Global Reach of Italian Fashion: Biki’s Cosmopolitan Legacy

Abstract

The celebration of Giovanni Battista Giorgini’s catwalk show in February 1951 aims to give the historical relevance of an event that wasn’t just an episode, but the result of long and established relations, especially with America. It revealed also an international attitude expressed by Italian fashion practitioners long before Italian fashion was officially recognised. For this reason, some narratives around the different processes of “emancipation from Paris” deserve to be scrutinized in more nuanced narratives. The archive of seamstress and then couturière Elvira Leonardi Bouyeure (1906-1999), aka Biki, offers one of those narratives.

Keywords

• archives
• biki
• italian fashion
• heritage
• sartorial