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Display of fashion and costumes
The Luigi Chiarini Library contains a large section dedicated to Fashion and Costumes, which consists of over a thousand bibliographical documents. It was originally set up to provide educational material to meet the specific needs of students on the Costume and Scenery course at the National Cinema School. However, over the years, the section has also been increasingly used by costume designers already established in their professional field.
A case is that of Antonella Balsamo, assistant costume-designer to Luigi Bonanno, who made prolific use of the bibliographical and in the Section when researching and creating costumes for the film Baarìa by Giuseppe Tornatore (2009).
The Section contains many richly-illustrated books and a large collection of fashion magazines representing this wonderful form of illustration, many of which are very rare and date back to the mid-1800s. They carry titles such as: L’art et la mode. Journal de la vie mondaine; Corriere delle dame; Journal des demoiselles; La moda: giornale delle dame; Margherita: giornale delle signore italiane; La moda illustrata: giornale settimanale illustrato per le famiglie; Les modes: revue mensuelle illustrée des arts décoratifs appliqués à la femme; Le Moniteur de la mode.
The Section is also composed of bibliographical and documentary material from a variety of endowments, in particular the Adriana Berselli Collection, the Paolo Fama Collection, the Piero Tosi Collection and the Gino Carlo Sensani Collection. These make up a collection of rare volumes, related not just to theatre and film costumes and fashion over the centuries, but also to the history of art, to furniture, to the decorative and graphic arts, and to photography.
There follows a selection of images taken from fashion books and magazines, which have been restored and digitally retouched to enhance their attraction.