Simonetta

Fashion house founded in 1946 at 5 Via Gregoriana in Rome by Simonetta Colonna Cesarò (1922). She married Gaio Visconti di Modrone by whom she had a daughter named Verde. Her first collection comprised 14 designs made from the only fabrics that were available immediately after the war: dishcloths, gardening aprons, butlers’ uniforms, laces, and ribbons. In 1947 Vogue America sent a journalist and photographer to Italy to do a feature on the most beautiful women in Rome. This was when Simonetta was discovered by Vogue which devoted 2 pages to her. The big American department stores Bergdorf Goodman and Marshall Fields were the first to buy her designs. Simonetta was the first haute couture Italian fashion house to be invited to New York by Bergdorf Goodman to take part in celebrating their fiftieth birthday in November 1951. Simonetta dressed Doris Duke, Clare Booth Luce, Norma Shearer, Dorothy McGuire, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Lauren Bacall, Dinah Shore, Merle Oberon, Chid Charisse, the Duchess of Windsor, Marlene Dietrich, and Jacqueline Kennedy. She also won a number of prizes, including the Davidson Parkson Award from R.H. Macy & Company, the Philadelphia Fashion Group Award, and Filene’s Dressing Talent Award. She was also a member of the New York Dress Institute’s Hall of Fame. Her second marriage was to Alberto Fabiani, also a couturier, and together they had a son named Bardo, who is now a famous and respected photographer. Fabiani and Simonetta kept their two brands quite separate, but decided — on the back of successes at Florence’s Italian haute couture seasons and on the advice of Farchild — to leave Rome in 1962 and move to Paris. They wanted to be the pioneers of an international concept of fashion, but were ahead of their time. Fabiani returned to Rome in 1964 and Simonetta remained in Paris until 1972 when she went to India to do philanthropic work. She now spends her time between Rome and Paris. Her designs are on display in the Galleria del Costume in the Pitti Palace in Florence, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Musée Galliera in Paris, the Mode Museum Munchen, the Kunstgewerbe Museum in Berlin, the Mode Museum in Cologne, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Brooklyn Museum of Fine Arts also in New York.