Rosa Genoni: the first lady of Italian fashion

Since her training in the workshop, her passion has centered around the discovery of processes, of production methods, of the logic of what she herself defines as 'work environments'.

Her declared goal was not the nostalgic recovery of a glorious past, on the contrary, a profound desire to free Italian fashion from subjection to French fashion, to make it an independent fashion on a productive and cultural level.

We recall that between the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s a dress, a hat, a bag, a shoe made no sense if they weren't a derivation (or a slavish reproduction) of the idea of a Parisian couturier. A concept such as 'Italian fashion at the turn of the century sounded more or less like thinking of an 'Italian smartphone' today. Possible, certainly, however rather improbable.

But Rosa Genoni had a concrete project.

She was well acquainted with the French fashion of Nice and Paris, she had worked in Brussels, frequented London and Switzerland. She knew where to find raw materials, lace and embroidery. He knew and recruited an excellent workforce and understood the importance of training (for years he would direct the Tailoring section of the School of the Humanitarian Society of Milan), textbooks (he would complete two) and the contribution of the press ( will write for several fashion and political magazines).

She certainly wasn't interested in importing other people's models, on the contrary, she aimed to define original systems </ strong> that could define a new way of doing and thinking.

This is why it promoted the cooperative work of the Italian Women's Industries, in the hope that the Italian supply chain could free itself from the Parisian dernier cri and give life to Made in Italy, a term that in those years was beginning to be used to define a new way of seeing - and showing - Italian design.

Compared to industrial design, due to its still highly artisanal nature, local fashion was struggling to establish itself as an autonomous discipline with a recognizable identity. But these were the years of the great universal exhibitions and Rosa Genoni had the opportunity to show some of her creations at the International Exhibition of Sempione in 1906.

Her choice falls on models inspired by the Italian Renaissance artistic tradition, with a view to redemption </ strong> towards French fashion.

In those years she worked as a première </ em> at the well-known atelier H. Haardt & Sons of Milan, but her employers refuse to be involved in the operation for fear that French suppliers may feel offended. This is why Rosa Genoni finances herself and has her garments made at her home, signing her work with her name and surname.

Starting from the suggestions of past painting is nothing new, but in his case the step forward lies in the idea of starting from the national tradition to propose a new point of view and at the same time building the future of an entire sector.

He doesn't want to make a costume, he doesn't make pure and simple copies of what he finds in galleries and art galleries, on the contrary, he updates their shapes and proportions, aligns them with contemporary needs, puts comfort and performance at the center, demonstrating that the past is a reservoir, not a shortcut.

In the fashion field, it is no coincidence that this same method of recovery and relaunch was resumed in 1951 by Giovanni Battista Giorgini for the first fashion show at Villa Torrigiani in Florence, a prelude to the events in the Sala Bianca at Palazzo Pitti , for many the real beginning of Italian fashion.

It is worth emphasizing that this trend is still active and that in more recent times Dolce&Gabbana and Gucci (in the years of Alessandro Michele) have also established themselves in the imagination and in the markets based on a skilful balance of quotations and contemporary language.