This article adopts a double perspective to investigate Italian cinema and fashion, two industries and symbolic universes that strongly contributed to the construction of a new image of the nation and of Italians both at home and abroad, but especially in the US, during the period of economic and cultural revolution commonly known as the "boom" or the "economic miracle." The double perspective on fashion and cinema is further articulated in the geographical and transatlantic exchanges that in the immediate postwar period helped define the political, economic, and cultural course Italy would take after the fall of Fascism and at the beginning of the Cold War. Over the past two decades, an academic approach to fashion (a field that had suffered from a lack of consideration) and more recently to the relationships between fashion, film, and costume (a field that has been further developed in fashion studies and in film and media studies) has been gradually defined in Italy and abroad.In this article, I offer an initial analysis of fashion films from La Settimana INCOM (The weekly INCOM; INCOM is an acronym for Industria Cortometraggi) newsreels.1 This represents a continuation of my previous research into LUCE (L'Unione Cinematografica Educativa) materials on fashion and its coverage of various fashion shows that were organized in Italy during Fascism and filmed for the first time, beginning in 1928 (Paulicelli 2004, 2016, 2020a, 2020b, 2022, 2024), the first cinematic documentation of fashion shows organized to publicize Italian products, launch them, and, as per a slogan of the time, create "an Italian fashion."2 In this article, then, I continue my analysis of film and fashion, this time in the postwar period, by addressing a series of questions about La Settimana INCOM's relationship to fashion: How is Italian fashion filmed and represented in the Settimana INCOM newsreels? What relationship was being established between fashion and cinema in the postwar period in both fictional cinema as well as in the newsreels produced by INCOM? How are we to interpret these short newsreels in which fashion is narrated and showcased with regard to both the historical context of transatlantic exchange and the broader context of cinema history as media archaeology? Can we trace relationships between what in the digital age have been called "fashion films" (especially from 2000 onward) and the shorts made in Italy by LUCE and then by INCOM? These are some of the questions that form the basis of a larger project.3Historian Fiamma Lussana's Italia in bianco e nero (2022) is the only monograph thus far published on INCOM. It follows a collection of essays also on INCOM edited by film scholar Augusto Sainati (2001b). But there are no monographic or critical studies that directly examine the fashion films produced by INCOM, the object of my research. These texts are important in order to better historicize and interpret both the role of fashion in INCOM's overall production in the postwar period and the role of the US, which already by the 1930s had been configured as a point of reference for Italy.4 INCOM was founded in 1939 on the initiative of Luigi Freddi, the founder of Cinecittà, following a sojourn he made to the US. From its inception, INCOM set out to "Assumere il know-how americano sulle modern tecniche del cinegiornalismo" (take on American know-how on modern techniques of cinejournalism) (Lussana 2022, 33). Lussana also notes, referring to the postwar period and the "restyling" of INCOM that "Il primo obiettivo della 'Settimana INCOM', che sarà il cinegiornale della rinascita, è stabilire subito una cesura fra un passato da cancellare o almeno da esorcizzare, pieno di grigio conformismo e libertà suffocate, e un presente che marcia a grandi passi verso il futuro di una ricostruzione morale e materiale" (the first objective of the Weekly INCOM, which will be the newsreel of rebirth, is to establish at once a caesura between a past to be erased or at least exorcised, full of gray conformism and stifled freedom, and a present marching with great strides toward the future of a moral and material reconstruction) (11).5 The caesura with the past was determined by the political climate of the newly established republic that was to enshrine and bring together in the process of reconstruction concrete forms of moral rehabilitation.Fashion—through its many craftspeople, from textile manufacturers to tailors and designers and those working in media communication—told the Italian story and actively formed and accompanied the process of Italy's modernization, mending a moral, cultural, and material fabric.6 Fashion played a key role in the representation of modernity and the desire to shed a rather uncomfortable recent past. The dynamics of dressing and undressing appeared in such INCOM newsreels as "Moda quest'anno al mare" (Settimana INCOM 1946b; This year's fashion at the beach) from July 13, 1946, and "Il nuovo costume da bagno: il bikini" (Settimana