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OPEN SECTION
The meaning of ‘Made in Italy’ in fashion
Simona Segre Reinach
Abstract In this paper I set out to account for the transformations and specic
features of Italian fashion within a broader scenario created by the globalisation of
industry, markets and consumption.
While a retrospective gaze may lead us to interpret Italian fashion as a phenomenon
that has simply evolved in time, a closer examination reveals a development made
up of continuity, but also of discontinuities. Continuity may be perceived in the
production of quality fabrics and artisan competences scattered throughout Italy.
The discontinuities highlight dierent fashion cultures, production and consumption
marking the phases of its development.
Introduction
While a retrospective gaze may lead us to interpret Italian fashion as a
phenomenon that has simply evolved over time, a closer examination reveals
development that is made up of continuity, but also of discontinuities. Continuity
is evident in the production of quality fabrics and artisan competencies scattered
throughout Italy. The discontinuities are highlighted by varied fashion cultures,
production and consumption marking the phases of its development. Present-
day Italian fashion lacks the precise prole that it had in the past decades,
but ‘Italian style’ is still recognisable. What exactly Italian style is, however, is
not easy to grasp. In this essay, I suggest that understanding the concept of
‘Made in Italy’ in relation to Italian style requires research into the cultural history
of Italian fashion and design, its ambiguities and historical evolution. This essay
aims to account for the transformations and specic features of Italian fashion
within the broader scenario created by the globalisation of industry, markets
and consumption.1 The basic ingredients of Italian fashion were dened in 1981
in a special issue of Domus, the celebrated journal of architecture and design,
which was devoted to fashion. The Milanese architect and director of Domus,
1 Specic anthropological eldwork to analyse the structure of the fashion industry, and not only its image,
makes a valuable contribution to such research.
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Alessandro Mendini, was ahead of his time in recognising the relevance of
fashion in postwar Italian culture and history.2 In that issue of Domus, Italian
style was dened as being characterised by:
crystal clear shapes, sharp cuts, precious fabrics, rened nishings
showing a bond between craftmanship and industry, a good balance of
realism and imagination. (Domus Moda 1981)
This is a good, although orid, denition to start with. But, a theory of Italian
fashion is still to be properly arrived at, as the cultural history of Italian fashion
has only recently begun to be researched (Colaiacomo 2006; Fortunati and
Danese 2005; Lupano and Vaccari 2010; Frisa 2011; Muzzarelli, Frisa and
Tonchi 2014). In this essay, I argue that there are two main reasons for this lack
of research. The rst is the diculty that Italian scholars have in historicising
Italian fashion, so to speak, as if fashion was a ‘natural’ outcome of the
development of the country in which the Renaissance had its origins. This is
what I have called elsewhere the naturalisation of taste (Segre Reinach 2010), a
sort of essentialism by which the outcome of a precise history of an industry is
reduced to a theory of innate talent for fashion, an ethnocentric version of what
the sociologist Joanne Entwistle has called tacit aesthetic knowledge (2009).
The second one is a ‘xation’ on the period of the maximum splendour of Italian
fashion, the prêt-à-porter of Milanese design in the late 1970s and 1980s.3
‘Emancipation from Paris’: Fashion and
national identity
It is well known that in the mid-twentieth century in Europe, the United States and
also in other non-Western countries with strong colonial links to the West, local
industries arose in an attempt to liberate fashion from the cultural dominance
of Paris. The production and cultural system of Parisian haute couture and its
celebrated couturiers, led to its establishment as a benchmark for any other
emergent fashion: for example, fashion designer Claire McCardell thus became
the ‘American answer’ to Dior’s New Look, while Shanghai in the 1930s was the
‘Paris of the East’. Until the 1950s, many nations or cities alternated between
imitation of Parisian models, and the inevitable adaptation of the same to local
tastes and culture, along with the occasional aim of becoming independent from
Paris. We must, however, stress that it was not a question of a single process
of ‘freeing themselves’ from Paris or, rather, initially stepping up to equality with
French fashion. Instead, specic fashions took shape in time. Under the label
of ‘national fashion’, various anthropologies of production and consumption
2 Although Domus was not the rst journal to understand the relevance of Italian fashion, it was certainly the
rst one to focus on the link between fashion design, modernity and industry in Italian prêt-à-porter.
