Robiola, Elsa
Elsa Robiola (1907-1988): Milanese journalist.
Elsa Robiola is a key figure in the history of fashion journalism. Together with Gio Ponti, the great Italian architect who directed Domus. She founded Bellezza magazine in 1941 and ran it for over two decades, managing to keep it going even during the harshest years of the world war. Moreover, in the 1950s, to keep it in step with Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
After the war, the monthly magazine was edited by Aldo Palazzi, who published the weekly Tempo, for which the journalist was special fashion correspondent, and Marie Claire. Bellezza had taught Italian women during the war how to dress with what was left over and had encouraged tailors to be inventive. And above all, not to be content with proposing models, more or less camouflaged, copied from French fashion houses.
This past meant that the magazine and its editor sided entirely with Giovanni Battista Giorgini in his attempt to present American buyers with Made in Italy in fashion.
Later on, in February 12, 1951, the first Italian fashion show took place in Giorgini’s living room in Florence. Elsa Robiola was among the few Italian journalists present, along with Elisa Massai, correspondent of Women’s Wear Daily. Gemma Vitti of Corriere Lombardo, Vera Rossi of Novità, Misia Armani of I Tessili Nuovi and Sandra Bartolomei Corsi of Secolo XIX.
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