Anna Piaggi - Editor

[brian]

absolutely...

[iconemod]

In person she's also quite mystifying... She is always like in a "limbo"...definetely not the real-business-girl to talk to. I remember there was a hardcover book published by Lagerfeld with aquarel drawings in which Anna (head to toe in couture Jean Patou...) was at Lagerfelds kitchen, washing a lettuce while Lagerfelds boyfriend at the time (Mr. Jacques de Bascher) was slicing some potatoes. Glamorous !!!!

[evexa]

Originally Posted by Incroyable

She is one of my absolute favorite fashion people. Alongside Isabella Blow who also has a penchant for hats albeit from Treacy.

I also have all her books. For the premiere of her "Fashion Algebra" she wore a Jean-Charles de Castelbajac designed as a replica of the book.

Looks like she made a miscalculation.

[softgrey]

great article ...
i think we need more pics of anna piaggi...

[Lea]

I like Anna Piaggi!



by illustrator David Downtown

she has a little article on The Daily Front Row Extra

[Lea]

i copied this from the daily front row extra

hats on to anna!
Anna Piaggi has been a muse to Karl Lagerfeld, editor of Vanity, author of Fashion Algebra, and consultant to Franca Sozzani's Vogue Italia (she's now editor at large). And damn! Can the woman dress!

Tell us about your approach to fashion.
I'm frivolous. I like to invent - but it's not gratuitous. I never put myself into a costume for costume's sake.

What's the deal with the blue hair wave?
It arrived by mistake in 1989. My hairstylist, Roberto Pagnini, was mixing colors on me and all of a sudden he went silent. He was horrified, but I liked it. I went to Vogue the next day with my blue hair and all the girls loved it. I haven't changed it since. Color is so important.

Can we peek inside your closet?
I don't particularly like closets. Mostly the clothes are just around me.

Why?
Because clothes are my best friends. Some I've had forever, some I see from time to time, and others I can't live without.

What are the tricks to Anna's legendary look?
Mix styles! I will wear a Fortuny dress like a scarf, miniskirts as capes. I put key pieces from Poiret over my Missoni pajamas!

How do you start your day?
I remove my old vintage clips that keep my waves in place, take my double espresso, read the papers, then make my lists: What I will do for work, the house, what I will wear later on. I'm very methodical and disciplined.

Do you always throw in a hat for good measure?
I haven't left the house without a hat since the early '80s.

Whose hats do you like the best?
Most are by Stephen Jones. When I need a hat for a special event, Stephen faxes me a sketch, I approve it, and he will whip one up. For the launch of Prada's Luna Rossa boat he made me one with organza sails.

[Arug]

What a hag = LADY!!!

[ingenue]

anna of italia is hilarious.. compared to anna of america

[Yimi]

I Love The Way She Mixes All These Beautiful Things,
And I Would Pass All These Cold Afternoon Looking Her...
I Luv Her!

[MissMagAddict]

Daily Telegraph UK Jan 15th 2006


The not so mad hatter


Anna Piaggi wears binoculars to the office, dead pigeons to parties, and outré headgear absolutely everywhere. Yet the most surprising thing about the kooky-looking fashion maven is her utter sanity, finds Lucy Cavendish

Anna Piaggi, the seventysomething style icon and fashion journalist, comes to the door of her Milan apartment looking like a cross between Gloria Swanson and Miss Havisham. Her face is painted like an ageing marionette's, caked in powder with high circular rouged blobs on her cheeks and lipstick painted on her lips in an inverted V. She's a riot of colour, sporting a rich golden velvet frilly frock coat by John Galliano with a hugemirrored dragonfly brooch pinned on to her waist. On her head she wears a Union Jack bowler hat made by the milliner Stephen Jones. On her feet she has Union Jack ankle socks and on her hands, bright pink fingerless mittens. She appears somehow semi-tragic, like an out-of-work pantomime dame. 'I hate the word icon,' she tells me in her heavily accented Italian-English. 'How can anyone be an icon? But… yes… it is hard to find another word.'
After a fashion: Anna Piaggi in her office last month Icon, pantomime dame, call her what you will - Piaggi takes her work very seriously. She talks about how good fashion, in her eyes,must combine wit and cynicism; how impressed she is by designers who use historical references in their work. And she is also, despite her appearance, perfectly sane. 'Oh, all this,' she says waving her hand at her apparel, 'it's all dressing. I love clothes. I love lots of things but it is just a ruse maybe, a way of avoiding, of confusing people about who I am really.'