3 As Italian prêt-à-porter of the 1980s (for both for men and women) was the main output of the Italian
fashion industry, other sectors, such as ‘fast fashion’ and ‘private label’ ready to wear, have been given limited
consideration here.
The meaning of ‘Made in Italy’ in fashion
137
have developed, relating to the individual histories that each nation, city or town
has interwoven with the production of apparel, with the textile industry and the
competencies of its craftspeople.
In the 1950s, Italy began to assert its identity in the eld of fashion. The process
was completed between the 1970s and the 1980s, with the invention of the
prêt-à-porter of Italian fashion designers—the so-called stilisti (Steele 2003).
Italian fashion is, therefore, one of the rst sartorial industries, along with
Japanese radical fashion (Kawamura 2004) to ‘emancipate from Paris’ and
transform itself from a simple clothing–textile industry to a cultural industry
that is evolving from the secondary sector to the tertiary one. While France
maintains its dominance of high fashion and luxury, Italy has made a name
for wearable elegance and industrial capacity, England is the symbol of both
tradition and innovation4 (Breward 2004), Japan expresses ‘deconstruction’,
minimalism and a certain brand of street culture, and the United States has
‘invented’ casual and sportswear. The process of establishing independence
from Paris continues and the contemporary scenario is marked by a multiplicity
of fashion cities and nations (Skov 2011), as is shown by the increasingly
numerous ‘fashion weeks’ that take place in the farthest ung ‘fashion capitals’
including Shanghai, Bombay, Berlin, São Paulo, Jakarta, Sydney, Tel Aviv and
Istanbul (Segre Reinach 2011).
The sartorial histories of the countries that have found themselves on the stage
of stylistic desirability, once the process of multiplication of the centres has been
set o, are particular and idiosyncratic. The ‘new players’ seek to blend local
specialisations and capacities with globalised aesthetics that, not infrequently,
clash with stereotyped, conventional ideas. Brazil, for example, seeks to set
itself free from the beachwear stereotype, while India tries to shed its image as a
source of ‘Oriental’ products and handwork such as beading. The intensication
of outsourcing, moreover, has changed not only the geography of fashion, but
also the relationship between ‘made in’ and national creativity. In some cases,
sartorial identities have become more fragile while, in others, such identities
have been strengthened, making a greater freedom of expression possible.
For countries with a mainly productive tradition, such as Ireland, the loss of
the manufacturing aspect has left the country, so to speak, a ‘fashion orphan’
(Skov 2011). For others, on the contrary, it has been possible to relaunch a
postmodern, immaterial identity without having to compensate for a local
manufacturing tradition that was never very signicant, as in Iceland. Thus, the
race towards achieving a recognised and recognisable fashion is also run by
countries that, so far, have not known how or been able to express a signicant
sartorial positioning. Investment made by the Chinese Government to develop
the idea of a creative and not only productive China is a case in point in that it
has set out to enhance its historical artisan skills throughout the subcontinent
by supporting the careers of its young designers (Keane 2013).
4 As in London’s diverse traditions of Saville Row tailoring and the swinging 1960s of Carnaby St.
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For the well-known anthropologist and philosopher René Girard (1979), mimetic
desire is a sort of universal engine that may be synthesised in this simple,
adamantine statement: ‘I desire what the other desires’. The triangulation of
desire5 makes objects a means to draw closer to another person whose charm
we feel, not merely the fullment of a desire for possession. In this light, the
production of a fashion is a complex cultural fact and not only an aspect of the
economy of a country. This leads us directly to the fundamental meaning that
dress has, in a relational sense, to the dynamics of taste and its manifestations
between people and between nations. The capacity to produce fashion—that is,
a desirable, commercially successful aesthetic—is linked to a set of conditions
that is connected to national cultural identity. Having creative authority means
that others wish to wear what a country/culture produces, which poses the
question of the dynamics of sartorial style undergoing continuous change.
