Anna Piaggi is an unforgettable style icon

Anna Piaggi is one of the most famous journalists in the world of fashion, a stylist, and also recognized as an icon of the whole world. She is one of those people for whom years are not a hindrance. On the contrary, for Piaggi they are synonymous with well-established, concentrated beauty, personal style and taste.

Anna Piaggi: biography of the early years

The future style icon was born on March 22, 1931 in the family of the manager of the universal store. Her mother worked as a secretary in the same department store, so little Anna managed to come into contact with the magic world of beautiful and stylish clothes. Unhappily for the whole family, Anna's father was killed when she was only 7 years old. Mother sent Anna to a children's boarding school.

There, Anna received a high-quality education, but as soon as her studies at the closed boarding school were over, she went to explore the surrounding world. Like her age Elsa Schiaparelli, Anna chose the free path, providing herself with occasional earnings of dishwashers or nannies. Anna Piaggi subsequently repeatedly noted that she managed to reach the top in the fashion world only thanks to strict discipline, grafted within the walls of the boarding school.

Carier start

No one knows for certain why the choice of the girl fell on the fashion industry. However, in 1960, she took a job as an interpreter in the fashion edition of Arianna. From that time, Piaggi began to visit London very often. In total, during her visits to London, Piaggi visited about 87 fashion shops. In one of the boutiques, she accidentally met a famous fashion historian - Ven Lambert.

In the process of communicating with Lambert, the Piaggi has a desire to collect old books, garments in vintage style, as well as elements of the interior. Anna begins to experiment, mixing elements of the XIX century. With modern details of clothing. But while her own style is not much different from the image of an ordinary woman - simple dresses, smoothly combed hair.

Work in fashion magazines

Significant became for Anna the 60s, which are considered the beginning of her ascent to the fashionable Olympus. And also at this time she met her future husband, Alf Castaldi. The next starting point for Anna was work with the publishing house Cond`e Nast. Together with her husband Anna releases reports from the latest fashion shows, writes articles about fashion trends. Anna Piaggi becomes the editor of the magazine of the same publishing house Vanity Fair in 1981. Photos of the fashionable journalist have been preserved since those times thanks to the stylist Karl Lagerfeld. Since 1974, he carefully collected photographs documenting both Anna's journalistic work and her fashionable images.

Working with Vogue

Since 1988, Anna Piaggi began working with the magazine Vogue, acting as a fashion consultant. She begins to lead her own column. Her fashionable intuition makes the magazine incredibly popular. Readers start buying it just for the sake of its reviews.

It should be noted that it was thanks to cooperation with the Italian Vogue that Anna Piaggi was able to show all her talent. For example, the British edition of this magazine is distinguished by meticulousness and sad photographs, the main feature of the French version is patriotism and a tendency to follow local fashion traditions. And in the Italian publishing house Anna was able to fantasize and experiment with images. Complete freedom is the main advantage that Anna Piaggi had in the magazine. Photo in his youth displays already formed in her taste for everything unusual.

Many great designers of that time rightfully called Piaggi "the architect of a quarry." She just had to appear in an image or dress, created by some still unknown young talent, as before him the gate to the world of great fashion opened with ease. It happened, for example, with Julian MacDonald.

Where did the blue strand come from?

Approximately at the same time in the hair of a fashionable journalist appears the famous blue strand. Anna Pyaggi herself claimed that this was entirely by accident. It happened during the next visit to the hairdresser. Suddenly Anna saw that the master had changed in the face. Indeed, the cause for concern was obvious: a mixture of paints reacted chemically with the hair, and the strand acquired a bright blue hue. But Anna Piaggi was not at all embarrassed, and since that time this lock has become an integral part of the image of an amazing woman.

The work of Anna Piaggi inspired such great designers as Dolce and Gabbana, Christian Lacroix, Versace, Stephen Jones, Galliano Blanik, and many others. Anna Piaggi's creed sounded like this: "You should never wear the same dress twice." Therefore in her wardrobe there were 2586 dresses. And most likely, it was just a small part of what she liked.

Anna Piaggi: personal life

In 1962, Piaggi married Alpha Castaldi. He was not only her friend and partner, but also a wise mentor. The wedding was played in New York, and there Piaggi moved to a permanent residence. They lived their whole lives in harmony. Only in 1995 Anna suffered a misfortune: Castaldi died of cancer. However, recovering from grief, Anna continues her creative activity and already in 1999 she produces her own book, dedicated to the ten-year history of her column in Vogue magazine. In 2006 an exhibition called Anna Piaggi: fashion-ology was opened in London. On it, you could see samples from the stock of Anna's personal collection. Only one pair of shoes showed 256 pairs.

August 7, 2012, Anna died in Milan. Her age at that time was 81 years. Anna Piaggi is considered an indisputable phenomenon not only in the world of high fashion, but also in human culture in general.