Gazzoni

Concetta. Italian dressmaker, born in Rome. In the late 1800s she had an intuition which, almost a century later, has given birth to shops and fashion trends: the idea of second-hand clothes. She would buy used garments from the great ladies of the Roman aristocracy, renovate them, and finally sell them to the ladies of the lower and middle bourgeoisie. These garments were only called second-hand: for the great ladies of Roman society, who at the time were crazy for the young D’Annunzio, for “il Duca minimo,” it would have been unthinkable to wear and show off an important dress more than once, perhaps twice, whether it were an evening gown or a fox hunting outfit. The dressmaker and her two nieces, Assunta and Giovanna, had a good business, but the change of wardrobe of their suppliers was faster than the speed with which they could sell to their middle-class ladies and the clothes would pile up. Concetta skimmed wardrobes from 1890 to 1946, filling five apartments with garments of the great fashion designers from Worth to Balenciaga. Some 60% of the Collection of original clothes, about 20,000 pieces, belonging to the theater costume designer Umberto Tirelli, including some items from the wardrobe of the Savoy queens — Margherita, Elena, and Maria José — came from that storehouse, in which Tirelli dug like an archaeologist of fashion.