The armation of a place and of a culture that may boast a situation of prestige
in the arena of global fashion depends on the interlinked ideas, prejudices or
reputations that others may form—which is based on many factors, not only on
the ability to produce something of aesthetic importance. While the producers
of apparel, the commercial rms and companies, are increasingly diversied and
transnational, the relation between fashion and national identity is strengthened
instead of dispersed.6 The outcome is a sort of aesthetic nationalism that has
nothing to do with nineteenth-century romantic nationalism, but is more like
a sort of potlach; that is, a complex exchange system in which the objects
circulating are garments, designers, images and brands that are aimed at
strengthening competence and prestige.
Producing, communicating and presenting a ‘recognised’ fashion thus goes far
beyond the original meaning of more or less specialised textile and clothing
production. The requisites of a fashion project today include material and
commercial aspects and communicational and immaterial ones. Fashion as a
tool for communication is also used by governments to promote tourism, to
establish international relations, to compete and exchange ideas and projects,
as well as a sought-after quality demanded by people to feel desirable and
in step with the times. Being able to express and communicate a successful
aesthetics beyond the indigenous community is now an important corollary
that indirectly signals cultural and economic strength. As the sociologist Diane
Crane (2000) explains, this is because, unlike other production and commercial
activities, fashion expresses an elaborate culture that is composed of symbols,
ideologies and lifestyles on which to draw and favour consensus and exchange.
Much more than in the past, fashion has the task to reect and represent not only
social or individual needs, but also diversied possibilities to construct ex novo
areas in which the imaginary is creatively set free. Up until the 1980s, fashion
5 That is, according to Girard, an always yielding to what appeals to others.
6 Paradoxically, in our globalised culture, the concept of the fashion nation with its glamourised brands
becomes more relevant.
The meaning of ‘Made in Italy’ in fashion
139
was not considered as an academic topic or a cultural industry, but simply part
of the manufacturing or textile sector—and very often it is only a by-product.
As historian Regina Lee Blaszczyk maintains:
In recent decades, fashion history has blossomed into a thriving
eld, attracting scholars from anthropology, sociology, history, home
economics, cultural studies, and fashion design. Building on insights from
earlier studies by curators and connoisseurs of dress and costume, a new
generation of scholars has situated fashion within broader historical and
cultural frameworks. (2008: 8–9)
Identity in fashion has, therefore, become a major issue—not just as an industry,
but as a passport for modernity. As French sociologist Frederic Godart (2012)
maintains, fashion has become an indispensable reference for all forms of
culture and other creative industries. The broadening signicance of dress has
transformed fashion into a brilliant synthetic indicator that is able to express the
importance and symbolic capital of a country.
It is not easy, however, for a country to make its name on the globalised fashion
circuit. As artist Adam Geczy puts it:
Fashion and dress are the very best loci by which to understand the
various spaces by which the signs of nation, identity and novelty have
become transacted, adapted and owned. (2013: 4)
This is a new concept that is applicable to those nations, such as Turkey,
Brazil and China, that seek to use fashion to express themselves as relevant
contributors to modern cultural industries, or to nations like Japan and its
radical fashion of the 1980s, whose fashion has been the subject of theorising
since the beginning.
Italy, however, is dierent, as the next section illustrates. It became a fashion
nation well before it became a nation. The long process started in the
Renaissance and continued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
including during the autocratic utopia of Benito Mussolini, beginning in 1936
(see Paulicelli 2004; Lupano and Vaccari 2010) up to the rise of the Milanese
fashion designers in the late 1970s.
Italian fashion in the making: The rise of prêt-à-porter
For historical and anthropological reasons, Italian fashion has often been
marked by strong regional and local connotations that are expressed not only
in diversied producers—such as Como silks, wools from Biella, Prato carded
wool, embroidery from Assisi, Brenta shoes—but also in the competition between
cities, such as Turin, Florence, Rome and Milan, for fashion dominance. It is
a system that is shaped by ‘embedded exible networks’ (Godart 2012: 134).
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In the 1930s, during Fascism—when a true Italian fashion did not yet exist and
the tailoring and dressmaking ateliers looked to Paris for women’s fashion,
London for men’s fashion, and the textile industry was still in its cradle—the
fascist regime nominated Turin as the capital of design and aimed to invent and
impose the fashion of Turin on Italy and abroad as a fashion of purely Italian
inspiration and production.
Despite the eorts of the regime, the success of the campaign was modest.
