Under the dress nothing, the film that forty years ago returned the world of fashion (except Franco Moschino) returns forty years ago

“The fashion of Milan trembles.” This is the title in the newspapers that accompanied the release of Nothing under the dress. Or at least that’s what is handed down. 40 years have passed since the thriller directed by Carlo Vanzina set in the patinated world of “Milan to drink” managed to put an entire sector in turmoil even before the shooting ended.

The reasons are a yellow in yellow in which the names of legendary stylists are intertwined, beautiful supermodels lent to the cinema, a mysterious author who had his good reasons to remain hidden and a very skilled Press Agent That, as the facts have shown, he knew well his own. Here is everything you don’t know about this film that has become cult that will return to the big screen starting from August 4th (with previews at the end of July) distributed by Cat People thanks to Faso Film.

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To clarify, we must start from the beginning. Nothing under the dress He came out in 1983 not as a film but like novel. Written by the stranger Marco Parmathe author is also one of the protagonists of the yellow in the role of the director of the magazine Venus. The Milanese fashion is against the background of the murder of an Italian -American model but the crime that is only one of the aspects told in the book: in that corrupt and patinated world there was everything, from drugs, to kidnappings, passing through blackmail and pornography.

Marco Parma’s true identity was a well -kept secret. Among the names that made themselves in an attempt to find out who was hidden behind the pseudonym, someone evidently well introduced in the sector, there were that of Marta Marzotto, that of Maria Pia Fanfani and that of Claudio Martelli (a pity not to be enjoyed the hunt for the yellowist in that period).

On the cover of the book, however, there was an American model that would become very well known but for others imponderable reasons. It was called Broome womansister of that Terry Broome which ended up on the front pages of the newspapers the following year. Also she wearer, also American, on June 26, 1984, drunk and stunned by cocaine, killed her stalker with a gunshot, the rich Playboy Francesco D’Alessio.

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Of the novel and those turbid atmospheres a lot of speak. Natural to think of a film transposition of the book. At first, he was involved Michelangelo Antonioni. According to what is read an article by Panorama of 1985, the director had knocked on the door of Giorgio Armani, of Krizia and of Gianfranco Ferré However, who did not want to be involved because they considered the story narrated by Marco Parma “poor, liar and who disqualified an entire category”.

Alone Gianni Versace He accepted to put the clothes and the face but the collaboration had been considered too onerous for the available budget. Given the road so uphill, Antonioni gave up the blow but the producer Achille Manzotti did not resign himself also because he had already paid the money for the rights.

The actress Nicola Perring as Jessica Crane, the missing model.

At that point the brothers Carlo and Enrico entered the scene Vanzinaveterans from the great successes of comedies such as Sea flavor, Christmas holidays And Holidays in Americajust to rattle a few titles. They took the yellow together with Dario Argento’s screenwriter, Franco FerriniAnd practically only the title of the novel. In the version designed for the cinema of Nothing under the dressthere were models killed with scissors, wealthy decorated, a beautiful one who improvises himself in an investigator in the nightmare and a commissioner close to retirement (played by Donald Pleasence).

The Vanzina put the story of Terry Broome in the blender, Red light murder by Brian De Palma and that glossy world populated by beautiful women who came to the city from all over the world trying their luck dressed as great signatures. Signatures that were again contacted with the brand new script in hand, without success: the new writing was also sent back to the sender.

The models in a scene from the film.

The reasons were variously argued. Mariuccia Mandelli, known as Krizia, said that if he had said no to Antonioni, why say yes to Vanzina? A spokesman for Armani replied that there were already too many controversies while according to Versace – they reported – the original freshness had been lost. Carlo Vanzina accused the stylists of not being too nice and of taking himself too seriously. The manzotti producer did not send them to say.

The Moschino fashion show set up for the film.

