Piccinino

Bianca Maria (1924). Journalist, and female presenter for Italian State television fashion programmes from the 1950s until 1994. After graduating in Sociology, she started off in television as a newsreader and writer and presenter for science programmes. She was then given the job of fashion correspondent; she attended all the ready-to-wear runway shows in Florence, Rome, and Paris (at the time they could only broadcast images of the shows three months after the event so as not to reveal the clothes before their “release date”), and interviewed all the greatest Italian and foreign dressmakers. She was the first woman to present the afternoon news, and after the reforms, the News at 1.30pm. At the same time she was studying the fashion phenomenon in relation to the evolution of society and the great events that shape it (fashion and costume, fashion as communication, fashion as a symbol of power), and she gave seminars on the subject at the Universities of Madrid, Florence, and Bologna. On leaving Italian State television, she continued her teaching work at Rome’s fashion academies, while also giving Masters seminars to young designers. She has written two books, one of which (What shall I wear?, published by Gremese) was particularly successful.