With the exception of Ferragamo and Gucci in accessories, recognition of Italian
fashion as a competitor to Paris was achieved only after the Second World War,
in Florence in 1951 (Caratozzolo 2006). The characteristics with which Italian
fashion made its name, compared with French fashion, were the wearability of
its garments, quality of fabrics and of details in general, and an overall allure that
was more modern and casual and better suited to the times. The styles were
also more easily reproducible for sale in American department stores. Florentine
fashion was thus highly successful, thanks to the favour granted it by the United
States. From the beginning, however, parochialism inhibited the fashion industry
from developing and organising as a united sector. Positioning shifted between
Florence, Rome—the home of many high fashion tailoring and dressmaking
establishments—Naples and Milan, both of which also pursued the status
of rst in Italian fashion. Ultimately, Rome became the home of high fashion
and Florence of ready-to-wear. At this point, Florence should have developed
a closer relationship with the textile industry to facilitate greater expansion in
the 1960s, however, while it appeared modern in the 1950s with the designs
of Emilio Pucci and Roberto Capucci and the novelty of the fashion boutique,
after almost 20 years Florence was unable to meet the public’s changed
expectations, the region’s capacity and the very needs of the fashion designers
themselves. Florence did not have the necessary infrastructure to support the
early experiments in fashion design and production on an industrial scale.
It was not suciently connected with the textile industry or the service sector,
including press, photography, PR agencies, and these elements were a crucial
factor for the transformation of fashion from a product for the wealthy, which it
still was, into a mass language, as it was getting ready to become. The fashion
designers complained that Florentine organisations, too antiquated in formula,
did not enable them to fully display their skills. Another place had to be found
(Mulassano 1979). It was at that point that a series of factors brought Milan to
attention of the nascent system of Italian fashion. Although until then it had
not played a recognised role in fashion (in 1906 it hosted the rst exhibition to
develop Italian fashion and, in 1948, the Centro italiano della moda was opened
by Filippo Marinotti, the director of the synthetic textile company Snia Viscosa),
it was for many reasons the ‘natural’ place in which to develop the idea of
prêt-à-porter, which was then emerging, as well as being the driving engine of
the rst economic boom in Italy (Foot 2001; Segre Reinach 2006; Volonté 2012).
The meaning of ‘Made in Italy’ in fashion
141
When in 1972—20 years after the historic rst fashion show in Florence
organised by Giovanbattista Giorgini in 1951—some fashion designers—
including Walter Albini, who is to be considered one of the precursors of the
stilista gure—decided to leave the Florentine catwalks to show in Milan, the
Lombard capital was already the home to trade derived from the fashion sector.
Milanovendemoda, the collective of agents and commercial representatives in
the clothing industry had been active since 1969, with the aim of enhancing
relationships with the many buyers who were already present in Milan. The city
was also sensitive to the youthful anti-fashion revolutions that were occurring
across Europe and the United States, in particular what was happening in
London and San Francisco. Inspired by the Biba store in London, Elio Fiorucci’s
store was a meeting point for young people wishing to distance themselves
from middle-class, conservative apparel, recognising the growing importance
of the communicative aspect of fashion.
The move from Florence to Milan as a ready-to-wear centre documents a change
in perspective of Italian fashion, from a product of art and culture, as American
observers had interpreted and promoted it, to a practice of modernity. At the
international level, the rise of Milan was the start of the transformation of fashion
as the expression of class and good taste to a popular language. Geographically
also, Milan was ideal as a fashion centre, situated as it is at the centre of the
industrial districts that made an integrated design, production and distribution
system possible. The textile, clothing and leatherwear sectors have developed
harmoniously in Italy, despite their diversity, unlike in other countries where the
development of one sector has not necessarily corresponded to the presence
or growth of another. The city also acted as a district of post-production and
communication activities. The presence and concentration of commercial
television companies, fashion magazines, advertising and PR agencies marked
Milan as a Lombard district of media production. The city, therefore, became the
meeting point between industry and the service-producing sector.
