincidence, her mother worked alongside the mother of tenor Luciano Pavarotti in a tobacco factory in Modena. After singing in a radio competition when she was just 10 years old, the tenor Beniamino Gigli advised her to give up singing until she was older to protect her voice. Freni took his advice and resumed singing when she was 17, making her operatic debut at the Teatro Municipale in Modena at the age of 20 in Bizet’s Carmen, and did not retire until more than 50 years later. Read more...


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Franco Moschino - fashion designer

Made clothes with sense of humour

Moschino was famous for his outlandish designs, poking fun
at aspects of the fashion world he considered too serious

The fashion designer Franco Moschino, founder of the Moschino fashion label, was born on this day in 1950 in Abbiategrasso, a town about 24km (15 miles) southwest of Milan.

Moschino became famous for his innovative and irreverent designs, which injected humour into high fashion.

For example, he created a miniskirt in quilted denim with plastic fried eggs decorating the hemline, a jacket studded with bottle tops and a suit covered with cutlery. He designed a dress that resembled a shopping bag and a ball gown made from black plastic bin bags.

Other designs carried messages mocking his own industry, such as a jacket with the motif ‘Waist of Money’ printed round the waistband, another in cashmere with ‘Expensive Jacket’ emblazoned across the back and a shirt with the words ‘I’m Full of Shirt’.

A Moschino blouse styled to look
like a dart board

Moschino’s first collections focussed on casual clothes and jeans, but he eventually branched out into lingerie, eveningwear, shoes, menswear and perfumes.

As a young man, Moschino was encouraged to believe that his destiny lay in taking over his father’s iron foundry but his only interest in the plant lay in the layers of dust that clung to the walls, in which he would make drawings.

He wanted to be a painter and at the age of 18 ran away to Milan and enrolled himself at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and the Istituto Marangoni school of design.

To finance his studies, he worked as a freelance fashion illustrator for fashion houses and magazines. This led to him becoming an illustrator for Gianni Versace, for whom he worked for six years.

Moschino began designing in his own right for the Italian label Cadette in 1977. He founded his own company, Moonshadow, in 1983, and soon built annual revenues in excess of £150 million.  He launched the Moschino Couture! label the same year.

His designs, which were inspired by the Surrealist movement of the 1920s, found acceptance among pop stars such as Madonna, Tina Turner, and Yoko Ono and two high-profile royal fashion icons in Princess Caroline of Monaco and Diana, Princess of Wales.

The Moschino logo adorns more than 150 boutiques
across the world, with its headquarters in Milan

Moschino died young, after suffering a heart attack in September 1994 at his villa at Annone di Brianza, overlooking Lake Annone, south of Lake Como. He had undergone surgery a short time previously to remove an abdominal tumour.

It came to light after his death that Moschino, who had raised money to build hospices for children with Aids, had himself contracted the disease. Moschino is buried in his family's plot at Cimitero Monumentale di Milano in Milan.

After his death, the Moschino brand was continued first under the guidance of his former assistant Rossella Jardini, and then by the American designer Jeremy Scott.

In more recent years, Moschino has designed the outfits for the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, for Kylie Minogue's 2005 Showgirl - The Greatest Hits Tour, for Madonna's 2008 Sticky & Sweet Tour and six outfits for Lady Gaga for her Born This Way Ball in 2011-2012.

The fashion house has more than 150 boutiques worldwide. Its flagship store is in Via Sant’Andrea in Milan, which bisects the famous ‘fashion street’, the Via Monte Napoleone.

Lago di Annone, where Moschino had a villa, is notable
for being in two sections, divided by a peninsula

Travel tip:

Lago di Annone falls into the area known as Brianza, bordered by the lakeside towns of Como and Lecco and the city of Monza.  It is an area rich in hills and beautiful landscapes, parks and nature reserves that has down the centuries attracted many painters and writers. The main characteristic of Lago di Annone is that it has two sections, divided by a peninsula - the Isella peninsula - with the sections linked by a narrow canal which was once spanned by a Roman bridge carrying a road between Lecco and Como. The lake lies at the foot of Monte Cornizzolo and Monte Barro, two peaks offering marvellous views to those prepared to climb. Less challenging is a footpath around the perimeter of the lake.

Hotels in Annone di Brianza from Booking.com

The Visconti Castle, built in the 14th century, is one of the
architectural highlights of Abbiategrasso

Travel tip:

Moschino’s home town of Abbiategrasso prides itself on being part of the Cittaslow project - an offshoot of the Slow Food Movement - which comprises more than 140 towns around the world of 50,000 or fewer inhabitants, promoting a relaxed pace of life and and ‘an identity and community spirit in the face of the modern world’. Part of its slow living involves closing off the town centre to cars during the weekend, with citizens encouraged to use bicycles. The town is also home to the Visconti Castle, built in 1382 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti and enlarged and decorated by Filippo Maria Visconti after 1438. The nearby Basilica church of Santa Maria Nuova was built in 1388 to celebrate the birth of Gian Galeazzo Visconti's son. Abbiategrasso is also the home town of Giuseppina Tuissa, one of the partisans who captured Mussolini as he tried to flee to Switzerland in 1945.

Stay in Abbiategrasso with Booking.com

More reading:

The meteoric rise of Gianni Versace

Roberto Capucci, the 'sculptor in cloth'

Giuseppina Tuissa's role in the capture of Mussolini

Also on 27 February:

1935: The birth of opera singer Mirella Freni

1964: Italy appeals for help to save the Leaning Tower of Pisa

1973: The birth of singer and actress Chiara Iezzi

1978: The birth of dancer Simone Di Pasquale

Books:

The Glamour of Italian Fashion Since 1945, edited by Sonnet Stanfill

(Picture credits: Lago di Annone by Cantakukuruz; Visconti Castle by Davide Papalini; via Wikimedia Commons)

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26 February

Dante Ferretti – set designer

Three-times Oscar winner worked with Fellini and Scorsese

Dante Ferretti, who in more than half a century in movie production design has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won three, was born on this day in 1943 in the city of Macerata. Ferretti, who works in partnership with his wife, the set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo with whom he shared his awards, won two of his Oscars for films directed by Martin Scorsese - The Aviator (2005) and Hugo Cabret (2012) - and another Tim Burton’s 2008 film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Read more…

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Angelo Mangiarotti - architect

Iconic glass church among legacy to city of Milan 

Angelo Mangiarotti, one of the greats of modern Italian architecture and design, was born on this day in 1921 in Milan.  Many notable examples of his work in urban design can be found in his home city, including the Repubblica and Venezia underground stations, the iconic glass church of Nostra Signora della Misericordia in the Baranzate suburb and several unique residential properties, including the distinctive Casa a tre cilindri - composed of a trio of cylindrical blocks - in Via Gavirate in the San Siro district of the city. He also worked extensively in furniture design. Read more…

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Napoleon escapes from Elba

Emperor leaves idyllic island to face his Waterloo

French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the Italian island of Elba, where he had been living in exile, on this day in 1815.  He had been sent to live in exile there the previous year following his unconditional abdication from the throne of France. Napoleon was given sovereignty over the island but he began about being moved still further from France and also missed his wife, Marie-Louise. On the evening of February 26, 1815 Napoleon and a few hundred loyal soldiers boarded small boats and sailed to a tiny fishing village near Cannes, from where they marched north to Paris. Read more...


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