The crisp cotton shirt on the summer day, the hemmed trousers still revealing his knees. Everyday pictures, like the one of little Modestino, inspire Emanuela Scarpellini to follow the life of garments from pictures to wardrobes. In this book, the fashion business and fashioned bodies are in constant dialogue with one another, revealing two aims. The first is to look at how fashion has been dressing cultural bodies. For example, the buttoning side of a garment, right for him and left for her, manifests and reproduces gender differences. The second is to understand how such culture materializes through the know-how, economic structure, technological innovation, and political resonance of the fashion business. Chapter 3 is a prime example. A gaze that “recognizes the past” (p.58) illuminates how fascist imageries and uniforms built human bodies along with organizational ones that failed to create Italian fashion but succeeded in diversifying its production.

With this prelude, Scarpellini locates the start of Italian fashion in the national industrialization following World War II, when textile companies were the second occupational sector in Italy. At these early stages, the ready-to-wear industry developed under American influence, materialized in the US machinery imported in 1954 by Gruppo Finanziario Tessile. In this dialogue between business and bodies, it is not surprising that such machinery could not be put to use until a survey of Italian consumers had revealed which sizes these machinery had to produce, a fitting metaphor for an industry that had to adapt to a nation of emerging consumers. Thanks to the growing frontiers of production, a new generation of Italians dressed in blue jeans, rewarding those pioneering entrepreneurs that had invested in this garment under American-sounding brands such as Roy Rogers and Rifle. The growth of knitwear was even more remarkable, with Benetton testing the mass production of leisure clothing. Scarpellini exposes the bilateral relationship between Italy and America through knitwear, where the latter was both importing fine Italian designers while supplying them with textiles and fibers. Chapter 4 outlines an unforgettable example of the iconic designer Pucci providing both the Italian ambience and high-end design to promote DuPont’s synthetic fibers.

Scarpellini accounts for the rise of fashion mass consumption while making room for the trajectory of glamorous Italian high fashion shaped through key moments such as the unprecedented marketing stunt hosted in 1951 at Villa Torrigiani. A parade of Italian brands persuaded American buyers and journalists that Florence was the upcoming fashion hub. The author gracefully reminds us that the excellence of Italian-made clothing in Italy was founded in old-fashioned values that prevented the swift adoption of fine-tuned machinery and the loss of high-skilled workmanship. After this first wave, we have to wait until 1971 to witness the resurgence of Italian fashion, now headquartered in Milan. Scarpellini provides a significant contribution by relating this resurgence to five main conditions. The first was a shift in the market, with youth and women as developing segments as well as increases in available income. The second was the dynamism of the industrial sector, with fashion brands licensing designs to textile producers, subverting the power relationship exemplified by Pucci and DuPont. Licensing allowed young talents without production structures of their own to enter the market and to benefit from the vertical integration of existing fashion districts. The third condition was that new fashion designers branded a style rather than simply garments, accelerating the turnaround of fashion. The fourth was the strategic role of fashion media, in particular magazines. The final factor was the networks of services available to the ready-to-wear industry, especially in Milan, along with institutions able to promote it at the international level. The dazzling bodies of top models lip-synching to a George Michael song during Versace’s 1991 fashion show consecrated the Italian fashion business.

Having summarized the conditions enabling the success of Italian fashion, the author turns to its challenges; namely, globalization, outsourcing, financialization, fast fashion, and online retail. Chapter 6 explores the failed attempts to create luxury aggregate groups and examines the strong financial performance of smaller-sized businesses that had fewer fashion districts and faced fewer novel foreign markets. The trajectories and future success stories of Italian luxury online retail paired well with the new avenues of technological textiles and sportswear.

However, the role of Italy in sustainable fashion is uncertain, and the author’s discussion of inventive curators of second-hand stores is not convincing. With every Italian discarding16 kilograms of clothing every year, the dialogue between bodies and business has reached a delicate tipping point. The author wraps up this excellent book by pointing to the potential, yet uncertain, solutions of creative industries and technological research. We are left to wonder if this is the key to the third wave of Italian fashion.