Indeed, so great is Piaggi's influence in the ephemeral world of fashion that, nextmonth, the V&A opens an exhibition dedicated to her life and work. 'It is a great honour,' says Piaggi. 'It's a wonderful thing but so exhausting! I have sorted out all my clothes and then written, how do you call it? Ah, yes, testimonials about them. I have no idea what people will think. I hope they enjoy it.'

So what is it about Piaggi thatmerits an exhibition at one of London's top museums? For a start, there is her work for Italian Vogue. She is revered for her agenda-setting monthly 'DP' fashion shoots where she highlights, well, anything she likes, really - a word, a feeling, a thought, something she has spotted in London, Paris, New York, the Tube, the subway, the collections, wherever. However, although her pages seem utterly idiosyncratic and a bit off-the-wall, Piaggi insists that they are highly disciplined. 'I am a very disciplined person,' she says. 'Fashion has to be a discipline or else it does not work.'

So she doesn't just look out of the window of her madly cluttered apartment full of Royal Doulton pottery and glass vases and ostrich feathers and a huge, incredible Murano glass chandelier with sketches of her by her friend Karl Lagerfeld decorating the walls and think, 'Oh, today I'll do something about the winter'? 'Oh no!' she says. 'I spend ages thinking about what I do and researching ideas. That's what I love about fashion, the designers who are intelligent, who give their clothes a bit of a twist. For me, Lagerfeld has always been brilliant at this. John Galliano is also clever.' Piaggi has also championed the careers of Manolo Blahnik, Dolce & Gabbana and Stephen Jones. Blahnik has said of her, 'She is the only authority on frocks left in the world.' Dolce & Gabbana described her as, 'Creative, eccentric and unpredictable.' Jones says, 'With Anna it's about fun, interest, frivolity.'
'I never wear the same thing twice in public''I have always liked to mix my look,' says Piaggi, in reply. 'Every dress tells a story. I am very careful about how I look. I never appear anywhere without make-up on. In fact, I never even go out of my bedroom without make-up. I never wear the same thing twice in public. I love hats and I love little canes and binoculars. It looks like everything is just put together in a haphazard way - but no, it is very carefully thought out. Karl Lagerfeld once held a ball and the theme was Venetian and everyone was dressing as doges but I decided to go as a fishwife. I balanced a wicker basket on my head filled with seaweed and crabs and I hung two pigeons I'd bought from the butcher round my neck but at midnight they started to bleed so I had to leave like Cinderella!'

Piaggi - who was born into an austere, bookish family in Milan - says there have been three significant men in her life: Karl Lagerfeld, her late husband the fashion photographer Alfa Castaldi, and the fabulous and eccentric fashion historian Vern Lambert who used to have a stall at Chelsea Antiques Market. It was Lambert who introduced Piaggi to vintage clothes. 'I was living in London in the early 1960s,' she says. 'And I loved it. London taught me how to take traditional fashion ideas and turn them around. In Italy we were all matching our handbags with our shoes, but in London you could wear anything! It was amazing. I used to go round all the markets and pick up anything. It shaped my style and my way of thinking and I love London for that.'

Piaggi used to accompany Lambert in his quest to seek out beautiful, rare clothes. 'We would go from country house to country house, and these women would go to their drawers and rustle around and then come out with these amazing dresses - Schiaparelli, Fortuny, Poiret - and they would be perfectly preserved because of the cold. Sometimes they were unworn and Vern would buy them and they were things of great beauty.'

