Nohe years of the Italian miracle, of the war now at shoulders, of rediscovered pleasures and exhibited well-being, ladies with high-sounding surnames or renowned elegance went months in advance to his Via Montenapoleone atelier. They received a decidedly special olfactory welcome, a sugary scent that came from the kitchens of the Cova pastry shop that still overlook that courtyard, and reached the stylist Jole Veneziani, the most admired fur queen on social occasionsinauguration of the Scala in primis.
An image from the exhibition “Jole Veneziani – High fashion and society” held at Villa Necchi in 2013. (Photo by Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images)
Jolanda Anna Maria Veneziani was born in Leporano, Taranto, in 1901, the last of ten children of two parents at the center of an intense cultural activity. Still a child she moved to Milan, and with her is her brother Carlo who will become an appreciated playwright: he is the author of Seaweedthe 1925 show in which a very young Paola Borboni bare-breasted recited the first nude scene of the Italian theater.
Jole herself is drawn to the stage, and performs acting and singing under the stage name Yvonne Randall, but the death of her father forces her to dust off her diploma in accounting and to become chief accountant of an important French company specializing in fur skins. An epiphany: in addition to knowing how to grab the finest materials, courageously dribbling the hardships imposed by the Second World War, she understands that she knows how to transform them into feminine, contemporary, desirable garments.
The fashion shows at Palazzo Pitti
She is an enthusiastic, passionate young woman, animated by an inexhaustible energy: «If I have to do something, I’ll do it right away. For me the word tomorrow does not exist». It is with this spirit that, after the war, she opened her atelier destined to become one of the most representative companies of that made in Italy fashion that debuts in Florence, in 1951, thanks to the brilliant intuition of Cavalier Giorgini to present the creations of some Italian stylists to American buyers, thus inaugurating the tradition of the Palazzo Pitti fashion shows.
His furs have bold cuts for the fifties and sixtiesand customers do everything to get their hands on on garments in astrakhan, chinchilla, leopard, sable by Veneziani. Among them stand out great movie stars like Marlene Dietrich or singing like Maria Callas (which, however, remains faithful to Biki for its fabric wardrobe) e the historic rival Renata Tebaldi which, however, according to the designer, was “too monumental”: she never spoke badly of anyone, not even her colleagues, but every now and then a joke slipped out and if some customers were particularly capricious, she warned the seamstresses «Be careful, it’s a carognino!».
Jole Veneziani drawing a sketch in his atelier at the end of the 1950s.
«I don’t care about fashion. When one of my clients arrives and asks me what is used, I reply piqued that she shouldn’t be interested and she just has to try to put on a dress that fits her personality» she stated to the press that she wanted to tell her phenomenon of she. She herself is a character capable of attracting attention: petite but showy, always dressed in pastel colors, decorated glasses which allowed her to transform the remedy for a strong myopia into a charming game, her chubby hands full of precious stones, scarlet mouth and nails, white hair.
The first of the Scala
Maria Pezzi, the unforgettable doyenne of fashion journalism, got to know the designer very well also in private life: «She was a very lively woman, she loved being in public, being noticed. She loved jewels, eccentric glasses. And she talked a lot, she always talked! On the contrary, he was very taciturn her husband Renzo Aragone, a former cavalry officer. He was a very tall, handsome man with elegant manners. A very united couple, they were separated only by his death in 1972. They loved to spend the holidays in their home in Portofino. And they had a lot of social life, Jole was always present at the openings of La Scala: she never missed one!»
It was Pezzi who nicknamed her “velvet paw”: “For the astonishment of seeing those hands”, the journalist recalled, “touching, caressing, brushing against the grain of stupendous skins, not only with incomparable competence but almost with sensual pleasure”.
A fashion show of Jole Veneziani’s creations in the Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti, in 1964.
And it is always Maria Pezzi, in 1963, who drags along at Pitti his friend Dino Buzzati who, stunned by so much beauty, will write on the Corriere della Sera: «Jole Veneziani unsheathed the flag, especially the one dear to women. Right from the start, the fateful banner appeared, the goal of a thousand dreams, the classic emblem of social victory, economic solidity, luxury, sweet life: his majesty the mink».
A pioneer, an innovator soul throbs in her: she dares to wear fur in bright colours, ventured already in 1967 the fur for men, work cords of fur to imitate the texture of tweed, experiment with synthetic fibers. He understands that in the United States the single garment has little success and creates the Veneziani Sport prêt-à-porter line, knitwear and clothes suitable for an ever more dynamic everyday life: success is immediate, American women go crazy for his white raincoat and make it the chief bestseller of the winter of 1951-1952. A commercial triumph also awarded by a cover of life, that never before had he dedicated one to a fashion creator.
A cutting-edge vision
Aware of how an all-Italian fashion system was establishing itself, he contributed to the foundation of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana and participated in fashion shows all over the world. To the Frankfurt Fur Show his is the most eagerly awaited fashion show, and it always ends with an ovation. They ask her to designing the interior of the new Giulietta Alfa Romeo. Thinking of a female audience, she renounced the dark colors used up to that moment and chose to cover it in pink, explaining mischievously: «The inside of a car is like a living room, anything can happen to it!».
Jole Veneziani on the catwalk accompanies the models who wear his creations to applause.
That his was an avant-garde vision has been confirmed by the numerous visits to the Milanese exhibition Jole Veneziani – High fashion and society which was dedicated to her in 2013 at Villa Necchi Campiglio. A task facilitated by the respect with which Federico Bano, head of the Bano Foundation and of the prestigious exhibition venue of Palazzo Zabarella in Padua, gave life to the Venetian Archive in 2007: 15,000 pieces including clothes, drawings, photographs, articles, films rigorously preserved and ready to be studied and admired. Bano had been a collaborator of Jole Veneziani since the second half of the 1970s, a personal friend of him, as well as managing director of the company after acquiring it in 1984, five years before the designer’s death in early 1989.
A cultural cenacle
The exhibition revived a glittering era: the years of the economic boom, of a country that re-emerges from a nightmare and rediscovers the desire to bet on the future, the desire to assert itself, but also to have fun, to indulge in the pleasures and light-heartedness that the war had violently obliterated. The Milanese bourgeoisie met in his atelier not only to enhance his image with millionaire estatesbut also to discuss and weave relationships: mindful of his family so lively on an intellectual level, Jole liked the atmosphere of the cultural cenacle and his would have hosted beautiful conversations with an ancient grace on opera and theatre, politics and literature. Communication fascinates her in all its forms, so much so that she personally contributes to the launch of the Rai broadcasts in Milan and signs, «with a light hand» as she likes to specify herself, fashion columns and interviews for Today, Marie-Claire and other magazines.
A new era
His professional adventure was marked by the events of history, and his decline also coincided with another crucial moment of his time. The riots of sixtyeight with which young people intended to oppose the crystallized and immobile universe of the “old-wisher” they found in the opening night on 7 December an excellent, unmissable opportunity for protestRotten tomatoes, eggs, shouts and whistles are thrown on the “della Jole” furs with which the ladies of the beau monde enter the Scala. While Jole Veneziani’s star was going out, a new era was born.
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