INCOM 1948a; The new bathing suit: The bikini) from July 22, 1948. In these, we hear the voice of Guido Notari, but we also see his face in the 1946 film. In fact, he introduces himself to the viewing public and underlines his presence "behind the screen." It is worth recalling that Notari was an actor who had worked in cinema since 1939 as a dubber and had been the voice of the Giornale Radio of the Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche (EIAR). His voice was certainly better known than his face. Notari, then, was not only the official voice of Fascist newsreels, he was also the voice of the New Italy of the postwar years.7 In the July 13, 1946, newsreel, INCOM's earliest fashion film brings to the screen a woman at the beach wearing a two-piece beach costume (which in the July 22, 1948, newsreel becomes a bikini), removing her miniskirt cover-up to reveal a suit better adapted to swimming, all the while exhibiting her femininity. The reel is narrated by Notari's persuasive voice, which guides the female and male audience to dive into the holiday atmosphere, to recapture the joy of living, and to leave behind the ugliness of war and starvation. Short films were meant, like cinema, to entertain and let their audiences dream. Let us not forget that Italy in the postwar boom period became a favorite vacation destination for the jet set, especially Americans. At the same time, the media and cinema began to promote a distinct Italian style: from the glamour of such tailors as Sorelle Fontana to the sophisticated and elegant sportswear of Emilio Pucci and others, this style offered a new model of elegance that had much to do with sprezzatura, the theory of art concealing art by way of a natural chic that afforded both comfort and sophistication (White 2000; Paulicelli 2014a, 2014b).The newsreels of La Settimana INCOM offer a history in images of the processes of change and modernization in postwar Italy through fashion and film. I would like to take up here a question posed by Lussana's study and also by Sainati's: What was the goal of documenting the real, and what is the significance of the silences or omissions in the attempt and desire to change, to "reinvent," an entire country? From this point of view, one can understand how fashion could literally embody the individual and collective desire to return to life, especially after the ruins brought about by World War II, a Civil War (Pavone 1991), and a totalitarian regime.8 Thus, in Lussana's words, "What filters through the newsreel reports is certainly a muffled, emphasized, often deformed story, but it is nonetheless a 'true' story because, beyond the shortcomings and forgetfulness, the human, social, and environmental landscapes it portrays really existed" (2022, 13).How is the Italy of reconstruction described by American journalists? As early as September 1946, Marya Mannes, the American special correspondent for Vogue, wrote an eight-page article bearing the telling title "Italy Revives." She documents the energy of Italy's rich cultural and creative scene in spite of the havoc left by World War II and the hardship the country was still facing. Her article sheds light on the multiple forces at work during the period of reconstruction, fashion included. Focusing mostly on Rome, Mannes offers a mosaic of the many Italies that lived side by side, from aristocrats to white-collar workers to the working classes. She juxtaposes the Roman aristocratic palazzi with the extreme poverty of the slums in the Roman periphery or borgate. Mannes includes fashion in her article on Italy's rebirth in a wider cultural context. We see a beautiful photo of the Princess Irene Galitzine, who "directs 'Fontana' a distinguished maison de couture." Then "Madame Anna" who was "long at Schiaparelli in Paris, and now directing the fashion house Gabriella Sport," which was headed by Countess Gabriella di Robilant, and which Mannes describes as a "vital" maison. American magazines and Italian promotion often highlighted aristocratic women and men, using their seductive "aura" to better sell elegant fashion and with it a new glamorous Italian identity that was able to compete with Paris. This was one of the grounds on which Italian fashion built its soft power. Mannes's article draws on the many diverse forces and contradictions that characterize Italy's postwar landscape.In postwar Italy, despite the fact that the Marxist and Catholic subcultures, then dominant, had deep reservations about the American model or way of life and sometimes were even so hostile as to be anti-American, the relationship between Italy and the US was mutually beneficial, although, as Giuliana Muscio (2000) has written, it was also complex and not unidirectional (see also Ellwood and Brunetta 1991; Gundle 2000, 2007). Indeed, a history of fashion and film in a transatlantic context shows very clearly how there was a "mutual interchange" between Italy and the US (De Pascalis 2023).In such a context the