Dress up, not down
Practicality doesn’t come into it. If you want to channel Italian cinema’s glorious heyday, it’s all about glamour: a strapless black evening gown for a refreshing dip, why ever not? Anita Ekberg’s Trevi fountain frolic in La Dolce Vita – one of the most famous scenes in big screen history – encapsulates the decadence and freedom of 60s Rome, with designer Piero Gherardi creating both the film’s sets and its Oscar-winning costumes.
Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale are among Italian cinema’s other perennially well-dressed stars. “Style must be adapted to the woman and not vice versa. The same can be said of clothes,” said Loren.
But never try too hard
Marcello Mastrioanni, Italian cinema’s leading man, starred in over 120 films; but it was in two of director Federico Fellini’s biggest hits, 1960’s La Dolce Vita and 1963’s 8½ that Mastroianni’s sartorial superiority was cemented.
The narrow-legged, single-breasted suits worn with thin black tie and crisp white shirt looked effortlessly elegant, never overstyled. And, of course, he was rarely without his black sunglasses.
His look came to personify Italian masculine style, the very embodiment of sprezzatura: the studied carelessness that summed up the 60s Italian look, and made it into the Oxford English Dictionary.
Choose your words
A little bit of poetry, as 1994’s Il Postino showed to the world, can go a long way. Set in 1950 on the stunning island of Procida, in the gulf of Naples, the film tells the story of a young fisherman who finds new work as a postman, leading to an encounter with an exiled Chilean poet.
Besotted by the most beautiful girl on the island but too tongue-tied to declare himself, the postman takes lessons in poetry from the sympathetic wordsmith. His carefully practised poetic declarations of love – beautiful in Italian, of course – do the trick perfectly. He gets the girl.
Tragically, Massimo Troisi, the film’s lead actor, died of a heart attack 12 hours after filming finished, his own desire to prioritise his art having led him to postpone heart surgery.
Get the right wheels
From bicycles to supercars, Italian cinema has always showcased wheels. The essential evening promenade – the gelato-toting “passegiata” – may be a strictly pedestrian affair, but sometimes real Italian glamour calls for speed, or at least a classic Vespa.
In the 50s Hollywood descended on Rome’s Cinecitta studios. Roman Holiday, a huge hit in 1953, saw Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn playing a reporter and a princess, footloose and carefree as they whizz around the sights of the Italian capital. The film won Academy Awards for Hepburn and for its costumes, but the iconic scooter, launched in 1946 as affordable post-war transport for the masses, was undoubtedly one of its stars. The film is estimated to have prompted 100,000 Vespa sales.
Always make time for lunch
“Everything you see I owe to spaghetti,” declared Sophia Loren. The dish, she added, “can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner”. It may not sound like a recipe for chic but who would argue with one of Italian cinema’s ultimate style icons?
Director Luchino Visconti’s 1963 film The Leopard (il Gattopardo) shows how to throw a feast to impress. A dish of Sicilian maccherone – a very long way from the Anglo-American comfort version – serves to remind the appreciative guests of a prince fallen on hard times that he is a man of real distinction.
Be it at home with family, in a perfectly casual local trattoria or a quick stop in a city bar, food is life in Italy – so shades on please, and buon appetito.
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