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Figure 1. Milan: The Porta Nuova Project
Photo: Simona Segre Reinach, 2014
The fashion industry in Milan grew rapidly between 1970 and 1978 and was widely
acknowledged nationally for its prestige. Despite the troubled years of political
terrorism (1969–81) and the oil and industrial crisis in the early 1970s, Milanese
fashion gave new strength to the Italian economy. After being the centre of the
The meaning of ‘Made in Italy’ in fashion
143
economic boom of the 1960s, Lombardy also found in Milanese fashion a means
to overcome the crisis in heavy industry, with a swift reconversion (Foot 2001).
In the years between 1974 and 1978, Milan and its industry were protagonists
in establishing the basis for the next decade’s economic boom in Italy. In this
period, leading textile associations were formed and strengthened, including
IdeaComo, the union of silk textiles (1974), and Federtessile, which grouped
together 10 textile associations (1975). Designers such as Armani, Versace,
Coveri and Krizia started to converge on Milan. The Italian stilisti were, and still
are, predominantly business people in their own right or in partnership with an
entrepreneurial gure who assists in handling complex international markets.
Franco Mattioli and Gianfranco Ferré, Sergio Galeotti and Giorgi Armani, Aldo
Pinto and Krizia, Rosita and Ottavio Missoni, Massimo and Alberta Ferretti,
Tiziano Giusti and Franco Moschino, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana
are a few examples. The investment of the Industriali dell’Abbigiamento e della
Maglieria associations in Modit, the entity that oversees Italian catwalk shows,
clearly established industry as having a role in the prêt-à-porter project. In the
mid-1980s a new generation of designers emerged, including Dolce & Gabbana,
Romeo Gigli and Miuccia Prada.
The 1990s saw the opening of Carla Sozzani’s concept store, 10 corso Como.
Avant-garde in its choice of location near Milan’s Garibaldi Station, which was
still a working class area, and distant from the downtown Quadrilatero fashion
area, this store marked the beginning of fashion’s spread into peripheral districts
in the city, such as Porta Genova, the Bovisa and Porta Vittoria. Following this,
the fashion designers redeveloped the vacant, former industrial areas outside
the city centre.
In the 1990s, however, prêt-à-porter underwent a crisis. There were various
causes. The dominance of branding and the rise of luxury conglomerates
damaged the ‘democratic’ origins that characterised the model and had been
one of the reasons for its success. The formation of large luxury groups that were
designed to compete in an internationalised market modied the manufacturing
model of Italian fashion. Relocation and the rise of new competitors, above all
in China, created diculties for small companies that were unable to represent
dierence or which did not have a product with high added value. The weakness
in the marketing strategies of the small rms, the lack of state support and
the emergence and strengthening of the luxury multinationals made the Milan-
based fashion system vulnerable to increasingly strong competition. Also, from
the design point of view, consumer tastes began to change. Italian style par
excellence—that of a relaxed, accessible elegance—came to be out of sync
with the growing appreciation of independent creativity that marked English or
Belgian production and was less and less the hallmark of Italian design.
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The production and cultural model of Milanese prêt-à-porter is no longer
the dominant system in fashion in Italy and elsewhere. New production and
consumption models modied the shape of the Italian and world fashion
industry.
Beyond the stilisti: A new fashionscape
The gure of the fashion designer has changed. The new generation of
designers come from a dierent background and fashion creativity has become
very much a matter of global exchange, as is its production, which is typical
of the structure of most industry nowadays. This is a historical evolution of
what Godart calls ‘the principle of personalisation’ (2012: 144) by which the
mythology of the designer as isolated creative genius is fostered. It is, however,
dicult for emerging designers to establish themselves in the new context,
which is in some ways blocked by the presence of the old guard. As sociologist
Giampaolo Proni states, the ‘Made in Italy’ campaign had three main features:
The designer, who combines the roles of creator and manager in one
person; the production system mostly allocated in industrial districts, with
an upstream and downstream production chain; ready to wear as the
production protocol. (2011: 64)
Proni is describing the 1980s model of prêt-à-porter, which had been replaced by
low-cost fashion products that are issued continuously as ‘fast fashion’ and by
artisan-produced, postmodern and technically sophisticated luxury. Fast fashion
has modied the traditional seasonal divisions of fashion with the presentation
of novelties. Its strong point is speed, attention to new consumers and prices
that are matched to the latest trends. In the model of the multinationals Zara and
H&M, but in a sui generis variation, a signicant part of new Italian fashion is
made up by producers of ready-to-wear fashion brands, such as Patrizia Pepe,
Pinko, Celyn B, Liu-Jo, Carpisa and Fracomina. This phenomenon has a cultural
and economic impact in that it represents an evolution of the Milan-based
model to one emanating from the ready-to-wear fashion centres of Bologna
and Naples. A new ‘atlas of Italian fashion’ is taking shape, in both geographic
and cultural terms, which is more composite than the one that existed in the
1980s (Frisa 2011). Large multinational or Italian-owned manufacturers of luxury
goods, such as Zegna, Loro Piana and Prada, are now operating alongside fast
fashion brands; demi-couture brands such as Albino and Sara Lanzi, which are
characterised by experimentation, artisan workmanship and technology; and
sportswear and casual brands with Anglicised names (Sweet Years, A-Style,
Guru). In the complex new Italian fashionscape, it is clear that brands of all kinds
are more relevant than fashion designers themselves.
