No posthumous tribute, no restored film, and yet, here is Marcello Mastroianni again in Cannes! In Marcello Mio, by Christophe Honoré, festival-goers will recognize the Italian actor, played feature for feature by his own daughter, Chiara Mastroianni, who begins to imitate her father to the great surprise of those around her. The felt hat, the glasses, the suit and tie combined with a white shirt with a slightly crooked collar…
All these elements, dissected by dozens of sites specializing in masculine elegance, are found in the film in competition, whose theatrical release is set for May 22. Behind the scenes, it was Chanel who, through discreet sponsorship, participated in the financing of this feature film, but connoisseurs know that, The good life (1960) to 8 ½ (1963), the original development of this silhouette owes a lot to the Roman tailor Brioni.
If French couturiers also succeeded, by improvising as costume designers, in creating unforgettable images, it was mainly thanks to actresses. Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy evening dress in Diamonds on sofa (1961) to Catherine Deneuve as Yves Saint Laurent in Beautiful day (1967), or Mireille Darc and her plunging bare back by Guy Laroche in The Tall Blond with a black shoe (1972). In Italy and beyond, however, it is the image of a man, Marcello Mastroianni, who will mark people’s minds, dressed in suits with three thousand stitches whose singularity only the initiated can grasp – here the precise structure of the shoulder, there a patch pocket barchetta (rounded).
Favorable word of mouth
From its launch, in 1945 in Rome, by Nazareno Fonticoli and Gaetano Savini, an expert tailor and a smooth talker born for commerce, Brioni enjoyed success. The post-war excitement, the streets crowded with Vespas and the reopening of the Cinecittà studios in 1948 earned the Italian capital the nickname“ Hollywood-on-Tiber ». Taking advantage of favorable word of mouth, Brioni saw Anthony Quinn, Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda and Clark Gable arrive in his boutique-workshop, thus becoming “the American tailor”wrote the magazine in November 1959 Gentlemen’s Quarterly (renamed GQ in 1967).
But it’s The good life, by Federico Fellini, Palme d’Or in 1960, which became his best calling card. The hero, a disenchanted journalist nicknamed “Paparazzo” and played by Mastroianni, parades in Brioni: black suit in wool and silk which takes on water in the Trevi Fountain alongside Anita Ekberg, or final white suit in cotton gabardine on Fregene beach. Phenomenal impact. “In all the big cities of Italy, it attracts a crazy crowd. All attendance records are broken! In Rome (…), people queue for hours to see it. This has never happened since the war. notes, when the film is released, the correspondent of the World.
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