Jole Veneziani is to fashion the start of Italian fashion. She played a decisive role in that first Florence presentation of 1951 and continued to play this role for many years
Beppe Modenese
If I think of Veneziani I have a picture of her that is not pompous, not rich and not frivolous: among the creators of those years she was undoubtedly the most avant-garde
Adriana Mulassano
Jole Veneziani was a pioneer and possibly unsurpassed
Maria Pezzi
MILAN - VILLA NECCHI CAMPIGLIO
FROM 10 OCTOBER TO 24 NOVEMBER 2013
JOLE VENEZIANI
ALTA MODA E SOCIETÀ A MILANO
A careful selection of materials from the Archivio Veneziani for this exhibition evokes the figure and career of the stylist who was one of the founders of Italian high fashion and a pioneer of Italian exports around the world.
The Milan appointment is the first in a project that, when the study of the archive’s patrimony has been completed, will take the form of a big travelling exhibition that will take the Veneziani Atelier to European capitals and the Far East.
From 10 October to 24 November 2013, Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan, the museum house owned by FAI - Fondo Ambiente Italiano, will host an exhibition evoking the history of Jole Veneziani (1901-1989), leader in the creation of Italian high fashion in the 1950s and ‘60s, pioneer in establishing Italian exports around the world and a high profile figure in the postwar rebirth of Milan.
The exhibition, curated by Fernando Mazzocca, promoted by the Fondazione Bano and FAI, will present period costumes, sketches, photos, films, documents and dressmaking objects chosen from the more than 15.000 pieces in the Archivio Veneziani, acquired in the early 1980s by the Padua foundation.
The installation design, by Corrado Anselmi, has been specially conceived to put Jole Veneziani’s creations into harmonious dialogue with the rich rooms of the Villa Necchi Campiglio, combining the history of fashion and custom with that of 20th-century Milan.
Milan was the city that welcomed a very young Veneziani when she moved from Taranto with all her rich and numerous family. And it was the Lombard capital where, after a brief experience as administrator of an important leather company, she developed her vocation for fashion and the instincts of a real entrepreneur.
The exhibition will open with a reconstruction of a typical day of an upper middle class Milanese woman, accompanied by mannequins wearing original garments created by Jole Veneziani and intent on setting the table for lunch, playing cards, reading a magazine etc.
Jole Veneziani realised that, even in the darkest years of the second world war, there was an evident desire for a rebirth and a wish to go back to the joys of life. In 1937 she opened a furrier’s workshop in via Nirone, to which she added a dressmaking department in 1943, and in 1946 the production of Haute Couture, after having definitively moved her premises to via Montenapoleone in 1944 in a Milan still being bombed and heaped with rubble.
In order to bring alive the spirit of those years, the atmosphere of the Atelier Veneziani in via Montenapoleone will be reconstructed, with dressmaking objects and original models accompanied by period photos of the rooms and of models in the fitting room.
Her creativity and professionalism led her to take part in the historical, and first, fashion parade at the Villa Torrigiani in Florence in 1951, which marked the birth of Italian high fashion. Organised by Giovanni Battista Giorgini, it was attended by the so-called ’13 apostles’, exponents of the most important fashion houses in Italy: from Rome, Carosa, or Princess Giovanna Caracciolo, Alberto Fabiani, Princess Simonetta Visconti, Emilio Schubert and Antonelli; from Milan, Jole Veneziani, Vanna, Noberasko and Germana Marucelli, Gallotti, or the Island Weaver, and Pucci; from Florence, the owner of the house Giorgini - who were able to break the French monopoly and open the way to Italian fashion exports.
Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, Veneziani’s luxury atelier at number 8 via Montenapoleone was not only the big creative workshop of a unique and universally praised style, but also a meeting point for Milan’s high society, thanks to famous clients, actresses and queens of the fashon world with whom she, with her inquisitive and lively temperament, also established friendships. Josephine Baker, Marlene Dietrich, Maria Callas, Elsa Martinelli, Lucia Bosè, Wally Toscanini, Anna Proclemer, Giovanna Ralli, Paola Pitagora, Anna Bonomi Bolchini, Ljuba Rizzoli, Emanuela Castelbarco, Sandra Milo, Franca Rame and Ornella Vanoni all passed through those gilded rooms resplendent with mirrors.