promotion of fashion and cinema, and fashion through cinema, had a crucial role. Film was one of the most impactful channels. As a "contrapunto" to the representation and mythologizing images that emerge from the INCOM newsreels, we must also consider the specific role and impact the fast growth of fashion had in the postwar years as a manufacturing industry and a symbolic force that greatly contributed to Italy's moral rehabilitation and economic reconstruction (Stanfill 2015). This will lead to a further articulation of the "contrapunto," namely, the establishment and acknowledgment of the role of costume in film, the productive interaction it had with fashion, and how they both ultimately sealed a new Italian identity.Fashion and film were often at the forefront of the INCOM newsreels. In one, which showed fashion collections during the 1950 Venice Film Festival, film and fashion are defined as "cousins," that is, intimately related. One year earlier, in 1949, a "festival of high fashion" was organized during the festival. Antonio Petrucci, a journalist, filmmaker, and scriptwriter, in his newly assumed role as director of the Mostra del Cinema in Venice (1949–1953), was one of the promoters of the event. This celebration of Italian fashion ran parallel to the promotion of costume design for cinema to seal the winning combination of fashion, cinema, and costume, which was a linchpin for the launch of a new idea of Italy.9 This initiative was one of many that showcased Italian quality and innovative design and craftsmanship and that gradually acquired a higher profile thanks in part to the promotion of American journalists such as Mannes and others who will be examined later. American magazines and Italian promotion often featured Italian aristocratic women and socialites and prominent gentlemen belonging to the jet set to better project a new glamorous Italian identity dressed in elegant fashions that were ultimately able to compete with those of Paris (White 2000).In its November 1945 issue, the magazine Bellezza featured a poster designed by the Florentine painter and illustrator Riccardo Magni. Here we see in close-up a comfortable platform shoe designed by Ferragamo surrounded by the ruins of Florence following the numerous bombings the city had been subject to during World War II. Ferragamo was an iconic symbol linking Italy and America, having started his career as the "shoemaker" to the stars in the Hollywood of Rodolfo Valentino. The comfortable, classic, and elegant shoe represented in the drawing acts as a foundation on which a nation reduced to the extreme can start again, hopefully on a new basis. This image concentrates in itself a melting pot of meanings. For one thing, it refers to the Ferragamo brand, which literally started again exactly at the end of the war after its prior economic collapse. But the drawing also symbolically predicts that the fashion industry would survive and be able to turn itself into one of the main protagonists of Italy's rebirth, both culturally and economically. Ferragamo's name was also a symbol of Italian reconstruction and of how fashion acted as a bridge between Italy and America, as the story of the designer testifies. Already by 1947, Ferragamo had become successful, so much so that the company received, along with Christian Dior (the main protagonist of French fashion's rebirth), the prestigious Neiman Marcus Award in the United States. This was the first time that an Italian brand had received this international recognition. Along with Dior, Ferragamo would become a symbol of the new look. This circumstance tells several stories: one is the interrelated history of Italian and French fashion (both beneficiaries of the Marshall Plan); another is the story of the two nations and their connections in the new geopolitical configuration of relationships between Europe and the US.The Neiman Marcus Award going to ateliers from the two nations also seals a new course of global fashion that featured Italy as a protagonist on the global market for the first time and the US as not only a promoter of French and Italian fashion but also a developer of its own American style and way to fashion. A new American look as an alternative to the glamorous Hollywood style so well documented in 1930s movies emerged alongside French fashion with Dior and Italian fashion with Ferragamo.10 Nevertheless, Hollywood movies had a profound impact on shaping and exporting to the world an attractive American identity conveyed through fashion and costume and whose impact was further developed in the postwar period along with the expansion of the garment and textile industries as well as department stores.In sum, as both a manufacturing industry and a strong symbolic influence, fashion was one of the driving forces behind Italy's modernization in the postwar years. But, of equal importance, fashion was one of the platforms that hosted and practiced the cultural and political diplomacy of the new course of