The phenomenon of made in Italy has a date and place of birth: 12 February 1951, in Villa Torrigiani in Florence. In this beautiful patrician house surrounded by a legendary garden (almost 10 hectares of greenery in the center of the city) he lived, with his wife and three children, Giovan Battista Giorgini called Bista, an elegant gentleman who dealt with foreign trade. Born in 1898 in Forte dei Marmi, he began his career from the marble that whitens the Apuan Alps behind his birthplace. Then he ended up dealing with what is still the oil of our country today: fashion.
Made in Italy is a term that evokes images of high quality craftsmanship, elegant style and refined design but also a way of doing business. How much is Made in Italy worth in the broadest sense? If you look at the value of the brand, Italy is ninth in the world with a value of 2.32 billion dollars, equal to 2.18 billion euros. This too will be discussed at the event organized by Il Giornale on June 5th in Verona at Confindustria, Piazza Cittadella from 9.30am to 1pm. Event hosted by Hoara Borselli, Daniela Fedi and Osvaldo De Paolini. (Click here to register now).
Italy has an unparalleled manufacturing capacity developed since the days of medieval artisan workshops. Even on an industrial level we manage to make clothes and accessories of excellent quality while maintaining that elegant lightness that the world envies us, starting with the French, our fiercest rivals when it comes to fashion. Bista senses that America is the right market to conquer with our impeccable but less pompous style than Parisian haute couture, so he decides to organize an Italian fashion show in New York. The project fails due to budget issues, but he doesn’t give up and transforms the problem into a great opportunity: to show that Italy is not just spaghetti, mandolin and folklore.
He organizes the fashion show at his home immediately after Paris fashion week. He invites American buyers and journalists to stay in Europe a couple of days longer to attend the event entitled First Italian High Fashion Show in which 10 very high profile fashion houses are involved. There is Simonetta founded in 1946 by a Roman noblewoman married in her first marriage to Gaius Visconti di Modrone. Precisely on this occasion, Donna Simonetta Colonna di Cesarò met among the other invited stylists Alberto Fabiani who later became her second husband.
Then there is Carosa (brand created by Giovanna Caracciolo), Jole Veneziani, Germana Marucelli, Shuberth, the Sorelle Fontana and, for ready-to-wear, Emilio Pucci who agrees to show only if Giorgini also invites La Tessitrice dell’isola , the brand behind which the Neapolitan baroness Clarette Gallotti hides. There are six powerful American buyers and some important fashion journalists including Bridget Titchner of Vogue and Jerry Stunz of Glamour.
The phenomenon exploded immediately, so much so that six months later it was necessary to find a larger location Grand Hotel in Florence (now St. Regis) followed closely in January 1952 by the legendary Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti. Under those 11 Bohemian crystal chandeliers that illuminate the precious white stuccos of the hall created in 1765 for the inauguration ball of the Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Habsburg-Lorraine, there were truly all sorts of things to be seen. The fashion shows in the Sala Bianca were an extraordinary success right from the first edition in which 300 buyers and many internationally renowned journalists enthusiastically participated. Among them the big one Irene Brincorrespondent for Harper’s Bazaar and a very young girl Oriana Fallaci which it describes Vincenzo Ferdinandi went down in history as the inventor of the suit with these words: “He comes from a family of Neapolitan tailors of glorious tradition and is a real tailor, not just a designer, he sews his own clothes always reserving the superstitious honor of attaching the last button and has the same cult for the suit that a Russian choreographer might have for dance and a Roman chef for matriciana pasta”.
Ferdinandi who he had met and collaborated with in 1948 Christian Diorwas later called by the great French couturier to create the suit worn by Jennifer Jones in De Sica’s film Termini Station. The Oscar for costume design was won and collected in the name of Dior, but Ferdinandi received many other awards including having the first black model in the history of fashion, the Cuban Dolores Francine Rhineey, on the catwalk. Giorgini feared that sending the so-called “black princess” on the catwalk was too strong a provocation for American buyers, but Ferdinandi held firm and in the end also received compliments from Bista.
He himself is someone who loves and knows how to shuffle cards so when he decides to invite a very young person Roberto Capucci despite the other participants in the event threatening to cancel their fashion shows from the program, he circumvents the obstacle by having the eighteen-year-old couturier’s first creations worn by a group of beautiful guests invited to the show. All hell happened: everyone wanted those extraordinary garments including a 62-piece dress which is a true work of art. It is not the only excellent debut in the Sala Bianca, we could mention other high-sounding names such as Krizia or Valentino, but the most interesting thing is that from the intuition of a Tuscan businessman an industry was born which is the second active voice of the national balance of payments and employs around 90 thousand Italians.
The story of this extraordinary adventure is very well told in the book Giorgini and the origin of Made in Italy (224 pages €49.00) published in 2023 by Gruppo Editoriale Srl. Edited by Black Fadigati (Giorgini’s nephew) and created thanks to Polimoda of Florence, the book makes use of the prestigious signatures of Eva Desiderio, fashion critic of the Quotidiano Nazionale, Grazia D’Annunzio of Vogue, Sonnet Stanfil of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Gianluca Bauzano of Corriere della Sera. Among the many testimonies collected is that of John B. Fairchild who inherited the magazine WWD (Women’s Wear Daily) from his father, transforming it into the first and most authoritative fashion newspaper in the world.
“Giorgini – he said – took us by the hand and took us into that new world where men and women in colorful clothes raced on Vespas. Clinging to each other. How young and sexy they looked in their Italian clothes! And all of us soon fell in love with that elegance.”
