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.

Villa Necchi Campiglio
Via Mozart, 14
Milan 20122 Italia
Tel. +39 02 76340121
fainecchi@fondoambiente.it
www.fondoambiente.it

Opening hours
Wednesday – Sunday
From 10am to 6pm (last entrance at 5.15pm)

Tickets Villa Necchi + exhibition
Adults 11.00€
Young (4-14 years) 4.00€
FAI’s members 4.00€