Piaggi, however, doesn’t believe in wrapping her vast collection of clothes in tissue paper and never wearing them. 'Oh, my dear,' she says, 'I love to wear them. I have this poor Fortuny dress that is all tattered and torn but in a way in looks very now, a little bit punky, a little bit rococo. I use clothes as history. I have an Ossie Clark with the Celia Birtwell print and I remember that as the dress I was wearing when I first met Karl. That is how I view clothes. They have been my life.'

[indie]

Do you recommend Fashion Algebra? I've looked trough it at bookstore..but I'm not quite sure.

[ultramarine]

I absolutely love her and Izzie Blow ...

Anna always wear hats (I thinkIzzy does too ..afterall she "discovered" P. Treacy!) ... and she has this quality you know ... she said frivolous ... well... its like a girl who plays dress up with everything on the closet, but she gets it right!

[smartarse]

Anna is the quintessential fashion maven at fashion shows. she is her own wardrobe. you can't miss her a mile away.

[rui]

This woman is the epitamy of FIERCE!!

[MissMagAddict]

Fashion icon and eccentric nonpareil, Anna Piaggi is, according to her good friend Manolo Blahnik, 'the only authority on frocks left in the world'. Creative consultant to Italian Vogue since 1988, her monthly Doppie Pagine (double-page spreads) in which she rhapsodises about anything fashion-related that has taken her fancy (a print, a word, some graffiti on the Paris Metro), have become an institution. This month, the V&A opens an exhibition dedicated to her life and work, including pieces drawn from her vast and off-the-wall wardrobe
Who are your favourite designers of the moment? I like Dolce & Gabbana and Rifat Ozbek. Also John Galliano, because he's a designer whose clothes create their own mood. I've recently rediscovered Chanel, who I used to wear years ago. I particularly like the collections they make for Japan, full of such stunning patterns and colours. I've also rediscovered Missoni, the clothes are made with such craft. And I like the modernism and discipline of Prada.
Which shoes have caught your eye recently? I always wear Manolo Blahnik. His shoes are so artistic and friendly and always suit my mood. Missoni spring/summer 2006
What do you wear to work? I work from home. So either a jogging costume from Dolce & Gabbana or a 'Gazette' newspaper-print dressing-gown from Galliano.
Who makes the best cashmere? Malo (malo.it).
Handbags? Chanel.
Who is your favourite jeweller? Betony Vernon in Milan (paradisefound.it) and Quidam de Revel in Paris (00 33 1 42 71 37 07).
Where do you buy your underwear? La Samaritaine (lasamaritaine.com) in Paris and Intimo Sirena (via California1) in Milan.
Who makes the best jeans? Vivienne Westwood.
What have been your biggest fashion indulgences? Hats (by either Philip Treacy or Stephen Jones), gloves (from Missoni Men, with cutout fingers - I wear them while I'm working and with matching nail varnish) and walking canes (from Madeleine Gély, 218 blvd St Germain, Paris).
Which are your favourite shops? Corso Como 10 (10corsocomo.com) and Dolce & Gabbana in Milan.
Which are your favourite shops outside Italy? Stephen Jones (stephenjonesmillinery.com) and Manolo Blahnik (020-7352 8622) in London. Ragtime in Paris (23 rue de l'Echaude).
Which are your favourite hotels? Hotel Pont Royal (hotel-pont-royal.com) in Paris. The Dorchester (dorchesterhotel.com) in London.
Which is your favourite restaurant? La Torre di Pisa (trattoriatorredipisa.it) in Milan.
What has been your biggest beauty extravagance? Dyeing my hair blue.
Which cosmetics would you be lost without? Foundation. I use Estée Lauder's Futurist.
Who makes the best mascara? MAC.
Lipstick? Chanel.
Nail polish? François Nars.
Who does your facials? I get all my treatments (including massages, manicures and pedicures) from the Grotta Giusti Hotel in Montecantini Terme (grottagiustispa.com).
Is there a diet that works for you? Pasta.

Interview by Ajesh Patalay Daily Telegraph UK