Archival Materials and Comparative Approach

The study was carried out by means of the re-organization and cataloguing of the Schuberth Fund at Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione (CSAC) of the University of Parma.⁴ The fund consists of 2949 fashion sketches donated by Schuberth’s daughter, Gretel, in 1990. For each sketch I created a catalographic card through SAMIRA Software,⁵ which includes information about: the sketch (data, material and technique), reference designer, dress/model description, state of preservation, and analytical and legal data. Sketches have been collected by the author and, for each sketch I created a second Photographic Documentation card with the digitalized sketch (Fig. 1). The analysis of the National Chamber for Italian Fashion (CNMI) documents kept at Luigi Bocconi University (Milan) has made it possible to accurately reconstruct Schuberth’s role in the promotion and spread of Made in Italy fashion between the 1940s and the end of the 1960s (fashion shows, presentations, défilés). As evidence of Schuberth’s activity and life, I also considered 105 unpublished photographs and 58 negatives, belonging to the Publifoto Roma Archive collection, as well as a series of 8 negatives belonging to the Dessena Archive collection, both collected at CSAC. The inventory was compiled and sorted according to the subject of the photographs. Thanks to these photographs, it has been possible to reconstruct Schuberth’s relations with foreign markets (United States and Germany) (Fig. 2). Additionally, in the survey I have included audiovisual material preserved by the Archivio Storico Luce⁶ (Rome) related to Schuberth, produced by the newspapers La settimana Incom, Orizzonte Cinematografico, Mondo Libero, Caleidoscopio Ciac, L’Europeo Ciac, and Settimanale Ciac. The newsreels often showed the designer together with actresses and women of high society during social occasions (e.g. film festivals, parties, receptions), walking around the city or departing for a trip. Comparison between the CSAC’s photographic material with newsreels preserved by the Archivio Luce allowed for a detailed reconstruction of Schuberth’s work and activities within the Roman cinematographic scene during the “golden years” of his atelier (1945–1960). The analysis has demonstrated the centrality of Schuberth in Italian society, but it has also been crucial for a deeper understanding of the Italian cinema-television-fashion system of the post-war period.
On the other hand, RAI Teche’s materials made it possible to analyse — for the first time — Schuberth’s participation in popular national television programs, such as Carosello (1957), La via del successo (1958), and Il Musichiere (1959). This corpus of audiovisual material made it possible to precisely date sketches from the CSAC’s Schuberth Fund and a part of the atelier’s collections. The analysis also highlighted the importance of cinema and television in the promotion of Made in Italy fashion. If the relationship between television and Italian fashion, with a few exceptions,⁷ has not yet received worthy consideration in fashion studies, it should be pointed out that this shortcoming must also be remedied in the field of television studies.

Trade Press and Women’s Publishing

An analysis of Italian press has been indispensable for research purposes. After World War II the Italian publishing industry became a laboratory for cultural experimentation, able to establish a dialogue between distant fields.⁸ While Schuberth was able to make the most of the cinema-fashion alliance, a key element of his communicative mechanism was publishing, an important attraction engine for female audiences. Popular journals as well as high fashion magazines⁹ dedicated many of their pages to the promotion of Made in Italy fashion and did so thanks to collaborations with movie stars (Fig. 3). The research focuses on the two Italian fashion magazines — Bellezza and Novità. The choice was dictated both by the very high quality of these periodicals (designed for the upper middle class) and by their historical significance, with Bellezza being the official mouthpiece of Italian fashion, and Novità an eye for modern national and international trends. Popular weekly magazines were also included in the analysis, such as Grazia, Annabella, Oggi, and Radiocorriere (RAI’s house organ). Indeed, women’s weeklies have made it possible to reconstruct the links between fashion, film and television. The connection arises above all in photo shoots and articles devoted to celebrities and film stars. Given the word limit of this essay, only a few examples will be considered and described.

The Designer-Star Goes to Cinema and TV

In the middle of the 1950s, the phenomenon of “Hollywood on the Tiber” was born: an economic, commercial, productive, and institutional presence of the major American studios in the context of Italian cinema. As underlined by Paulicelli

Hollywood on the Tiber was a phenomenon of the 1950s and 1960s, during Italy’s reconstruction and economic boom, which was fuelled by the marriage of fashion and film. Together, the two industries helped to construct an attractive idea of Italy that turned a nation in ruins at the end of World War II into one of the world’s most desirable tourist destinations.¹⁰

The reopening of Cinecittà enabled Rome to become the central hub of epic film productions within a few years, of which the nascent international fashion industry took full advantage. Hollywood stars and new Italian divas entered the most famous ateliers, such as Sorelle Fontana (its regular clients included Ava Gardner, Linda Christian, Barbara Stanwyck, Deborah Kerr, Audrey Hepburn and Liz Taylor), Gattinoni (frequented by Lucia Bosè, Anna Magnani, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner and Audrey Hepburn) and that of Emilio Schuberth, already frequented by exponents of Rome’s aristocracy for some time.¹¹ The actresses became loyal clients of the Italian designers, carrying out the important role of spreading international awareness of their product. Indeed, collaborations between cinema and fashion were gradually becoming more and more widespread.