capitalism and the ensuing complex and rich exchanges, negotiations, and hybridization between Italian and American culture (Ferragamo 1972; Ricci 2004; Belfanti and Merlo 2016; Paulicelli 2020a).It was out of these multifaceted interactions that the twin concepts of Italian style and Made in Italy were born. But the path taken was by no means smooth. The many forces and relationships behind cities, networks of people, and local and international politics often provoked tensions and conflicts that spawned different views, initiatives, and practices. They are testimony to a fragmentary process that made it impossible to find common ground. Indeed, the process of modernization was characterized by multiple paths and multiple narratives of modernity. Film will be one of the most impactful channels in this regard, particularly the less-studied newsreels on fashion from the Settimana INCOM, to which I now turn.11The fashion films from the Settimana INCOM can be viewed with an eye to three histories: that of Italian fashion, that of cinema and media, and that of culture in a transnational context. In 2001, Sainati, in his introduction to a collection of essays, asks the following questions: "How many Settimana INCOMs could we find in La Settimana INCOM? How many crossroads of topics and analyses have been deposited in postwar Italy's richest audiovisual archive? Is the answer 2,555 issues, about 350 hours of film, detailing the many evolutions that Italy experienced between the immediate postwar years and the economic boom (2001a, 11)?"These are all important questions, of course. But fashion and film are not treated in any of the essays in Sainati's book. The Settimana INCOM newsreels were projected in Italian cinemas before the main feature film and viewed by a huge number of cinemagoers. And as a recent study of the role of Italian cinema audiences by Daniela Triveri Gennari and colleagues (2020) has demonstrated, cinema-going was one of the most important leisure activities in Italy. The newsreels were distributed in every cinema from 1946 to 1965 and were the most widespread form of information for the Italian cinema-going public in decades that were crucial for the process of modernization and nation building after the fall of the regime and the end of World War II.Through fashion, the INCOM newsreels provide a concrete form that complements the abstract concept of modernization. That is to say, they allow us to see the bodies of models in movement as they show off the clothes designed by such postwar fashion houses as Biki, Germana Marucelli, Schuberth, Fontana, Galitzine, Simonetta Visconti, Gattinoni, and Antonelli. This is fashion "in action"; the newsreels interpret and place within a precise social and cultural context the emergence of new subjectivities, those of women in primis, in Italy's new consumer society, highlighting the geopolitical relationship between Italy and the United States. These newsreels are not only texts rich in information but also narratives of the negotiation of a post–World War II, post–civil war and post-Fascist Italy in the throes of a multifaceted process toward a modernity that bore on the local and the global and on various Italian centers. In fact, the newsreels focus on locations from all over Italy and on several fashion initiatives, including fashion shows, starting from 1946, with newsreels such as "Dedicato alle signore: indiscrezioni su una casa di moda" (Settimana INCOM 1946a; Dedicated to the ladies: Rumors about a fashion house), featuring Simonetta, one of the couturiers who were protagonists of Italy's "rebirth"; or other designers based in various Italian cities and documented by newsreels such as "La pagina della donna. Modelli italiani" (Settimana INCOM 1947d; The women's page: Italian models); "La pagina della donna. Modelli a Bologna" (Settimana INCOM 1947b; The women's page: Models in Bologna); and "La pagina della donna. Modelli a Torino" (Settimana INCOM 1947c; The women's page: Models in Turin). "La pagina della donna" featured a series of Italian fashion shows or fashion related events and initiatives that took place in several of the cities that were to emerge as components of the plural constellation of Italian fashion cities, Rome, Milan and others, which will characterize the multiple geographical and cultural identities of Italian fashion, making it different from Paris, the uncontested center of French couture and fashion. In addition, "La pagina della donna" included foreign fashion reports, mainly from Paris and the US, on topics such as the choice of a short or a long skirt (Settimana INCOM 1947a). The US is also featured in "Thanks America" (Settimana INCOM 1948b) as well as many more newsreels featuring the American ambassadors then serving in Italy—James Clement Dunn and then Clare Booth Luce—not to mention American actors visiting Italy, such as the beloved Tyrone Power and Linda Christian, who married according to Catholic rite in Rome in 1949. Settimana INCOM