Cadette

Italian prêt-à-porter house. In business since 1966, it was very successful in the early 1980s, thanks to the work of Walter Albini and, later, Moschino, two personalities who, over time, stressed the two-part spirit of Cadette: first, a high level of fashion, realized through the reinterpretation of the past, remembered with longing, in a new key of simple timelessness; and second, an impulse toward the European avant-vanguard, open to the underground trend of the anti-fashion. The brand was created in Milan thanks to a meeting between Enzo Clocchiati (a native of Trieste, someone considered to be a bit mysterious, a student of economics, an executive in industry, a director of Olivetti in Vienna, a member of the staff of the prime minister in Rome) and Christine Tichmarsh, a model for Saint-Laurent, right at the moment when it was necessary to rescue the small business of a friend. The brand would have extraordinary success at Pitti (1967), in the wake of the sophisticated stylism of Albini. The following year, it left the runway of the Sala Bianca after a sudden decision to start high fashion prêt-à-porter in Milan, in order to present and sell its styles directly to Italians and foreigners — a style against luxury, faithful to itself, fashion as culture — in a showroom and in a boutique in the heart of Milan. Another boutique was opened in 1974 in Paris, on Rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré. On the death of Clocchiati, Cadette was taken over by Fantoni, who hired Moschino as designer. The Collection marking the début of that young talent on the runway of the Milan Fair of 1978 brought the griffe back to success during the hot stylism of the 1980s.