Schuberth opened his atelier in Rome in 1938 and became a protagonist of the social scene in very few years. He was the first fashion designer, together with the Fontana sisters, to understand the enormous communicative importance of the world of cinema, especially for promotional purposes. It was important for an atelier to dress the nobility, but they certainly spent less than the Hollywood stars and were very tied to the Parisian tradition. American actresses, on the other hand, saw Cinecittà as the most glamorous place at that time.¹² Long before Sorelle Fontana,¹³ Schuberth opened his altelier to films, including Margherita fra i tre (Ivo Perilli, 1942), Femmina incatenata (Giuseppe Di Martino, 1949) and Il principe fusto (Maurizio Arena, 1960), and to newsreels. Among them, La pagina della donna una lezione di buon gusto, produced by La settimana Incom, shows the idea and self-image that Schuberth, wants to propose to the public. The film does not advertise the designer’s models, but tells a story, in which the “magician” of Italian fashion combines clothes with headgear by arranging the look of some models. The film shows the qualities of Schuberth, the “arbiter of elegance”: the tailor is a star, playing himself. If we consider this film by applying the difference between actor and star,¹⁴ we could say that Schuberth was a star, in the sense of a “modern myth”, of his time. The tailor built his star image by drawing on cinema and film stardom. According to Morin, the star, at least until the end of the 1950s, “is made from a substance compounded of life and dream … incarnates herself in the archetypes of the universe of fiction … is a syncretic personality in which the real person cannot be distinguished from the person fabricated”.¹⁵ For Schuberth the coincidence between being and appearing is not only fundamental in order to acquire and maintain recognizability among the public, but leads to the increasingly difficult distinction between private life and life on screen. Schuberth’s own clothing is fundamental: for him, clothing is not merely an extension of the body but a form of being, a manifestation, a certificate of identity. Schuberth’s identity is anything but concealed, especially the one shown in public and ‘embraced’ by the media of the time:

Leggero, veloce, incredibile — blusa aperta su cui spiccano gioielli che sono grandi decorazioni francesi, calzoni scuri, scarpa piatta, da ginnasta — il sarto di moda trascorre con un passo estremamente elastico — pieghevole il collo, sottile la vita, arpeggiato il gesto — da uno de’ suoi saloni all’altro dando l’impressione d’una genialità che, organizzandosi non ha perduto nulla della sua leggerezza.¹⁶

Among the three films mentioned above, the most significant for the purposes of our analysis is Femmina incatenata, a sentimental melodrama that follows the tragic events of the aspiring sculptor Idla (Lori Randi) and her teacher Manuel (Manuel Roero). In the film, a long sequence shows us not only the interior of the Roman atelier, where Idla works, but also Schuberth himself (decorated as always with brooches and precious jewels). The most significant moment is that of the show inside the atelier, where the story is interrupted to give space to fashion. Schuberth’s actual models followed one after the other, demonstrating the collection to some ladies: it starts with four elegant but practical morning suits, then moves on to afternoon dresses and ends with evening dresses (which have sonorous Schubertian names, such as Summer dream and Enchantment). The designer is omnipresent (Fig. 4): when he does not appear playing himself, we can see his portrait on the wall,¹⁷ the last image presented by the director before the fade-out at the end of the sequence. Everything in the atelier is Schuberth. Certainly not within the narrative discourse, but in what concerns the relationship between the two media, fashion and cinema. Thanks to the film, the fame of Schuberth’s atelier extended to a much wider audience, that of the cinema and the numerous magazines dedicated to films and worldliness which, in those years, underwent a period of unprecedented expansion.

Yet, Emilio Schuberth was also the first fashion designer to understand the mass media role of television¹⁸ (Fig. 5). Toward the end of the 1950s, entering people’s homes from the very birth of television, he participated as guest in La via del successo, a program hosted by Walter Chiari,¹⁹ in which Schuberth showcased his 1958/59 dress collection. But it was the following year, in 1959, that Schuberth fully exploited the potential of television with his participation in Il Musichiere, one of the most popular programs in the history of Italian television. Built on the model of NBC’s Name that Tune game show, Il Musichiere was a musical game (hosted by Mario Riva) in which two competitors competed to guess a song after Gorni Kramer’s orchestra played just a few notes. However, the public’s most anticipated segment was “Nintepopodimenoché!”, in which the host introduced the special guest of the episode and invited him or her to sing. Among these guests, there were some of the most famous Italian actors of the time, such as Totò, Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni, as well as international stars such as Gary Cooper, Anita Ekberg and Jayne Mansfield.²⁰ On Il Musichiere,²¹ Mario Riva introduced the designer as “the tailor to queens and stars”, and after entering the stage with his usual glamorous style, Schuberth was interviewed about his work. Riva asked his guest if he preferred to dress Hollywood stars or aristocrats, as well as who was the most demanding between the two. Totally at ease in front of the cameras, Schuberth answered the questions by smiling, gesticulating and showing off his large shining ring, dazzling the viewers. On this occasion, he had the opportunity to reveal the secrets and the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of his work to the audience in the room and to the Italians watching at home. Thus, thousands of Italian women who would never enter his very famous atelier were also able to daydream, at least for one evening, and imagine a world that was inaccessible to them. Schuberth openly divulged the habits of Martine Carol, who spent entire days, and sometimes nights, in the atelier, of Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, and of the husbands of the divas who “were interested in the models”. After this introduction, the host passed the microphone to Schuberth, who dedicated his song to “all the women in Italy and the world”. When the notes of the chorus played, model-choristers entered the scene, parading around the tailor like mannequins dressed in sparkling and highly elegant dresses. At the end of the number, the designer handed out sketches of a dress that could be made at home to members of the audience. Totally aware of the potential of the medium, he chose simplicity and modesty to attract the audience watching at home.

