Abstract
‘Made in Italy’ is a term associated with style, elegance and quality goods (Fortunati and Danese, 2005). The nationally-specific dimension of Italian fashion emerged in the 1950s as the industry sought to break away from its over-dependency on Parisian style and to establish itself as an important force on the international stage. While numerous texts exist on Italian fashion and style, relatively little scholarly attention has been devoted to assessing the place of costume in Italian cinema.1 This disparity in Italian film studies appears at odds, for example, with the now established body of work existing on fashion, style and costume in Hollywood movies including Stella Bruzzi’s Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies (1997), David Desser and Garth Jowett’s edited volume Hollywood Goes Shopping (2000), Sarah Street’s Costume and Cinema: Dress Codes in Popular Cinema (2001) and Tamar Jeffers McDonald’s Hollywood Catwalk: Exploring Costume and Transformation in American Film (2010), to name but some. These and other texts have clearly illustrated the significance of costume to the film text in terms of mise-en-scène, assessing character and plot development, identifying genre, denoting the class, gender and sexuality of the wearer, and its extra-textual meanings to audiences (Stacey, 1994).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Anon. (1950) L’Illustrazione Italiana, 21 May, 18–19.
Bianchi, P. (1950) ‘Gli spettacoli: Cinema – Cronaca di un amore, L’illustrazione Italiana’, 12 November, 31.
Bruzzi, S. (1997) Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies (London: Routledge).
Buckley, R. (2006) ‘Elsa Martinelli: Italy’s Audrey Hepburn’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 26:3, 327–40.
Buckley, R. (2008) ‘Glamour and the Female Film Stars of the 1950s’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 28:3, 267–89.
Buckley, R. (2009) ‘The Emergence of Film Fandom in Post-War Italy: Reading Claudia Cardinale’s Fan Mail’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 29:4, 523–59.
Calefato, P. (ed.) (1999) Moda e cinema: Macchine di senso / Scritture del corpo (Ancona-Milan: Costa & Nolan).
Fortunati, L. and Danese, E. (eds) (2005) Manuale di sociologia e cultura della moda. Volume III: Il Made in Italy (Rome: Meltemi Editori).
Gaines, J. (1990) ‘Costume and Narrative: How Dress Tells the Woman’s Story’, in J. Gaines and C. Herzog (eds), Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body (New York and London: Routledge).
Giacomini, S. (2004) Alla Scoperta del set: con venti personaggi il cinema lo fanno (Rome: Rai Eri).
Gnoli, S. (2002) Moda e cinema: La magia dell’abito sul grande schermo (Città di Castello: Edimond).
Gnoli, S. (2005) Un secolo di moda italiana, 1900–2000 (Rome: Meltemi).
Herzog, C. (1990) ‘Powder Puff Promotion: The Fashion Show-in-the-Film’, in J. Gaines and C. Herzog (eds), Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body (New York and London: Routledge).
Laurenzi, L. (2004) ‘Firmato Count Sarmi’, in T. Kezich and A. Levantasi (eds), Cronaca di un amore: un film di Michelangelo Antonioni – Quando un’opera prima è già un capolavoro (Turin: Lindau), 84–91.
Paulicelli, E. (2008) ‘Framing the Self, Staging Identity: Clothing and Italian Style in the Films of Michelangelo Antonioni (1950-1964)’, in E. Paulicelli and H. Clark (eds), The Fabric of Culture: Fashion, Identity and Globalisation (London: Routledge), 53–72.
Quiriglio, M. (1956) ‘Schubert veste le dive’, Cinema, 16 June, 286–8.
Stacey, J. (1994) Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (London: Routledge).
Street, S. (2001) Costume and Cinema: Dress Codes in Popular Film (London: Wallflower).
Studlar, G. (2000) ‘Chi-Chi Cinderella: Audrey Hepburn as Couture Model’, in D. Desser and G. S. Jowett (eds), Hollywood Goes Shopping (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press), 159–78.
Venuri, L. (1951) ‘Notes on Five Italian Films’, Hollywood Quarterly 5:4, 389–400.
Wilson, E. (2008) ‘Dressed to Kill: Notes on Dress and Costume in Crime Literature and Film’ in M. Uhlivova and E. Wilson (eds), If Looks Could Kill: Cinema’s Images of Fashion, Crime and Violence (Köln: Walther König), 14–19.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Réka Buckley
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Buckley, R. (2013). Dressing the Part: ‘Made in Italy’ Goes to the Movies with Lucia Bosé in Chronicle of a Love Affair. In: Bayman, L., Rigoletto, S. (eds) Popular Italian Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137305657_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137305657_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-33586-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-30565-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)