Italy in International Competition in the 1960s and 1970s: The Textile and Fashion Industry

The oil crisis of 1973 coincides with the end of the model and the strategies outlined in the inter war period. Iitalian public enterprise helped to develop key sectors (iron and steel, energy and infrastructure) for the country's growth; Italian private companies were able to increase the production capacity of industry, with mixed results, particularly positive in automotive and consumer durables, less brilliant in the chemical sector. The ’economic miracle‘ that characterized the period of the "golden age" was spreading across the entire country and involved the growth of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). During this period Italy drew closer to the technological frontier/caught up with technological progress? Seizing the opportunities offered by the opening of international markets and the full affirmation of the technological regime of mass production (Grabas 2014; di Maio 2014). After the Second World War, Italian fashion houses and tailors’ shops bought exclusive models from French fashion houses such as Dior, Balenciaga and Fath. However, the Italian fashion industry was looking for a new international promotion; in the initial phase of this movement, the bonds of cooperation between textile companies and fashion designers were not yet consolidated or widespread in the textile and clothing sectors. Marzotto had benefited tremendously from the Marshall Plan and tried to penetrate the American market, making visits to promote his goods in the United States. He focused on products with a high value and, between 1951 and 1952, decided to begin producing garments. During the ’economic miracle‘', 1958-1963, economic growth was concentrated in the industrial triangle and unleashed a wave of of mass migration to the cities of this area, Genoa, Turin and Milan, which experienced a disordered and uncontrolled growth in building. The high labour supply kept the level of wages far below the European average. A sharp dualism emerged between export industries which, in order to hold up against international competition had to build technologically advanced plants, and industries still anchored to inefficient production methods, such as 'clothing, textile and furniture industries, producing for the domestic market and that only later came to the notice of foreign markets (Merlo 2008). In 1951, Giovanni Battista Giorgini organized an evening at Villa Torrigiani, his private residence, with the aim of promoting Italian fashion. Giorgini chose the fashion houses based on their expressed ambition to free themselves from the influence of French fashion (Codeluppi 2007). The basic idea was the launch of Italian fashion internationally through a fashion show. The success was resounding, the show impressed international buyers much more than the previous show in Paris and the major fashion magazines of the time, such as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, commented positively on the event. In 1952 Giorgini won the White Room in Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and this event could be seen as the birth of Italian fashion. In the early 1960s, Italian patents registered in the United States by foreign entities reached 4.5% of the total, not a very high level , but which had never been reached before and has not been reached since. This was a period of great expansion for the Italian economy, which reached levels of GDP growth among the highest in the world, while at the same time, reducing regional disparities between North and South. The new waves of emigration to the cities of the industrial triangle, which were unprepared to deal with this massive influx , exacerbated social conflict which erupted in the union struggles of the ‘hot autumn’(Pinchera 2009; Belfanti, 2008; 2005, 2003). In this decade, the ’casual look‘ was born thanks to the appearance of a new social class, the middle class, who had become wealthy and e required appropriate clothing that was, democratic, not luxurious. The equivalent in France was prét à porter, which made affordable yet stylistically innovative and technically advanced dresses. For the first time it was possible to close the traditional gap between mass-produced clothing series and tailored haute couture clothes and create an intermediate formula (Codeluppi 2007). The first couturier in prét à porter was Pierre Cardin. The period of growth was, however, interrupted by the first oil shock of 1973. This work aims to contribute to the history of the period 1958-1976, with particular reference to the Italian and European textile industry, above all where the Italian textile industry was one of the strategic factors of its "Made in Italy".