“The Couturier is a Builder, Not a Decorator”

As a key innovator in Italian fashion, particularly in the 1950’s, Schuberth has been the preferred couturier of several movie stars who frequented his atelier requesting not only dresses for special occasions (such as film festivals and galas), but also for films. Glossy fashion magazines as well as popular journals are yet another example of Schuberth’s self-promotion, similar to that used by models and movie stars, such as Alida Valli and Valentina Cortese, who left for Hollywood in 1948 with a set of Schubertian dresses,²² Anna Magnani, Milly Vitale (Fig. 6), and Martine Carol (Fig. 7). However, Schuberth’s brand is most synonymous with Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.

As shown in several scholarly works, Schuberth was the “creator” of the glamourous looks of Loren and Lollobrigida as they were becoming famous actresses. The journalist Michele Quiriglio, writing in the periodical Cinema, confirms Schuberth’s role as follows: “When Lollobrigida visited Schuberth for the first time, she was not yet la Lollo. She had beautiful eyes and a sweet smile, she was a typical Italian beauty, but she didn’t know what her look should be nor how she should dress herself”.²³ Schuberth was responsible for urging Lollobrigida to cut her hair, thus ultimately refining her persona. The new “Lollo haircut” required a new overall look, which the designer accomplished by altering the construction of her dresses. A similar strategy was used to re-orient Loren’s image as a star. In every social occasion, both Lollobrigida and Loren wore Schuberth; his designs were capable of enhancing their Mediterranean beauty, and the two divas were keen on associating themselves to his haute couture atelier (Fig. 8). In the autumn of 1954, Loren and Lollobrigida flew to London to represent Italy before Queen Elizabeth: for this important occasion, Schuberth created a pale pink organza dress with a floral embroidered bodice and shell skirt for Loren, while Lollobrigida donned a white silk and chiffon dress with black velvet ribbons. This event reverberated in Italian women’s magazines which, in some cases, lingered on the meticulous description of every detail.

I want to draw attention here to one last and interesting example. The article Ten models for Sophia Loren describes a number of dresses that Schuberth dresses made for the star. An analysis of the graphic and stylistic choices made by the journal offers key insights on the mechanism of double promotion. Following the same order used in fashion shows, Grazia published ten pieces designed by Schuberth for Loren (Fig. 9). All of these dresses are basic designed, simple, discrete (tailleur and everyday suits), especially if we compare these models with the evening ones, but the objective of the article is the following: to choose clothes designed by the tailor ‘of queens and divas’, but used by them in everyday life, in this way establishing a mechanism of identification with an audience familiar with the actress and also interested in fashion trends. The article gives the reader a double advantage. Firstly, she gets a scoop on the latest trends of a major Italian film star and, on the other hand, she can learn to dress like her. In turn, the diva legitimizes the work of the atelier which has contributed to her glamourization; indeed, the text emphasizes that the pieces “were all created by Schuberth, who was also the tailor of Gina Lollobrigida”.²⁴

During the 1950s, Schuberth also started to design costumes for films. Retracing the steps of this secondary but important activity of the atelier allows us to shed light on almost completely unexplored aspects of its output, not only in terms of a designers’ central role in enhancing the divine image of an actress, but also to understand to what extent, through the work of an ‘exceptional costume designer’, the cinema welcomes, filters and conveys international fashion trends. Schuberth ‘lent himself’ to the cinema, but cannot be considered as a professional film costume designer: he did not adapt his costumes to the story being told, shaping the character’s exterior on screen. Instead, he enhanced the body and image of the diva, the film’s protagonist. Indeed, Schuberth had a key role in the glamourisation process of the stars also on set: pieces created for films always drew inspiration from the atelier’s collections and were fashioned according to contemporary trends, even in historical films. There was strong system of commissioning in the film industry, with the most famous actresses demanding clothes made by their own couturier. This assumption is supported by the analysis of several films (not only Italian but also Hollywood productions) starring Lollobrigida, Loren, Bette Davis, Brigitte Bardot and Abbe Lane. We can see, for example, how a contemporary gold dress, advertised on fashion magazines by Loren and Martine Carol, is adjusted for Lollobrigida in King Vidor’s Solomon and Sheba (1959), as well for Loren in Melville Shavelson’s Houseboat (1958) (Fig. 10). Whereas the vast majority of fashion designers did not showcase their creations through the film industry until the establishment of ready-to-wear, Schuberth was far ahead of the times, promoting his atelier through the world of cinema.