newsreels (Settimana INCOM 1949a, 1949b, 1949c) document both actors' visits to Roman ateliers—the Atelier Fontana for Linda and Caraceni for Tyrone—and their wedding. As Micol Fontana has recalled on several occasions that wedding launched Made in Italy to the world and paved the way for "Hollywood on the Tiber."12 The newsreels narrate the impact on Italy of personages like Power and Christian and the mediatic event that was their wedding (Vitella 2016).In this context, it is important to be attentive to the role that individuals who act as "translators" or cultural and political mediators play in diplomatic history as facilitators of the political and moral rehabilitation of Italy and its identity in the post–World War II period. A fashion figure like Micol Fontana is one such mediator and translator of Italian style to the American market. As a large manufacturing industry and a huge mediatic machine that activates the engine of desire, fashion gives concrete form to and incarnates (quite literally) in the bodies and clothes that models and new consumers wear an Italy that is reborn out of ashes and ruins. The fashion shows with beautiful models organized by the aristocrat and consummate PR professional Giovanni Battista Giorgini, held first in 1951 in his Florence villa Torrigiani and later at the Sala Bianca in Palazzo Pitti, are also part of the complex process of Italy's rehabilitation and rebirth. As early as 1952, as documented in a Settimana INCOM newsreel, we find "La moda italiana va a New York" (Settimana INCOM 1952; Italian fashion goes to New York). The film recounts the three weeks Italian models, five from Rome and five from Milan, spent in New York City, including close-ups of such well-known models as Luciana Angiolillo, Loredana Pavone, and Laila Scarlatti (Monti 2016). The official voice of INCOM comments on the "smiles that help confirm the international triumphs that our Alta Moda gained with the Florentine fashion shows." Models, or indossatrici, started to gain visibility and popularity in postwar Italy, and schools were founded to train them in the profession (Monti 2016). An article in the May 23, 1953, issue of La Settimana INCOM Illustrata depicts several indossatrici who also worked in advertising and founded the "Club for indossatrici" in Rome. They contributed to materializing new aspirations for women as consumers as well as establishing themselves as mediators for selling Italian fashion and with it an appealing image of Italy. Something similar happened in cinema with actors. In 1952, a festival of Italian cinema was organized in New York City. In her diary for that year (Brin 2014), fashion journalist Irene Brin recalls that at the beginning of October she was tasked with representing Italy during the "Week of Italian Cinema." She says she took under her wing several Italian stars, among them Eleonora Rossi Drago and film directors such as Luciano Emmer and Luigi Zampa. Other members of the Italian delegation were Silvana Mangano, Dino De Laurentiis, and Carlo Ponti. Among Brin's tasks were those of organizing as many photoshoots as possible as well as interviews with Italian crew members. While in New York City, she met Ferdinando Sarmi, who was then working for Elizabeth Arden. It is worth mentioning that Sarmi was another Italian émigré who in 1958 would establish his own atelier in New York City (Lambert 1959–1971). Known as Count Sarmi, he came from an aristocratic family that did not support his desire to become a fashion designer. In an article published in Time on June 25, 1965, Sarmi declared, "In Italy . . . when the oldest son tells his father he wants to be a dress designer, it's like a woman saying she intends to be a prostitute" (clipping in Lambert 1959–1971). The article continues: "Sarmi's own father responded by packing his son off to the university of Siena. The result was to make Sarmi, some 30 years later, the only Seventh Avenue designer to hold a Doctor of Law degree." Sarmi received the 1960 Coty Award and became a very successful designer, participating in the seasonal fashion shows organized by Eleanor Lambert. In 1940, during World War II, Lambert (1903–2003), known as the "godmother of American Fashion," founded the New York Dress Institute and started to organize what she called "Press Week," the forerunner of today's New York Fashion Week, during which designers were chosen to show their collections to journalists.13 She wrote a short biography of Sarmi as well as of all the designers who were part of the Press Weeks, thus promoting American fashion by circulating the most important names among the press and consumers. Sarmi is described as one of the most talented designers who, besides his custom-made line, offered a boutique line that was called "Sarmi Boutique Milano" (Lambert 1959–1971). Lambert specifies that "these fashions were made in Italy."For Italian designers in New York City, fashion became a creative combination of the two countries, whose relations