The meaning of ‘Made in Italy’ in fashion
145
Fashion is still an important industry for Italy and its economic contribution to
employment is rightly acknowledged. The economic aspect of fashion, however,
is only a part of the phenomenon. At the crossroad between art, commerce
and industry, modern fashion is also and above all a cultural phenomenon with
historical and anthropological components that merit analysis. Entrepreneurs
are driving the development of a new model that has the potential to maintain
the international precedence of Italian fashion and luxury, and thus competing
with the French multinationals. A 2012 alliance between Zegna, Loro Piana and
Marzotto is an example of the new trend for disparate companies to become joint
shareholders in companies from associated industries (in this case, Pettinatura
di Verrone, a company that nishes wool and cashmere), thus inaugurating a
partnership between large companies in the sector with the aim of keeping alive
the service activities of transformation, which is one of the strong points of
Italian fashion. The market is changing and this makes it possible to knock down
the historic barriers preventing Italian entrepreneurs from joining forces and
increasing market share. On the other hand, the sale of Italian brands to foreign
groups is also occurring. Loro Piana, for example, was acquired by LVMH (Moet
Hennesy Louis Vuitton) in July 2013, and there has been much commentary on
the fact that luxury brands are losing their Italian roots. There are two opposite
interpretations of this process. For some analysts this is seen as the Italian
fashion industry’s loss of inuence. For others, however, this process reinforces
Italian identity by injecting nancial capital into the domestic industry to allow it
to operate on a global scale.
Towards an anthropology of Italian fashion
The history of Italian fashion is exemplary in the industry’s ability to enhance
its special features and its constant adaptation to sociocultural humus. If, once
the current global recession is over (which data suggests might happen soon
(Bottoni 2013)), ‘Made in Italy’, in its various meanings, succeeds in overcoming
the challenge of internationalisation and globalisation of the markets, it is no
less important to pinpoint its identity, features and the new forms of production
and consumption that surround it. In other words, to prepare for the future of
Italian fashion, it is necessary to understand why Milan took its place alongside
Paris as a fashion capital.
Today, Italian fashion—which in many cases wishes to be distinguished from a
‘Made in Italy’ with which it no longer completely identies—signies a capacity
for experimentation and increasingly transnational creativity. The Italian fashion
of today, therefore, is reinventing itself again. It is not yet clear the direction in
which it is heading and there remain many questions to be answered including,
for example, how producers can fuse the commercial need for mass production
with the demand for quality. Equally, how can they produce aesthetically
interesting productions at moderate prices so as to successfully challenge the
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146
dominance of international fast fashion? How can production on an industrial
scale be sustained and how will commercial growth via investment impact on
family-managed rms? It is the market that will determine the answers to these
questions.
