Anna Piaggi is an Italian

Italian people

The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...

 fashion writer

Fashion journalism

Fashion journalism is an umbrella term used to describe all aspects of published fashion media. It includes fashion writers, fashion critics or fashion reporters...

 and style icon.

Anna Piaggi has worked as a translator for an Italian publishing company Mondadori, then written for fashion magazines such as the Italian edition of Vogue

Vogue (magazine)

Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...

and, in the 1980s, the avant-garde magazine Vanity. She is known especially for double page spreads in the Italian Vogue, where her artistic flair has been given free expression in a montage of images and text, with layout by Luca Stoppini. Since 1969, she has used a bright red manual Olivetti

Olivetti

Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines.- Founding :The company was founded as a typewriter manufacturer in 1908 in Ivrea, near Turin, by Camillo Olivetti. The firm was mainly developed by his son Adriano Olivetti...

 valentine typewriter for her work.

Piaggi has a large clothes collection, including 2865 dresses and 265 pairs of shoes, according to a 2006 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. She dresses in an exuberant, unique and eclectic way, never appearing in the same outfit more than once in public. Such is her influence and knowledge in the fashion world, Manolo Blahnik

Manolo Blahnik

Manuel "Manolo" Blahnik Rodríguez CBE, , is a Spanish fashion designer and founder of the self-named, high-end shoe brand.-Biography:Born to a Czech father and a Spanish mother and born and raised in the Canary Islands , Blahnik graduated from the University of Geneva in 1965 and studied art in Paris...

 has dubbed her 'The world's last great authority on frocks'.

Her associates in the fashion world include the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld is a German fashion designer, artist and photographer based in Paris. He has collaborated on a variety of fashion and art related projects, most notably as head designer and creative director for the fashion house Chanel...

 (from the 1970s), who has often sketched her, and Manolo Blahnik

Manolo Blahnik

Manuel "Manolo" Blahnik Rodríguez CBE, , is a Spanish fashion designer and founder of the self-named, high-end shoe brand.-Biography:Born to a Czech father and a Spanish mother and born and raised in the Canary Islands , Blahnik graduated from the University of Geneva in 1965 and studied art in Paris...

, who is the designer of many of her shoes. She is the muse of British milliner Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones (milliner)

Stephen Jones OBE is a leading British milliner based in London, who is considered one of the world's most radical and important milliners of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He is also one of the most prolific, having created hats for the catwalk shows of many leading couturiers and...

. She is also an admirer of British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 clothes designer Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood

Dame Vivienne Westwood, DBE, RDI is a British fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream.-Early life:...

 and her hats, made by Prudence Millinery

Prudence Millinery

Prudence, designer for Prudence Millinery, designs and makes couture hats for major designers all over the world.- A brief history :Prudence was born in 1963 in New-York, USA. A graduate of New York's Fashion Institute of Technology and a former assistant buyer for the Associated Merchandising...

. She is rarely seen without fingerless gloves, mostly by UK designer label Glovedup Gloves (www.Glovedup.com). She has lived in New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and has visited London and Italy periodically since the 1950s.

Piaggi was married to the photographer Alfa Castaldi

Alfa Castaldi

Alfa Castaldi was an Italian photographer. He began his photographic career in 1954, depicting the social life of his native Milan for Italian magazines, moving into fashion photography in the 60's, when he provided images for Novità , Linea Italiana, and Arianna. Castaldi married Anna Piaggi in...

 in 1962 in New York. Castaldi died in 1995.

Books

• Piaggi, Anna & Karl Lagerfeld. Karl Lagerfeld: A Fashion Journal. Thames and Hudson, 1986. ISBN 0-500-01395-0.
• Lagerfeld, Karl. Lagerfeld's Sketchbook: Karl Lagerfeld's Illustrated Fashion Journal of Anna Piaggi. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. ISBN 1-55584-019-1.
• Piaggi, Anna. Africa di Missoni per Italia 90, Anna Piaggi, Gianni Brera. Edizioni Electa, 1990. ISBN 88-435-3410-6.
• Piaggi, Anna. Anna Piaggi's Fashion Algebra, Anna Piaggi. Thames and Hudson, 1998. ISBN 0-500-01876-6.
• Piaggi, Anna. Doppie pagine di Anna Piaggi in Vogue. Leonardo Arte, 1998. ISBN 88-7813-883-5.
• Wintour, Anna, Michael Roberts, Anna Piaggi, André Leon Talley, & Manolo Blahnik. Manolo Blahnik Drawings. Thames and Hudson, 2003. ISBN 0-500-28413-X.
• Clark, Judith (editor). Anna Piaggi Fashion-ology. Victoria and Albert Museum, 2006. ISBN 0-9552335-0-X / ISBN 978-0-9552335-0-0.

External links

• Style.com photographs
• Images (Archived 2009-10-25), including Karl Lagerfeld sketches and David Bailey photographs.
• http://glovedup.com/h/Gallery/AP.html Gallery of Anna Piaggi wearing Glovedup Gloves