“There was no designer who gave us a dress, nobody who came to meet us,” he vented with Panorama. “Everything I had to pay, the furs I had to go to rent them, the underwear for a parade, then, I even had to buy it” continued “I did not claim to be sponsored, at least having clothes on loan!”. Other times, we would say. Someone who smelled the opportunity in all this tussle, however there was. It was Franco Moschino.

“When he read the script he told me”I am a dispute, I go against the current. If the others do not accept, I accept ““Reported Manzotti who underlined Moschino’s availability: the designer who founded his brand two years earlier, would have made available the models of his latest collection. And it was of speech.

Pat Cleveland parades for Moschino in a scene of Nothing under the dress.

In one of the scenes of the film, one of the most iconic, as they say now, can be seen The setting up of the Moschino fashion show in front of the Milan Central Station (a detail that does not like to Nicola Trussardi Because he first had had the idea of the station in that year with a show set up on the tracks).

Pat Cleveland parades for Moschino in 2013 for the spring-summer 2014 collection with a reinterpretation of the model worn in the parade of Nothing under the dress.

Catwalking/Getty Images

On the catwalk, in addition to the actresses/models fleeing the killer and police, there was also Pat Cleveland wrapped in the dress Cow of the autumn-winter 1985-86 collection of the fashion house. In the cast, as well as on the platform, it also appeared Renée Simonen At the debut as an actress: the Danish supermodel was a real star not only because he was very launched in his career but also because in that period he had a relationship with John Taylor, the Duran Duran bassist. To understand, let’s talk about the top of the range of the celebrities of the time.

Renée Simonen in a scene from the film.

In short, in the middle of the controversies the film was actually presented in November 1985. Enrico Lucherinithe one who in Italy invented the profession of press officer, knew one more than the devil. How did he manage to talk about a movie? Inventing a lie that became news and which by force of things made the film promoted on the front page promoted. THE’trick He had a sort of copyright: with «light», A deadline also finished on the Treccani dictionary as neologism, it was meant the fake news Author, a genre that traveled hand in hand with Italian cinema.

Nothing under the dress He had a real and likely stories galore. It was just enough to choose one. Lucherini exploited the fashion discontent of which he had been so chatted. So, at the first he reserved a row of armchairs to the stylists who had entered into controversy with the production, complete with a name and surname printed in plain sight. The Front Row He remained empty and the press could not help but notice him. “The fashion of Milan tremblesThe newspapers headlined but that was a “Lucherinata”, the first of Lucherini for Carlo Vanzina.

Rossella Jardini tells about her link with Franco Moschino: like him no one ever

For many years it has been the right arm – and the muse – of that genius never celebrated Franco Moschino’s quite celebrated. And he is then, for 20 years, preserved the aesthetic and cultural heritage. Today Rossella Jardini is (still) an elegant lady, who tells in a fresh book of the press about her link with “the person who made me laugh more in life”

“At the Milanese preview of Nothing under the dresswho attacked the world of fashion, placed the names of the stylists on the armchairs, “said the Press Agent al Messenger «I had looked at me from inviting them and, when the chairs remained empty, I said they had boycotted the film. The newspapers grabbed and the box office exploded ». A marachella that cost the closure of any relationship with Milanese stylists for a few years in Luccherini.

A scene from the film.

If, for obvious reasons, we cannot reveal those who killed the models with tailor scissors in fiction, in reality, however, we can reveal the author of the book from which everything is shrewd. It has been no longer a mystery for about thirty years. Marco Parma is Paolo Pietronilong -term journalist, in those years he was director of Friend. Natural that would know the lights and shadows of the world of fashion perfectly who saw its undisputed capital in Milan.

The title of this worship film (there are also an expert Anna Galiena and Sonia Raule) has become a phrase commonly used even by those who have never seen the film and who will now have the opportunity to fill the gap. That nothing under the dress forty years ago was able to make the great fashion tremble (less one), at least so tells the legend. Then that nothing, who say the detractors of yesterday and today, will not be nothing.