Figure 2. The Ferragamo party at Shanghai Moma
Photo: Simona Segre Reinach 2008
While Italian fashion is currently fragmented, there are individual projects that
indicate unity (Frisa 2011). From a marketing point of view, the strength of Italian
fashion lies in its capacity for constant change (Segre Reinach 2013), while
maintaining a clear identity. As Chiara Colombi states:
The old claim—Think global, act local—is replaced then by—Think
regional, Act local, Forget global—for which the Italian products, in order
to move away from stereotypical interpretations, and to be understood in
its value-laden complexity, must be supported by contextualising policies
and strategies in the target markets in order to show respect for, and
convey, one’s identity of meanings and values. (2011: 58)
There are interesting examples of new brands that position themselves between
artisan, craft and global trends. Their ‘Italianness’ is to be found more in the
creative process than in the stereotypes of Italian glamour. From a theoretical
point of view, however, the future scholars of Italian fashion, similarly with
those actively involved in the sector, would prot from an approach that is both
comparative and processual, questioning the ways in which Italian fashion diers
from other fashion systems, if this is the case, and thus providing a cultural
history of ‘Made in Italy’. Italian ‘good taste’, which took shape in the years
The meaning of ‘Made in Italy’ in fashion
147
following 1950, was not the taste of an elite, as was the case for the French
fashion which provided the taste of the urban bourgeoisie there (Bourdieu and
Delsaut 1975). On the contrary, Italian fashion arose following a distancing of
itself from the ritual of Parisian haute couture and, later, adopting aspects of a
new popular culture that emerged after the decline of egalitarian ideologies of
the 1970s; it is ‘post-bourgeois’ fashion.
Conclusions
A full examination of the sociological and anthropological issues concerning
Italian fashion still needs to be completed. A museum of Italian fashion that
presents a coherent narrative of the development of the style and industry
should be established. It is not a coincidence that, despite the relevance of Italian
fashion and the Italian fashion industry, its fashion schools are not recognised
internationally. As Godart writes: ‘with the notable exception of Italy—the best
schools are located in a very limited number of countries, the United States,
the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and Japan’ (2012: 108–09). I am not
in the position to judge whether Italian fashion schools are good enough or
underestimated (and we should take also into account that books on Italian
fashion written in Italian by Italian scholars are rarely translated into English)
and, in the present globalised economy of the fashion industry, it could mean
the same thing.
Italian fashion has been marked by a continuous transformation (Merlo 2003).
I propose that the term metamorphosis usefully characterises the process of
change that has been the hallmark of Italian fashion from the early 1950s, from
the rst catwalk shows in Florence, up to the present day in the globalised
era. It is important to consider ‘Made in Italy’—Italian fashion—as an open
system, a structure that is sensitive to change and which responds to events
with great vitality. It is not a closed formula that is aesthetically repeatable
and encapsulated in a ‘label of origin’, as some consider, believing that by
so doing they will enhance it, and instead impoverishing its more authentic
value (Segre Reinach 2013). Its strength lies in its ability to evolve in time, to
change while still remaining recognisable. Flexibility, considered a feature of
Italian companies is also exibility in knowing how to develop a concept and
a positioning. If Italian fashion’s ability to adapt to present-day conditions
while preserving clear identity, that of Italian style, is to be taken as a possible
heuristic device, most of the fashion theorists, and I include myself among
them, Italian and non-Italian, shouldn’t be afraid to face the reality of a system
much celebrated but never really considered beyond its commercial success.
To research Italian fashion implies unpacking the meaning of ‘Made in Italy’,
in relation to Italian style and analysing the relationships between its cultural,
economic and historical roots.
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Simona Segre Reinach is a cultural anthropologist and professor of fashion studies
at Bologna University. She has written on fashion from a global perspective in Berg
Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion (2010), The Fashion History Reader (2010),
and published articles in Fashion Theory, Fashion Practice, Business and Economic
History, and Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty. She is author of four books in
Italian: Mode in Italy (1999), La moda. Un’introduzione (2005, 2010), Orientalismi
(2006), and Un mondo di mode (2011). She has done eld work in China (2001–08)
and contributed to a collaborative study on Sino–Italian joint ventures in the eld of
textile and fashion. She is also involved in Fashion Curation Studies and she curated
the exhibition 80s–90s Facing Beauties. Italian Fashion and Japanese Fashion at
a Glance (Museo della città di Rimini, 11 October – 8 December 2013). She sits
on the editorial board of Fashion Theory, Dress Cultures Series by Tauris and The
International Journal of Fashion Studies.
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This text is taken from Craft + Design Enquiry, Issue 7, 2015,
edited by Kay Lawrence, published 2015 by ANU Press,
The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
