Italian Fashion Desingers
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«Dolce & Gabbana
The charming- combination of Dolce's tailoring perfectionism and Gabbana's stylistic theatrics has complete the label a powerhouse in today's celebrity-obsessed age and just as powerful as the ambassadors of sport, music and film that they dress.
Domenico Dolce was born in 1958 to a Sicilian family, his father a tailor from Palermo who trained him to make a jacket by the age of seven. Stefano Gabbana was born during 1962, the son of a Milanese print worker. But it was Sicily, Dolce's birthplace and Gabbana's favourite childhood holiday destination, that potted a bond between them when they first met, and which has provided a position for their aesthetic signatures ever since: the traditional Sicilian girl (opaque black stockings, black lace, peasant skirts, shawl fringing), the Latin sex temptress (corsetry, high heels, underwear as outerwear), and the Sicilian gangster (pinstripe suits, slick tailoring, fedoras). And it is the resistance between these polar opposites - masculine/feminine, soft/hard and innocence/corruption -that makes Dolce & Gabbana so exciting.
Established in 1985, the label continues to pay reverence to such Italian film legends as Fellini, Visconti, Rossellini, Anna Magnani and Sophia Loren; in glossy art books, Dolce & Gabbana documents its own payment to today's legends of film ('Hollywood'), music ('Music') and football ('Calcio'). With an territory that includes the younger D&G line, childrens-wear, swimwear, underwear, eyewear, fragrance (eight in total), watches, accessories and a global distribution through their own boutiques, Dolce & Gabbana are, quite merely, fashion's Italian stallions.
Giorgio Armani »
Now in his fifth decade working in fashion, Giorgio Armani is more than just a designer - he's an organization, an icon and a multinational, billion-dollar brand.
Giorgio Armani was born during 1934 in Piacenza, northern Italy. He spent his determining years not in fashion but studying medicine at university and completing his national service. After working as a buyer for Milanese department store La Rinascente, he scored his initial break in 1964, when he was hired by Nino Cerruti to design a menswear line, Hitman. Several years as a winning freelance designer followed, but it was in 1975 that the Giorgio Armani label was set up, with the assist of his then business partner Sergio Galeotti.
Armani's signature 'unstructured' jackets for both men and women (a womenswear line was established in 1976), knocked the filling out of traditional tailoring and from the late '70s, his clothes became a consistent for the upwardly mobile. Men loved his relaxed suits and muted colour palette of impartial beiges and greys. His designs for women, meanwhile, were admired for an androgynous and current elegance. Richard Gere's suits in American Gigolo' (1980) were a landmark for the designer, as was the cover of Time magazine during 1983.
The brand now encompasses six main fashion lines and has diversified into bedlinen, chocolates and even hotels. Armani has won countless awards, with an Honorary Doctorate from the RCA in 1991; from 2000 his designs have been exhibited in a major retrospective illustrate that has travelled worldwide. Armani has also selected up a dedicated Hollywood following, and January 2005 saw the launch in Paris of 'Giorgio Armani Prive', an haute couture-like collection.
«Prada
During 1971 Miuccia Prada entered the family business. Twenty years later, the very traditional leather goods company had changed beyond all recognition. The modernism of something as easy as a nylon bag meant there was no looking back: Prada was on the way to redefining luxury, delicacy and desirability in fashion.
Prada the company - led by the designer and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, who started labor with Prada in 1977 and is now CEO of the Prada Group - seem to have an uncanny ability to detain the cultural climate in fashion. This sensitivity has been flagrantly teamed with commercial savvy, which has made the brand's power over the past decade vast and its growth enormous. From bags and shoes to the first womenswear collection (1988), the Miu Miu line for the younger customer (1993), menswear (1994), Prada Sport (1997) and Prada Beauty (2000), all are straight overseen by Miuccia Prada herself. Yet, unlike many other Leviathan brands, there is amazing both unconventional and characteristic in Miuccia Prada's aesthetic. Much of this may be down to her opposing character.
