THE FASHION SCIENTIST

PROBLEM

Writing about Anna Piaggi was not as easy as I thought it would be. Anna and her work represent, for me, the archetype of what fashion journalism should be. She has shaped me indelibly, helping me understand the idiomatic value of clothing and the choices/stories we all create (consciously or unconsciously) every day when we “edit” our outfits and look at ourselves in the mirror: we externally communicate who we are internally.

ANNA PIAGGI’S CHARACTERISTICS

Her offbeat approach to fashion, lived on her own terms, with no regard for the “rules” of the times (Anna-chronisms?).

Her profound knowledge of every reference or subject, paired with an almost disarming lightness.

The way she viewed a magazine’s pages as a cohesive whole, made up of photos, illustrations, text, graphics, and styling, leaving nothing to chance, yet giving the impression that everything was spontaneous.

Her constant unpredictability, like a wild card that added a “twist” to a predefined recipe.

Her all-encompassing and obsessive love for dressing, in every form and variation, free from any dogmatic or “archivist” mindset.

All of this should have helped me: the coordinates for Anna are there, but there remains an ineffable “something”

—her true essence, in the end.

SOLUTION

I decided to approach her by following her own example: using a “logical” structure. In 1998, Anna Piaggi, quite unexpectedly, approached the editorial process of her book D.P. Doppie Pagine - Fashion Algebra just as the title suggests, placing fashion within the “grid” that forms the backbone of every magazine: the layout. My approach will be simple, offering elements of a “mathematical” operation—coordinates, geographical or stylistic cues—without any pretense of providing a real solution to the “A.P. problem.” 

GEOGRAPHY OF A.P.

MILAN

Her hometown. As a child, she attended an all-girls boarding school, but at four years old, during Carnival, she was dressed as a little Dutch girl, with a white cap, a long dress with an apron, and traditional wooden clogs. This was her epiphany: in stark contrast to the strict school uniform, the costume revealed what she truly desired—to create a new Anna every day. In the 1950s, she met photographer Alfa Castaldi, who would become her lifelong partner. Alfa frequented Bar Jamaica in the Brera district, a meeting place for anarchist intellectuals, musicians, photographers, and, above all, the avant-garde artists of the time. It was Alfa who introduced her to the cultural and artistic side of life, a deep mastery of aesthetic references that would become a defining feature of Anna’s personality and work.

Milan is also home to La Rinascente (so named by Gabriele D’Annunzio), Italy’s first “modern” department store, which has strong ties to the Piaggi family: Anna’s grandfather was a buyer, and her brother was a window dresser. This “department store of the future” introduced her to the first brand she championed: colorful knitwear with a small label that read “Missoni.” From that moment, the Missoni family became an integral part of her fashion vocabulary.

The Mondadori publishing house, located just outside Milan, would come to define her career. The magazine Arianna appointed her as fashion director—a profession that was still evolving at the time, and which Anna handled in an avant-garde manner from the start, with a fascination for the British youthquake that would soon lead her to her next geographic and mental destination.

LONDON

The capital of freedom. Bored with the “rigidity” of her work, Anna moved to London in the late ’60s, right in the midst of the youthquake. This city, infused with countless different cultures, modernity, rebellion, and nonconformity—yet simultaneously steeped in deeply iconic traditions—gave her another defining trait: a “double vision,” with one eye on the present and the other looking back at the past, at the invisible and the ineffable. In London, Anna erased the distinction between high culture and pop culture from her aesthetic language. She simultaneously followed young designers of swinging London like Mary Quant and Barbara Hulanicki (creator of the Biba label and its revolutionary, trailblazing concept store) while developing a near-obsessive interest in historical fashion.

It was during this archaeological journey that she had a transformative encounter with Vern Lambert, an antiques dealer and costume history enthusiast. Vern became her guide in an endless, passionate hunt through flea markets and auction houses, as well as the third element in an inseparable aesthetic-professional-romantic triangle. Anna became a catalyst, blending Castaldi’s cultural depth with Lambert’s non-superficial frivolity, both essential aspects of her being and her work. London was also the city where she formed lifelong “style friendships”: with Manolo Blahnik, the supremely elegant and sophisticated creator of the most extravagant and stylish iconic shoes; Stephen Jones, the “mad hatter” who transitioned from the punk and new romantic scenes to the heights of Ascot; and Vivienne Westwood, for whom an entire separate article would be required.

A.P.’s TOOLS

VANITY

In the ’80s, a decade saturated with fashion, images, and surfaces, Anna Piaggi became such an essential and unique figure in the industry that Condé Nast (publisher of Vogue) gave her a platform to fully realize her vision in 1981: the magazine Vanity. The Piaggi-Castaldi-Lambert trio formed a creative powerhouse built on photography, layout, words (important not only for their content but also for their visual impact), and above all, illustrations. Drawing inspiration from the history of fashion journalism—where, before photography, painting played a key role in storytelling—Anna made the bold decision to use this seemingly outdated medium in a modern way, unlocking a vast realm of creative freedom and narrative depth.

Antonio Lopez, an illustrator and part of Karl Lagerfeld’s living moodboard (along with Anna herself) in the ’70s, and what we would now call an image-maker, was the first in a long line of “artistic friends” whom Anna entrusted with literally putting her fashion sense to paper.

D.P. OF A.P.

By the late ’80s, fashion was on the brink of a drastic shift. The fall of the Berlin Wall and with it totalitarian ideologies, the devastating impact of AIDS on the creative community, an impending economic crisis, and general uncertainty about the future made the excesses of the closing decade seem completely out of place. New voices emerged to tell a different story: Helmut Lang, the minimalist flagbearer; Martin Margiela, with his “poor” vision that completely rejected glamor; and Hussein Chalayan, pushing conceptual thinking to the limits of comprehension. In 1988, Franca Sozzani became editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia, marking this shift with a new editorial direction that emphasized style over passing trends. In this landscape of elegance by subtraction, Franca introduced a wild card: Anna Piaggi’s Double Pages.

The four-page spreads curated by Anna often broke the magazine’s editorial flow in a brutal yet brilliant way. Born from her personal inspirations, they were structured with absolute vision. A mix of historical and cultural references, mental and visual states, anti-trend trends, and playful frivolity, all expressed through diverse mediums: backstage photos, illustrations, graphics, collage, and always her words—characterized by intricate wordplay, witty amusements, cryptic syntheses, and boundless irony. Her approach to fashion was simply what she envisioned, with no concern for what others might like.

Though the Double Pages may appear aesthetically dated today, they remain a testament to a key principle of fashion publishing: the page as not just a structured combination of text and images, but as a singular, fluid, and variable entity, seemingly without rules—an unexpected spice that infused Vogue Italia with an untamed creative energy.

A.P.’s POINT

“For Roland Barthes, fashion is divided into three distinct stages: the first stage is the garment as a real object. The second stage is the photograph as incidental imagery. And the third stage, the most important for him, is the language of fashion, which becomes the myth and, for him, becomes fashion itself: the fashion journalist is the one who creates fashion.”

(Anna Piaggi, 1966)

Thank you Anna.