intensified in the postwar years. And, as in the case of Sarmi especially, they became important cultural mediators. Just prior to his move to New York City, Sarmi had appeared in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Cronaca di un amore (1950), the director's debut feature film. Sarmi was also the costume designer for the film, which features the young Lucia Bosè parading in elegant and sophisticated costumes. And even earlier than his cinematic encounter with Antonioni, Sarmi appeared in a December 19, 1946, La Settimana INCOM newsreel called "La pagina della donna. Nasce un vestito" (1946c; The women's page: A dress is born), which features him in a fashion house in his role of creative director, we may say today, while he masters illustration, draping, and styling.Already in his examination of the material contained in the Settimana INCOM newsreels, Sainati underlines their "soft power" as integral to building a new identity for Italians that feeds on desires—"initially modest," thanks to the economic hardships of the immediate post–World War II years, but gradually becoming more consistent and widespread. Fashion is one of the load-bearing elements in the construction of the machine of desires that "structures the framework of the growing Italian economy" (Sainati 2017).Before the advent of television in Italy, the Settimana INCOM newsreels provided information and propaganda during the years of reconstruction. In 1947 and in 1949, the Ufficio Centrale per la Cinematografia reintroduced the mandate to project newsreels in each cinema (as had been the case with LUCE newsreels). These newsreels were made with great financial support from the state (Sainati 2000; Frandini 2001; Gundle and Forgacs 2007).For these reasons, the Settimana INCOM came to be considered the official voice of the government, under the control of the Christian Democrat senator Teresio Guglielmone. Despite this, it would be near-sighted to consider this important material from a strictly political standpoint or in a direct relationship with government policies in the Italy of the postwar years. In fact, as film historian Pierre Sorlin (2001) has suggested, the INCOM newsreels constitute a "window of an Italy on the march" (72), to such a degree that he puts forward the hypothesis that the Settimana INCOM was not so much a mouthpiece for the government as it was an instrument of communication for capitalism. Such a vision confirms the hypothesis with which we began of a relationship between the desire for capitalism and the construction of a national identity. But it also corroborates the fact that Italy, in this kind of cinematic production, joined other European nations in dedicating space to news, sport, fashion, cinema, local festivities, etc. In fact, beginning in 1948 (the year that determines the political direction Italy would go in with the exclusion of the Italian Communist Party from power after the elections of that year won convincingly by the Christian Democrats), political arguments were no longer included in the newsreels.14 If we recall the great themes noted by Sorlin that characterized the production of INCOM newsreels (the needs of the nation, reconstruction, and economic and social progress), we can identify the contribution that the fashion and the textile industry, of which Sorlin does not speak, gave to the processes of reconstruction and the consequent economic and social progress and the transformation of Italy into a mass society.In all this, the relationship between Italy and the US has a special role at the political, cultural, and economic levels, as well as in fashion, of course. In various media forms, we can identify several attempts to rehabilitate an identity through fashion. Furthermore, these newsreels are a document that complements the printed material of the time: magazines, company archives, and the exhibitions that were organized in Italy and the US thanks to the mediation of key personages of US and Italian culture, such as Max Ascoli, the founder of Handicraft Development, Inc., which was in operation starting in 1944 and instrumental for the success of the traveling exhibition Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design, which first opened at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City in 1950 (Camurri 2012; Rogers 1950).The project to rebuild an Italian identity and document the nation's gradual economic and social progress was reinforced by the publication of a magazine that accompanied the Settimana INCOM newsreels. The first issue of the Sandro Pallavicini–founded magazine came out in December 1948 under the name La Settimana Incom. Tutto il mondo in sette giorni (The weekly INCOM: The whole world in seven days). It aimed at reproducing in print the style of the newsreels and bore the same logo, the statue of David by Michelangelo. In 1950, the magazine changed its name to La Settimana INCOM Illustrata (The week
Eugenia Paulicelli (Mon,) studied this question.