Luisa Beccaria

Luisa Beccaria had always dreamt that fashion was one way to express her fantasies and her ideal of beauty. This passion was to reveal itself as a language and the best way for her to communicate her personality. Luisa was very young when she designed her first clothes. She was only twenty years old when she was offered the opportunity to exhibit and sell her designs in Piero Fornasetti's art gallery in Milan. Everything was snapped up in three days. She sold her dresses to an extremely heterogenous public and realised that her pastime had become, without realising, a job.

Luisa continued organizing other similar exhibitions and soon newspapers started taking an interest in her designs. She received her first orders from shops and that soon led to her first fashion show in Milan. At the time everybody was talking about Luisa Beccaria's designs.

In 1983, as she was expecting her first child, Luisa was preparing for the opening of her first boutique. She was picking up the fruits of her first successes. "Since then", Luisa says, "I have never stopped; the collections became regular". In 1984, she inaugurated the first boutique in Via Madonnina where one of her first fashion shows had been held. Soon she had another boutique for children's clothes and an atelier where she experimented all her ideas and was able to work on special dresses, made to measure.

In 1989 Luisa Beccaria was asked to participate in Italy's high fashion shows. "Couture is a reality that is very familiar to me," says Luisa, "it has allowed me to develop my passion for researching refiness and exclusivity, as well as my ideal of beauty and harmony." Luisa considers that Couture shows are a great luxury and a great liberty because they "allow you to realize what you feel deep inside, to create fabrics and prints, to elaborate color and they let your imagination run free".

Luisa Beccaria describes herself as having a strong but delicate personality. She feels close to artists such as Fragonard, Winterhalter, Alma Tadema and the Preraphelites. She loves iridescent and undefined colors, draped fabrics, a certain type of atmosphere and the harmony of nature. In her creations she searches for the origins in order to project the future, mixing past and present.

She has always loved Paris which has offered her some strong emotions and fills her with enthusiasm each time she goes there. She first showed in Paris in 1993 at the invitation of the Italian Institute of Culture. Since then she presents her collections regularly in the French capital but "it is always like the first time: the desire and the fear".

Renato Balestra

Renato Balestra's strong artistic inclination surfaced at a very young age. He took painting lessons and studied music encouraged by a sophisticated family of architects and engineers. Following in the family footsteps, Renato was to major in engineering until a bet between friends launched him into the world of fashion; behind his back his friends sent one of his dress designs to Milan: he immediately received an invitation to collaborate to a high couture collection to be presented at the legendary Florentine fashion shows.

Renato Balestra has expressed his talent drawing and design doing set designs for the theatre and cinema; but it was the world of fashion that rewarded him with the greatest successes and thus set him on his definitive career.

Today Balestra's atelier designs and has its trademark on some thirty different collections that go from "Ready to Wear" to a complete high fashion for men collection, accessories, furniture and household objects. He also makes perfume both for men and women as well as cosmetics and make-up.

Renato Balestra has designed clothes for Farah Diba, for the Queen of Thailand, for the first ladies of the Philippines and Egypt, for famous names of the international jet set and for beauties like Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Lauren Hutton, Natalie Wood, Edwige Fenech and many more.

But it isn't only t world of fashion that interests Renato Balestra: he is an eclectic man - he takes part in television programmes and has recently written a book entitled "A la recherche du style perdu". A man who loves open air life, sports and gardening, he escapes to his country house outside Rome whenever he can. He enjoys travelling which - he says - is the greatest school of life. He owes it to himself - he adds - to get to know different countries, to come into contact with diverse peoples and cultures, to try to understand their lifestyles, their customs, their philosophy and their religion.

Renato Balestra's life is a balancing act between a lively social life in the international jet set and the simplicity of an unspoilt island in the Far East. But the propelling force in his life is his volcanic creativity which he expresses every day in his work - which is also his passion.

Giorgio Armani

Giorgio Armani (born in Piacenza, Italy, July 11, 1934) brought a new concept to women's dressing, and has had the most influence on fashion since Christian Dior's "New Look" and Mary Quant's mini skirt. As more and more women established themselves in the work force on an executive level they were looking for an alternive kind of power dressing to the drab dark-grey-suit-blouse-with-floppy-tie look.

Armani, who used menswear fabrics in highly refined and sophisticated versions for his de-structured suits for women, was warmly embraced by legions of women who guaranteed his success. Today the head of a multi-million dollar business, Armani built his career step by careful step. A serious northerner from Piacenza, Armani's classic good looks and marble-blue eyes no doubt helped along the way, but hard work and tenacity brought him to his current position.

He began studies as a doctor, following the Italian maxim ofa doctor and a lawyer in every family but soon found out that medicine was not for him. After doing his obligatory military service in 1957 he went to work for Italy's leading department store La Rinascente, and found himself dressing windows and helping buyers. In 1964 Armani went to work for Nino Cerrutti, an important Italian textile manufacturer who also produced lines of clothing for men and women. Armani designed the Hitman line for men.

Working with a wide array of the finest textiles and learning the techniques of the business was fundamental for Armani's future success, as one distinguishing feature of his lines for men and women in the meticulous selection of fabrics used. In 1970 Armani, encouraged by the enthusiasm of close friend Sergio Galeotti, set up a free-lance design studio. He was very successful, designing for such manufacturers as Boulevard, Montedoro, Sicons, and Gibo. In 1974 the first Giorgio Armani menswear collection was presented, and by 1975 he had put aside enough money to launch, in partnership with Galleotti, the first women's line.

His jackets were an instant hit, and although some skeptics wondered what he would do for an encore, he steadily developed the Armani Look to include a highly original concept of evening dressing, which can be admired on television every year during the Academy Awards where many of the biggest stars, male and female, dress Armani, including Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer. Armani is very sensitive to the desires of his clients, and has said that although there are times when he would like to exercise his fantasy, he finds in the end that he sticks with the "Armani style". Although a workaholic, Armani does like to relax once in a while, in one of his homes in Broni, San Tropez, Forte dei Marmi, and Pantelleria.

Italian Fashion Houses

Italian fashion houses have been the center of the fashion life for the last sixty years and many new Italian fashion brands are raising to gain the runway scene. Italy is the homeland of many high-end fashion brands and famous fashion designers, which made this country popular all over the world not only for its pizza and spaghetti. Italian people have always been reputed to have an exquisite taste not only in food but in fashion too.

Italian fashion's roots are very ancient, they might be detected in the 11th century, when aristocratic and noble families showed off very sophisticated and rich dresses signed by Italian manufacturers, already appreciated from a worldwide public. We can see an evident trace of Italian fashion even in arts: paintings and portraits represent often people wearing Italian unique designs.