THE FALL COLLECTIONS / MILAN : Yes, It’s Scorcese and Armani, Together Again
Martin Scorcese collaborated with Giorgio Armani seven years ago on the documentary “Made in Milan,” which took a look inside Armani’s fashion empire. Now, Armani is funding and will be executive producer of another Scorcese documentary, this one a feature-length study of the relationship between cinema and Italian history and culture. “A Personal Journey Through Italian Cinema” will echo “Martin Scorcese’s Personal Journey Through American Movies,” which was made last year under the aegis of the British Film Institute and shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York earlier this month.
The director plans to narrate the film himself and include clips from 112 Italian films he considers seminal. He was here last week during the fall collections to begin securing the rights to works by such auteurs as Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica.
“Italian film gave so much to me that I want to keep it alive, especially in the minds of Americans,” Scorcese said at a Thursday news conference. “Making this film is a way to provide some important film history, and to understand how the cinema here emerged from the culture, the land and the people.”
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Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: Scorcese sat at the head of the celebrity table at a dinner party for 200 that Armani hosted in the private apartments above his Via Borgonuovo headquarters Friday evening. Michael Keaton, Ornella Muti, Fanny Ardant, Eric Clapton and Mira Sorvino stayed for the whole party, even though Sorvino planned to be up early the next morning to try on gowns for the March 25 Academy Awards. Uma Thurman, Patricia Duff and Ronald Perelman arrived in time only for a little gelato and espresso. Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn, who attended Armani’s show and a few others during fashion week, had already left for Paris, where Allen is performing with his jazz band.
Gianni Versace also hosted a party, thick with supermodels, after his show, and the Ferragamo family invited 70 buyers and journalists for a quiet dinner in their historic apartment near the city’s famous Duomo cathedral.
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Fashion Versus Romance: The following anecdote was passed among the Americans attending the fashion shows here like a note in junior high study hall, probably because it elicited giggles and so effectively countered the fatuous explanations of Prada’s phenomenal success.
An American publicist invited a New York editor with whom she was friendly to accompany her to the better boutiques in town, because she valued his opinion. How surprised was she at his comment when she emerged from the dressing room at Prada, the picture of understated retro chic? “No man’s going to want to get you out of that dress,” he said.
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Stores We Love: At the end of a cobblestoned street just barely wide enough for a single car, and across the Piazza del Carmine, so picturesque a square that it could have been styled by a Universal Studios set designer, lies Gioiello Fantasia d’Autore, an antique and vintage jewelry shop where proprietor Demalde Evlivio sells from his amazing collection of baubles. He buys his best Victorian pieces in England, finds postwar Trifari and Miram Haskell earrings in New York, and imports Czechoslovakian rhinestones to craft into reproductions of Cartier designs from the ‘20s and 30’s. The dazzling display is enough to make you forget that minimalists like Jil Sander frown on jewels cluttering up their simple clothes.
