The Fashion Liner

On 20 February 1956, eight very beautiful members of the Italian aristocracy disembarked from the liner the Cristoforo Colombo in New York to become models for Italian designers: Lorian Gaetani Lovatelli for Antonelli, Maria Teresa Siciliana di Rende for Schuberth, Consuelo Crespi for Fabiani, Diamante Capponi Cornaggia Medici for Veneziani, Mita Corti Colonna di Cesarò for Carosa, Kiki Brandolini d’Adda for Marucelli, Barbara Biscareti di Ruffia for Capucci, and Jacqueline Borgia for Simonetta. The idea came to Bista Giorgini, the promoter of the nascent Italian fashion industry and the organizer of the exhibitions at the Pitti Palace in Florence. He arranged a social whirl that involved Salvador Dalì, Marilyn Monroe, and Elsa Maxwell, the chronicler of the Hollywood’s gossip, plus a succession of TV shows: the Dave Garroway Show (audience of 23 millions), Home (11 millions), the Jack Parr Show (10 millions) and the Igor Cassini Show (14 millions). The advertising results were huge and the success overwhelming. The fashion manager of NBC regretted not having a “French version of Giorgini” for the programs dedicated to the Paris fashion exhibitions, and Diana Vreeland, the famous fashion editor of Vogue, wrote that she had been fascinated by the clothes and hats. The creations of Italian milliners were also appraised, though these were the last glory days of the hat as a necessary article of elegance. It was another victory for the Florentine strategist, who was well aware how the success of the fashion industry in Italy could also benefit from a degree of snobbery, something to which Americans were then particularly sensitive. Giorgini had already “used” duchesses and marquises for photo services, and inundated buyers with noble titles and diadems during the Florentine parties. When Betty Bullock, the NBC fashion editor, proposed a second TV tour across the USA, the result was another aristocratic cruise of Italian fashion.