Born in Milan in 1950, Miuccia Prada studied political science at the city's university and was a member of Italy's Communist Party, yet is said to have damaged Yves Saint Laurent on the barricades. The designer, who has made the Wall Street Journal's '30 Most Powerful Women In Europe' list, also exhausted a period studying to be a mime artist. These dualities have led to her expert skill in balancing the contrary forces of art and commerce within the super-brand, sometimes quite factually: Prada has its have art foundation and has collaborated with the architect Rem Koolhaas on stores in New York (2001) and Los Angeles (2004).
From the late '90s, the Prada Group embarked upon a policy of fast expansion, purchasing brands with Azzedine Alaia, Helmut Lang and Church & Co.
Valentino»
Valentino Garavani - who, like all megastars, is identified simply by his first name -is Italy's greatest couturier and one of the most appreciated designers showing in Paris. While hopeful glamour girls lust after his V-logo belts and bejewelled sandals, to his loyal following of moneyed dressmaking clients Valentino is identical with showstopping evening dresses, which are spotlessly cut in lean, feminine lines with theatrical flourishes such as ruffles, romantic embroideries and sensible use of his favourite shade of bright red.
Born in Voghera, south of Milan, in 1932, Valentino travelled to Paris at just 17 and, next studies at the Chambre Syndicale de la Mode, was apprenticed to Jean Desses and Guy Laroche. In 1959 he returned to Italy to found his own atelier on Via Condotti in central Rome; Elizabeth Taylor, in town to film 'Spartacus', was one of Valentino's earliest clients.
In 1963, he launched his first full collection, to worldwide acclaim, at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and by 1967 he had won the Neiman Marcus Award, the first of numerous accolades. An appearance on the covers of both Time and Life magazines followed, and in 1968 Valentino was chosen by Jackie Kennedy to design the dress for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis.
At the finish of the '60s, Valentino met Giancarlo Giametti, a former architecture student who would turn into the business brains behind the increasing fashion house and in 1970 ready-to-wear collections, for both men and women, were debuted.
By 1998 the pair had determined to sell the house, to Italian corporation Holding di Partecipazioni Industriali, which in turn sold the brand to Marzotto, in 2003. In July 2005 Marzotto created Valentino Fashion Group, which operates as a part, publicly-traded concern.
More than the years the perfectly-groomed designer has dressed the most advantaged women of the day, with Princess Margaret, Marella Agnelli and Begum Aga Khan. In 2002 his Hollywood qualifications were re-affirmed when Julia Roberts wore an elegant black-and-white vintage Valentino dress to the Oscars. Valentino has been honoured by the governments of Italy, wherever he was awarded the Cavaliere di Gran Croce(1986) and France, which decorated him as a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (2005).
Versace»
Donatella Versace (born 1959) is a divinity of fashion. The female figurehead of one of the little remaining family-run fashion houses, she presides over seven brands below the Versace name. Her flamboyant, party-girl image has turned into synonymous with Versace itself.
Gianni Versace (born 1946) and Donatella grew up in Reggio Calabria, southern Italy. While her much older brother stimulated to Milan to seek his fashion fortune, Donatella deliberate for a degree in languages at the University of Florence. As there, her brother's career took off. After functioning for Callaghan and Genny, he set up his solo label in 1978. Suggesting the family's love for bright colours, body-hugging shapes and a big dose of glamour, it was a great success. He called on his younger sister to help expand the brand. The two worked jointly for much of the '80s and '90s, with Donatella absorbed on the sumptuous advertising images for which Versace is known to this day. She also set up the children's line, Young Versace, in 1993 and worked as head designer on the dispersal label, Versus.
When Gianni Versace was tragically killed in 1996, his sister became chief designer and inherited a rather daunting legacy. Versace was brought into the 21st century by fusing Gianni's extremely Italian glamour with Donatella's own rock'n'roll instincts. Versace is frequently in the public eye, not least because of its - and Donatella's - famous friends. Jon Bon Jovi, Courtney Love and Elizabeth Hurley are all loyal Versace fans. Madonna still posed as a sexy secretary in Versace's spring/summer 2005 ad campaign.
Donatella is also accountable for extending the brand's range, setting up both a cosmetics line and Palazzo Versace, the first six-star Versace hotel, which opened on the Gold Coast of Australia in 2000.