The exhibition continues with a section focusing on the figure of Jole Veneziani. Always accompanied by the original models of her creations, the visitor will be taken along the path of the stylist’s history, through an accurate selection of original sketches, testimonies of the people who met her, magazine covers that immortalised her and her dresses - that of Life on 14 April 1952 being memorable - and the recognition gained at a national and international level.
And again photos of the Veneziani family, of fashion parades held all over the world and of the famous models.
Some particularly significant moments in her career will also be highlighted, such as the consultancy for Alfa Romeo, for whom she studied the brightly coloured bodywork and interiors of cars on the model of American car manufacturers, or like the prestigious commission to adorn La Scala with flowers for the opening night on 7 December, when many of the participants were dressed in her magnificent gowns.
There will then also be cinema, theatre and television, with a special area set up to screen films of the period.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an album based on period photos, published by Marsilio editori.
The Veneziani Archive
This project aimed at conserving and safeguarding the artistic memory of the fashion creator Jole Veneziani took form in 2007. It involved the Fondazione Bano in an intense task of cataloguing and itemising the material from the famous stylist’s historic atelier, thanks to the cooperation of Padua University’s degree course in Fashion Culture and Technology and the IUAV of Venice. With more than 15.000 pieces including garments, fabrics, drawings, photos and accessories, the Archivio Veneziani, which came to Federico Bano, president of the foundation, in the early 1980s, is still the object of further study.
The aim is to conserve and safeguard the historic memory of this great dressmaker, who was one of the leaders of Italian fashion exports and an undisputed example of creativity, enthusiasm and female business activity, and of her atelier. This material, especially the nucleus of more than 2000 photos, many taken by renowned photographers, is also extraordinary documentation, because of the people, places and situations portrayed, of the history of Italy and Italian society between the second half of the 1930s and the 1960s.
The archive is intended to be not only this, but also an opportunity for growth, study and a ‘living’ testimony of a very important period in Italian Fashion and its creativity. It has for this reason joined the ‘Archivi della moda del Novecento’ project developed by ANAI and the Ministry of Culture.
Villa Necchi Campiglio
Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan (via Mozart 14) was built by Piero Portaluppi between 1932 and 1935 for the family nucleus of Angelo Campiglio, his wife Gigina Necchi and his sister-in-law Nedda. The Necchi Campiglio world was that of the Lombard, industrial, upper middle class, well-to-do but also hard workers and in step with the times. Portaluppi was succeeded by Tomaso Buzzi, who, in the postwar period, gave the rooms a more classical and traditional style. The villa also houses the Collezione Alighiero ed Emilietta de’ Micheli and, on the ground floor, the Collezione Claudia Gian Ferrari of 20th-century Italian works.
Villa Necchi Campiglio belongs to FAI - Fondo Ambiente Italiano and is part of the Milan Museum Houses circuit.
The exhibition will be made possible by the precious contribution from Eni, who as a main partner in the ‘Eventi nei Beni del FAI’ calendar, supports the foundation in this important project.
PIRELLI, which has for years supported the foundation, is also renewing its contribution, along with Cedral Tassoni, a historic Italian label that for the second year running has decided to link the tradition, history and natural quality of its product to FAI.
Milan, July 2013
JOLE VENEZIANI
Alta moda e società a Milano
Milan, Villa Necchi Campiglio (via Mozart 14)
10 October - 24 November 2013
Opening times: Wednesday – Sunday 10 am-6 pm (last entrance at 17.15)
Tickets Villa Necchi + exhibition: adults: € 11,00; young (4-14 years): € 4,00; FAI’s members : € 4,00
Information: Villa Necchi Campiglio tel. +39 02.76340121
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