Fashion and costumes in the work of Italian filmmaker Robert Vignola in silent Hollywood

While the influence of dive fashion on the cross-class audience of Italian silent cinema has been established, the relationship between fashion and silent Hollywood stresses the class-composition of the audience. The work of director Robert G. Vignola, born in Italy but active in the United States, clarifies the passage from a cinema addressed to the popular audience of the nickelodeon to the middle class, and specifically women, in the narrative and through stars, within the suggestions of fashion. There is a general consensus about Italian American culture being an extension of Italianness. In the press, Vignola was always identified as an Italian and his artistic sensibility was credited to his Italian origins, at a time where Italian silent cinema was incredibly popular on American screens. From a transnational perspective, the role of fashion in his work both within a historical perspective and in the theoretical debate on female silent film spectatorship also points to the underestimated relations between American media and Italian culture.