Tizzoni

Giuseppina Tizzoni (1889-1979). Italian dressmaker. She was one of the protagonists of the first attempt in the 1930s to create an autonomous Italian fashion, freed from its subjugation to Parisian fashion. There was an attempt to impose such a fashion by decree of the Ente Nazionale della Moda, established by the Fascist regime on 31 October 1935, in the period of autarky that was a response to the sanctions imposed by the League of Nations for Italy’s aggression against Ethiopia. The Ente required dressmakers to produce Collections that were 50 percent “of Italian design and production,” monitored the Collections through sketches or photograph, and awarded a certificate, a label warranting “Italianicity of fabric and design.” Giuseppina Pagani, who had been a “piscinina” (the term used in Milan for beginning seamstresses) and then a junior seamstress at Fumach, set up shop in 1920 with the name of her husband, Tizzoni: an atelier in Milan’s Via della Spiga, at the corner with the Via Santo Spirito. Even before the autarky diktat, her Collections, like those of the best-known dressmakers in Milan and Rome, were mixed, original outfits and outfits of French fashion, purchased from pattern makers and revised in two or three versions or inspired by the creations of the big Parisian names, often just pirated and plagiarized. About her Maria Pezzi wrote: “A typical dressmaker, short, fat, countrified, with a consummate professional skill and an infallible eye.” During the war, the G. Tizzoni company evacuated and did its presentations in Como. At the end of 1944, while northern Italy was experiencing the nightmare of Nazi and Fascist occupation and civil war, the magazine Bellezza wrote: “Despite the heavy downpours of a rainy autumn day, the trains of the Ferrovie Nord bring from Milan a considerable number of spectators and the lake ferries bring members of the audience from distant banks.” Times were dark, but the ladies found “a memorable Tizzoni cape, black, for afternoon wear, trimmed with mink.” For several years, Giuseppina had been working in partnership with her daughter Carla Tizzoni (1915-1986) who helped her, while holding in reserve her degree in chemistry and pharmaceuticals. At the end of the war, they reopened together the shop in the Via della Spiga and, in 1959, the sartoria took the name of mother and daughter. In the 1960s, the Tizzonis employed about a hundred people and enjoyed notoriety at the peak of the high fashion heap, especially for their gala evening wear and wedding dresses. At the beginning of the 1970s, Carla designed a boutique line, a forerunner of prêt-à-porter.