TOGiusi Ferré was 76, a Milanese DOC, teacher of Italian fashion and costume and famous journalist. Author of the lucky columns Banana peel And Touch of classfor years he has told the looks of the stars with wisdom and irony, amidst style drops and sparks of elegance.
(Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images)
Her iconic fiery red hair said a lot about her, diehard December 16 Sagittarius, who loved to wear black, her favorite color.
Quirino Conti, author of the afterword of his best-known book “Banana Peel”, had described “the moral sense, as it scrutinized facts, things and people”.
The memory of the editorial staff of iO Donna
“He lived and told the golden years of Italian fashion from the inside”
It is not easy to say goodbye to Giusi Ferré. She was not only one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest Italian fashion journalist. She was a‘observer of fashion and society that she then knew how to describe with irony and genius. Only Giusi Ferré could, in fact, invent a column that became historic in the Io Donna magazine as “Banana Peel”, dedicated to the style slips of celebrities.
Invented in an era where celebrities were icons to be admired and to whom everything was forgiven, she was able to kindly desecrate themshowing that the elegance and good taste have nothing to do with the brands you wear. And it was no coincidence that Banana Peel had become a book and a TV program. She left us at the age of 76, but until the last day she wrote her inimitable style columns and her costume articles.
He did not like social media, he did not pursue their cheap popularity and, to the last, he compiled his articles using the typewriter. But don’t think it was snobbish: Ferré had one huge culture and a pop spirit. Curious, she skipped elegantly from reviews of fashion shows to cursives on the world of TV. She quoted Flaiano but she was amused by the idea of interviewing Elettra Lamborghini. You have lived and told the golden years of Italian fashion from the inside. You have grasped and told the revolution of women’s style launched by Giorgio Armani better and before others. Lightness was his motto. But in the meaning that Italo Calvino gave it: “lightness is not superficiality, but gliding over things from above, without boulders on the heart”. (Elisa Messina)
The first time near her: awe
The first time I spoke to Giusi Ferrè was sixteen years ago, in September 2006. I met her at one of Gianfranco Ferrè’s last fashion shows, before her death the following year in June 2007. At the time I wasn’t working yet. to iO Donna, I wasn’t even a novice, but when I approached her I felt that awe that you feel when you have an iconic character in front of you.
With her flaming red hair, Giusi was sitting on one of the armchairs of the designer’s art nouveau building in via Pontaccio, at the time his headquarters.
She had a surname in common with the designer, of course. And a never better defined kinship. So I asked him. She looked at me, peering at me, and then she burst into a loud laugh along with another colleague. Yes, dear, we are brother and sister ”, she replied. She obviously enjoyed making fun of me. She who knows how many times they had asked him.
Yet I had found it amusing all the same because, after all, I believe that Giusi Ferrè was just like his lyrics: ironic, biting, irreverent, caustic but cheerful. She wasn’t wearing a mask. It was like she was she. Then when I was hired at iO Donna I naively tried to follow the style, but obviously I immediately went astray. And the editor-in-chief pointed this out to me immediately: read the captions of the Tocco di Classe and the Peels carefully; Giusi is never offensive, she is never cruel, but she manages to be shrewd with an adjective, he explained to me.
Who knows if where he is now, perhaps in the Olympus of the gods, he has already struck everyone with one of his lightning jokes. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Hi Giusi. (Michaela K. Bellisario)
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